They are if you’re going to discount them anyway because the Malaysians can’t be trusted at all. On the other hand, if you want to avoid a point by asking for impossible information, then I guess cites would have a purpose for you.
No, the reason to spend money on this isn’t because we can easily afford it, that’s just why we can. The reason to keep searching is because it hasn’t been found. And the governments of the nations involved have a responsibility to their citizens. While it was certainly more urgent early on, it seems to be leveling out now. If it’s important to find it now, it should continue to be a year from now. That responsibility shouldn’t just disappear because everyone has kind of gotten bored with the whole thing.
Here in the US we spend like half a trillion dollars each year just maintaining a military. If we can’t figure out a way to trim like 0.002% off that to put towards figuring out why a plane full of over 200 people seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, then we really need to get our priorities in order.
The status of the western turn has always confused me. When I saw the current search location, I immediately noticed that it was almost a perfect 180 heading from it’s last transponder transmission. To me, that seemed like the plane had trouble and turned south and just kept flying until it ran out of fuel. But now I think the western turn is confirmed. I wish info about the flight such as fuel aboard and radar data were available to us internet detectives, but it seems like the grown-ups are keeping it to themselves. However I can piece some parts together…
Inmarsat has a brief page on their MH370 doppler study here (this PDF file may have better images). The third image does indicate a western turn and a couple possible tracks based on different speeds which end near the search area. The second to last paragraph also says “Therefore, at some time between 00:11 UTC and 01:15 UTC the aircraft was no longer able to communicate with the ground station – consistent with the maximum time the aircraft was able to fly, the article concluded.” (Inmarsat is weirdly quoting an article about itself on this page)
So Inmarsat based the end of the tracks on the amount of fuel the plane had aboard and the fact that it made a western turn. The end of the tracks are what brought us to the search area where the Bluefin is being used now.
Some other stuff I’ve ran across which means absolutely nothing but may be interesting…
Let me go back to the second image on that Inmarsat page, it’s confusing because it shows a “possible turn.” I thought they meant the western turn at first, but based on the dots on the graph, I think that means the pings it received at that time had changing frequency offsets and probably came in while the aircraft was in the middle of a turn. The time is a little bit less than 18:30 on the graph. The wiki page for MH370 says the first of 6 Inmarsat satellite pings since contact was lost with the plane happened at 18:22UTC, so this must be it. Interestingly, it had reached waypoint GIVAL at 18:15UTC and turned toward IGREX but was soon lost by radar.
Skyvector.com is a cool site which allows you to plot aircraft waypoints on a map. The reported waypoints that MH370 used were:
IGARI (where it was when it’s transponder went off)
VAMPI
GIVAL was reached at 18:15UTC
IGREX - it headed toward IGREX next but radar contact was soon lost.
The possible turn indicated by Inmarsat took place at 18:22, 7 minutes after reaching waypoint GIVAL at 18:15.
The GPS coordinates S21 3.00 E103 59.00 should fall somewhere within the search area where they’ve been using the Bluefin.
Here is a link to a map I made which plots all this. The 4th dot from Kuala Lumpur is a waypoint I added between GIVAL and IGREX that’s a little over 7 minutes past GIVAL (assuming 450 knots airspeed). This is soon after radar contact was lost and should be about the location that the Inmarsat data indicated a possible turn. If we assumed it turned southeast and headed toward the crash area, we could just delete IGREX which would take it right back through waypoint VAMPI.
Oh please. I asked you for a legitimate cite that hasn’t been refuted. The Malaysian government has been all over the map on this (literally). It didn’t take long to filter through the chaff and focus on the actual flight path. All this cloak and dagger about a flight to avoid radar detection is at this point unfounded.
Nicely done. In case you didn’t know, the search area co-ordinates on your map do fall within the actual search area as shown on marinetraffic.com.
One minor detail about your map–the Malaysian investigators have said that the plane appeared to evade Indonesian radar. I assume that means that it avoided flying directly over Indonesian territory and probably somewhat farther out from the coast. Instead of the sharp turn to the southeast on your map, it was probably a more rounded curve that kept the plane out over the ocean.
The calculations from the satellite data have been refined a couple of times so that the search area is now a little further up on the blue arc on the Inmarsat map, about straight west from the northwest bend of Australia. If the plane had simply turned in that direction and kept flying south, it would have been about a 160 degree turn that would have taken it almost directly over Singapore. Under normal flying conditions, it would have run out of fuel about a thousand miles south of the search area. Which is neither here nor there now, of course.
Asking for a cite on fuel burn for a particular plane on a particular night is not legitimate. You weren’t asked for a cite on fuel burn to support your hypothesis, not because no one thought to, but because it’s unreasonable and impossible. So puh-lease back at you.
There does appear to be a legitimate cite (PDF) for the turn northwest through a few waypoints and then south to the Indian Ocean, thanks to Fubaya. I never thought of going to the Inmarsat website. Do you accept Inmarsat as a credible source, or are they under the obfuscationary spell of the Malaysian gov’t?
There are more than that.
Thanks. That’s still very few (especially, few large commercial jets), compared to how much of the passenger safety card and emergency spiel is dedicated to this eventuality.
The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 - Series of sonar scans of the Indian Ocean floor could be completed within a week. If not found, then what?
Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out to be in the South China Sea all along?
Don’t mean to sound crass but at this point almost anything would be funny, or at least peculiar.
A Malaysian Airlines flight experienced trouble with its landing gear on takeoff tomorrow (early Monday, time zones are weird) and returned safely to Kuala Lumpur.
They are now looking for it in the South China Sea.
Boo Hiss !!!
But it was funny…
Meh, they’ve only searched a small area for debris, and only started looking near Australia how long after the disappearance? There could be a lot of debris nearby that’ll never be found.
It’s worth considering and worth looking for evidence that it’s elsewhere but so far there’s several indications that it’s nearby and no indication that it’s anywhere else.
Would be funnier if someone faked debris in the South China Sea from MH370 … 
Just one problem those poor family members in China don’t have any hair left now from all the frustration they have been going through.
But I would almost bet someone will fake something sooner or later just to have their 15 minutes of fame.
Missed your response. Yes, Inmarsat is a credible source in respect to being unbiased. As it stands now the search is based on a series of interpreted data of signal strength that as a group draws a line. The information is far from being the GPS enabled ping response that would have existed if Malaysia Airlines had subscribed to the service.
As for the cite I asked for, the information on fuel uplift should be available as it’s a simple number for Malaysia to produce. It’s not like the plane was dispatched with an unknown quantity. If this information isn’t available then any reference to flight duration is pointless. Normally flights are fueled based on en-route weather conditions, terminal destination weather conditions, and alternate airport. So at best, without any uplift numbers the flight would have been fueled for a flight to Beijing plus an alternate plus holding fuel for the alternate.
Did you notice the map on page 4 of the Inmarsat document that shows the turns the plane made?
What about it?
There are some doubts about the search area now. For one, nothing has been found, even though 2/3 has been covered (a few days ago). The investigators are thinking of starting over: