I just found this from the Malaysians’ March 19 press briefing: “I am aware of speculation that additional waypoints were added to the aircraft’s flight routing. I can confirm that the aircraft flew on normal routing up until the waypoint IGARI. There is no additional waypoint on MH370’s documented flight plan, which depicts normal routing all the way to Beijing.”
I don’t know why CNN radio suddenly made a big deal of this today.
I’m also wondering about reports that the plane entered the flight corridor over the Strait of Malacca and connected with a few waypoints before leaving military radar coverage. At this point, there’s so much noise that it’s hard to know, or remember, what’s fact and what’s speculation.
Another thing, I’ve read that disabling ACARS involves going down into the guts of the plane to pull a circuit. Do you know if that’s how it has to be done, or is there an easier way to do it?
Well, following on my previous post, I found this from yet another unnamed source, this time a “commercial pilot also familiar with the Boeing 777”:
That suggests that switching ACARS off isn’t difficult. The bit about turning it off for flights to China is interesting, although on MH370, it was turned off well before reaching China, so I gather it’s irrelevant.
OK, so no mention of confirmed wreckage. Instead, further analysis of the Inmarsat satellite data has concluded beyond reasonable doubt that the flight did end in the southern Indian Ocean, nowhere near any possible landing site.
This is just so strange. Based on the same info they have had for a week, they have now suddenly concluded that they know with certainty that it crashed in the Indian Ocean. Sounds a lot like there is some kind of new data source at play, and they are being intentionally vauge - ref. the whole discussion that has been going on about militaries not wanting to show their hands.
Not sure about “suddenly”. Maybe they’ve been trying all sorts of analysis of what for all we know may be a mountain of data, and finally found an approach that showed something.
From what BBC is reporting, it sounds like what Ximenean said. The technical explanations are a bit over my head, but it sounds like a British telecommunications company called Inmarsat analyzed the satellite data in a certain way and has come up with something. Must be something convincing, because I just saw the Malaysian prime minister giving a press conference stating the plane crashed in the southern Indian Ocean beyond all reasonable doubt.
Confirming that based on satellite data, the plane crashed into the ocean west of Perth beyond all reasonable doubt. Again, the technical details are above my understanding, but it’s being taken seriously by other experts, even non-Malaysian ones.
Meanwhile, CNN Breaking News is saying “Malaysia Airlines sent a text message to relatives of passengers on MH370 to tell them the plane had crashed.” Geez, stay classy Malaysia Airlines.
They seem to be confirming that the data sent to the satellites ended at a certain position over the Indian Ocean. Since there are no islands in the area and given the amount of time which has passed, it’s probable that the aircraft ditched or crashed not the ocean with no survivors.
This may also be a means for certain state level actors to introduce information that they have gathered without revealing how they were able to do so. If the US Navy for example used hydrophone data or the information collected by a submarine patrolling area, they would be loath to reveal its origin and as a result they may have “guided” Immarsat to regions where the information that they were seeking was found.
Sounds like they did an in-person breifing with family members, I would guess the text was sent to cover those who were not present. Not sure what else they could have done. If they sent a letter people would complain about learning about it on the news first.
From what I can piece together, Inmarsat performed a novel analysis on the data from their satellites, testing against other flights in the area whose position was known exactly, and came to a “beyond reasonable doubt” conclusion.
Well, based on my experience with government bureaucracy, another possible explanation offers itself: that the analysis of satellite data was completed in a more timely fashion, but because classified material was involved (source of the info or perhaps software used to process it) it’s taken days and days to get all parties to sign off on official permission to release the info.
Not images. It’s the data that Inmarsat originally used to produce those two arcs showing where the last transmission may have come from. Upon further analysis, apparently it must have come from a point towards the southern end.
This is a sensible explanation - the focus of satellite image review and searches has already been in this area for many days. So perhaps they “knew” it crashed there days ago but only now have they been able to come out and say it. It is rather confusing though, because the news is coming at the same time as fresh debris sightings. It’s like, hey they found it! Well not exactly but kind of or something.
It’s funny, if you draw a line through original destination Beijing and Kuala Lumpur, the presumed final position of the plane is just about the same distance in the opposite direction.
Must have been at cruising altitude most of the way, to make it that far. I guess no passenger intervention then, although probably not much they could have done.