
MH370 assumed to have crashed with no survivors, says Malaysia Airlines - chmars
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/24/mh370-chinese-plane-spots-white-objects-live-updates
======
biesnecker
Would be interested in hearing what data they've collected that pushed them to
make that declaration. Everything I've heard so far this morning is that there
is mounting evidence, but nothing concrete.

Given the length of time the families (and the rest of the world) have been
left hanging, I certainly hope there is slam-dunk evidence that this is the
case, and that amendments and alterations won't be forthcoming.

~~~
robin_reala
From the statement:

 _Inmarsat, the UK company that provided the satellite data which indicated
the northern and southern corridors, has been performing further calculations
on the data. Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of
this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path.
Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370
flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle
of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth._

Looks like the data was there all along but unextracted.

~~~
buro9
Inmarsat data tracks the Rolls Royce engines.

The data they have isn't position or direction, it is a set of metrics that
report on engine performance and conditions.

They never had positional information, except by virtue of the timing signals
for those data points to their satellite. Which is how they originally
determined the arc shaped corridor.

They must have been able to cross-reference this signal with another satellite
(or source) to say with certainty that the plane went down the Southern
corridor.

I would be surprised if this was cross-referenced with one of their own
satellites given that they could have done that a week ago. I'd speculate that
they were supplied with access to some other source that had received the
signals, and were able to use that to triangulate the position.

~~~
nly
> They never had positional information, except by virtue of the timing
> signals for those data points to their satellite.

Does anyone have any more insight in to this? Was the protocol a one-way ping,
or a ping-pong exchange? Previous reports have inferred that the data from the
hourly pings were incredibly basic. Obviously timing signal propagation is the
basis for GPS, but is it normal or even feasible to collect millisecond or
microsecond transmission timings for engineering data fed via satellites like
the ones operated by Inmarsat? What other variables would have been used for
ranging?

1 millisecond at the speed of light is close to 300km.

~~~
foobarqux
I thought the distance measurement was derived from received signal strength.

edit: Other's have said that they are using Doppler shift.

~~~
sateesh
This story from Telegraph is scanty in details. But it also mentions Doppler
effect. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10719304/How-
Brit...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10719304/How-British-
satellite-company-Inmarsat-tracked-down-MH370.html)

~~~
nly
> These pings from the satellite – along with assumptions about the plane’s
> speed – helped Australia and the US National Transportation Safety Board to
> narrow down the search area to just 3 per cent of the southern corridor on
> 18 March

So it looks like the announcement today is actually old news.

In any case, it's not entirely clear to me how the Doppler effect would
distinguish between northerly and southerly passage.

~~~
DrJokepu
Maybe it could be used to establish whether the airplane is getting closer to
or getting further away from a satellite? Maybe even the relative speed?

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joetek
Today's announcement is simply the inevitable switch from "Search and Rescue"
to a "Recovery" effort. It's been 2 weeks, someone had to make the call that
the possibility of finding people alive has diminished to the point beyond
hope.

As a "Recovery" effort, the pace will continue, but they will no longer risk
lives to find the wreckage.

~~~
afreak
Reason would dictate that if the plane had truly landed somewhere, it would
have been found by now. Wild theories of said plane flying under some other
similar plane to avoid radar detection would have been figured out already and
would have not caused us to go on any wild goose chases in the Indian Ocean.

We all wanted that plane to be safe and sound.

------
ufmace
Does anybody really believe anything else at this point? I don't see how it
could have done anything but crashed somewhere, and we just don't know where
or why yet.

If it landed safely, or even semi-safely somewhere, I don't see how there
could be people still alive after this much time, but haven't managed to find
some way to contact somebody.

I don't think much of any of the hijacking theories either. Okay, maybe it was
an attempted hijacking and something went wrong, leading to the crash, but I
can't see it having landed somewhere for later use, as some people seem to be
speculating. Anybody who has access to a runway to safely land and take off
again such a large jet, and who can afford enough fuel to get it in the air
again and can actually get that fuel to it without somebody taking notice,
plus make enough changes and file appropriate flight plans to fly it anywhere,
surely has enough resources to just buy their own jet instead of using some
wacky plan to hijack a fully loaded passenger airliner, thus drawing the full
attention of the world.

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joering2
You could assume with a high probability it crashed for 2 reasons: #1 noone
came out with hostage demands (imagine cost of keeping alive and fed 250
people, for 3 weeks), or claimed terrorist responsibility. #2. NSA has a
multitude of sophisticated satellites in the space (recently they lunch a new
one that costed over a billion of dollars! -- payload: top secret) and its
been known on the record that technologically less developed countries like
Russia could spy and listen on foreign countries via satellites in late 70s,
some 40 years ago. NSA knew from minute one what happened with this plane. The
"problem" is that revealing to the public that the plane crashed and where it
is buried has sadly no value and does not come close to over-weighing the
benefit of keeping secret that they can see everything around the world up to
a minute. If you would have a def con raised, all military personnel pulled
back for duty, then it would be smart to assume the plane went to Afghanistan,
or somewhere else where it could be re-branded into a nuclear missile, or
something. Since there was nothing like this happening, there was no
explanation other than it crashed and everyone is dead.

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melling
On CNN a representative from Inmarsat stated that airlines could track
direction and speed tomorrow. Airlines simply need to enable the service,
which is relatively cheap.

Considering how cheap this service is, shouldn't it become mandatory? Then the
question becomes, how do you board a 777 at 600 mph and land it if the crew
becomes incapacitated?

~~~
eli
It's easy in retrospect to say that that should be mandatory, but how often
does something like this happen? I bet there are a lot of cheap things we
could do to mitigate extremely unlikely tragedies.

~~~
melling
I am not looking back, I am looking forward. If it only costs $10/flight,
shouldn't it be mandatory? Air France 447 happened 5 years ago.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447)

So, we're talking about more than once per decade.

~~~
dalai
It only took a couple of days to find where the Air France 447 crashed despite
its location. Moreover, I doubt either accident would have been prevented or
people would have been rescued if the precise location of the crash was known
sooner.

There is some value in knowing early where an accident occurred, but that is
rarely a problem. How much is it worth to fix it for the few cases that happen
in the middle of nowhere?

~~~
melling
Your statement is inaccurate:

"While Brazilian Navy authorities were able to remove the first major wreckage
and two bodies from the sea within five days of the accident, initial
investigation was hampered because the aircraft's black boxes were not
recovered from the ocean floor until May 2011, nearly two years later"

If they knew where the plane went down, it wouldn't have taken 2 years to find
the flight data recorders. The "pingers" on the recorders lasted for about 30
days, which should be plenty of time, if you know where to look.

------
protomyth
The world's a big place and we really don't have it all figured out. Simple
explanations are probably the correct one. I do wonder how many flights daily
could be drummed up by weird trivia if they were put under this much scrutiny.

So, how long until the 24-hour news networks switch to stories that have big
ramifications instead of this interesting, but not very (world wise) impactful
event?

~~~
twoodfin
Asking the news networks to stop talking about what is, in fact, a massively
intriguing (albeit tragic) mystery is like asking water not to be wet.

~~~
protomyth
Yeah, I know I'm shouting at the rain, but I would love to actually see 24
news ignore the Casey's[1] and mention but not fixate on the M370s. I guess
the whole idea of what actually affects people is just lost in the shuffle.

1) I don't care how tragic, it was a local story

~~~
mikeash
I just wish the quantity of coverage was somehow related to the quantity of
information available.

Yes, it's a fascinating event and I can see why they want to talk about it.

But once you've covered all available facts (which in the case of MH370 does
not take long, and that was especially true in the days immediately
afterwards) then it's time to stop and talk about something else for a while.

~~~
uptown
Cable-news is a broken product. Circa, on the other hand, has been phenomenal
at reporting factual updates related to this story. I strongly recommend it
for following news stories of interest.

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kghose
One aspect of the 'infographic' has me puzzled. The search area inset (small
box) is way south. It has two lines that say projected flight path. But the
flight path is way north. Should the lines in the inset box blowup say 'debris
field flow?)

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zimmern
There is still the possibility that the plane belly landed and the survivors
are floating around in life rafts. It doesn't follow that because the flight
terminated in the indian ocean, it crashed.

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tuan5
this announcement makes Malay government's unrealistic well known. Good job
Malay Gov~

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glasz
2 weeks. no wreckage. only people talking. as time is ticking they just get
desperate to tell something. anything. i won't believe a damn thing.

they don't have a shred of a clue. there's only future profit to be secured.

edit: yeah, c'mon. give me downvotes, idiots.

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JazCE
I'm more intrigued by the reaction of the families. Is this a normal reaction
from Chinese families?

~~~
localhost3000
Outrageously cold and immature to imply that the family members are
overreacting and worse to imply that it might be related to their ethnicity.
They've been given false hope for two weeks. I cannot begin to imagine the
emotional torture they've had to endure.

~~~
tzs
Why wouldn't you expect how one outwardly reacts to a tragedy to be affected
by one's culture and society? You are reading way more into his comment than
he intended.

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Thiz
Occam's razor.

"Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be
selected"

No signals = Mid-air explosion.

Hijacking, abduction, bermuda triangle, parallel universe, bitcoin theft,
patent stealing, or whatever stupid conspiracy theory people wanted to believe
never passed the test of Occam.

~~~
dingaling
Mid-air explosions actually have a very significant radar signature, called
'bloom', as the debris field expands.

If your theory is that the aircraft exploded somewhere between Malaysia and
Vietnam then it would have appeared as a rapidly-increasing radar return even
on civilian radars.

 _Source: personal anecdote from ex-mil radar operator, who also noted that it
was possible to track the larger pieces of debris from the target drones and
direct the following-up missiles towards them_

~~~
InclinedPlane
Mid-air aircraft explosions also have a very significant IR signature, which
will show up on missile warning satellite observations. TWA-800 did, for
example.

