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MH370 assumed to have crashed with no survivors, says Malaysia Airlines
- biesnecker 13y agoWould 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.
- joezydeco 13y agoPerhaps it's the lack of certain types of data? If they've had cooperation from all countries within flyable range and searched every landing strip and airport by satellite (and surely the USA has quietly put their spytech in operation here), then is it possible to conclude that the plane must have landed in the water somewhere?
- jofer 13y agoCloud cover makes that impossible.
- robin_reala 13y agoFrom 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.
- JeremyNT 13y agoI have heard of Inmarsat before, as a provider of satellite-based IP and telephony services. Perhaps a device utilizing their service was in use on the plane (for in-flight broadband, perhaps?), and Inmarsat was able to review their usage data to help determine the plane's course.
- jzwinck 13y agoInmarsat is used for in-flight broadband, sometimes branded OnAir. But not on Malaysia Airlines flights as far as I can tell. See http://www.inmarsat.com/press-release/inmarsats-swiftbroadband-soars-to-new-heights/ http://www.inmarsat.com/press-release/inmarsats-swiftbroadba...
- LoganCale 13y agoTheir satellites appear to regularly send out a ping as a low level part of their communications protocol to see what receivers are in range and to keep channels to them alive. The aircraft's SATCOM system continued to respond to those pings for a number of hours after it disappeared, and the new location information is based on analysis of the series of pings that occurred.
- nodata 13y agoYeah, but yet again it's a lot of words that avoid giving us any information: what analysis did they do, and how did they come to their conclusion?
- varelse 13y agoSome sort of predictor/corrector algorithm likely exploiting high-resolution data that would otherwise be classified is my guess. See Kalman Filters for such a thing... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalman_filter
- buro9 13y agoInmarsat 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.
- Spooky23 13y agoThey knew based on the satellite data that it was either heading to Kazakastan or the Ocean.
- Thiz 13y agoOccam'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.
- aidos 13y agoExcept that's not what the evidence suggests...so Occam's Razor doesn't apply in this instance.
- hyperbovine 13y agoOccam's Razor always applies... but the simplest possible explanation needs to account for why the thing would fly seven hours off course for the purpose of blowing up over the Indian Ocean.
- corresation 13y agoI don't think anyone thinks the plane blew up. At some point it likely just ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean. The simplest possible solution with the facts that we have now is that one of the pilots (one of the pilots wife and children moved out of the family home the day before liftoff) wanted to commit suicide (taking many victims with him), but for some reason wanted to leave a mystery. Perhaps relating to insurance in some way -- hoping the black box would never be found that revealed any of the actions. Their tactic might have been to continue flying into no-return range in such a way that they didn't have to fully admit to what they were doing until it was too late. It is terribly crass to make someone a villain when they might have been simply a victim, but of all the possible explanations that is all that seems to fit right now. That someone wanted to leave a mystery, and intentionally crashed in a place and way where it was incredibly unlikely that they would ever be found, and it turns out that only a communications handshake and some technical excellence led to it possibly being found.
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- glasz 13y ago2 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.
- protomyth 13y agoThe 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 13y agoAsking 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 13y agoYeah, 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 13y agoI 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 13y agoCable-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.
- JazCE 13y agoI'm more intrigued by the reaction of the families. Is this a normal reaction from Chinese families?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- joosters 13y agoNormal based upon what? Normal reaction for families with relatives on a flight missing for two weeks with no news about what happened to it?
- JazCE 13y agopoint taken, but it does seem very extreme. did this happen during 9/11? edit Also, are the families of NZ nationals, Australian, French etc behaving the same as the asians?
- joosters 13y agoYou're still wildly over-generalising. Why do you think that the Chinese, or 'Asians' can be categorised together? Why do you think that people from a country will, as a group, behave in an identical or similar way?
- rimantas 13y agoWhy do you think they cannot? Or do you think that the thing called "culture" does not exist? How people show or do not show grief can and is the cultural thing.
- joetek 13y agoToday'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 13y agoReason 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.
- melling 13y agoOn 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?
- twoodfin 13y agoThen the question becomes, how do you board a 777 at 600 mph and land it if the crew becomes incapacitated? If (extremely hypothetically) it turns out that this disaster could have been preventable if there had been some way for someone outside the aircraft to assume control, the tradeoff to be examined would be the benefits vs. hazards of extensive remote control capability, rather than some kind of commando raid techniques.
- eli 13y agoIt'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 13y agoI 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 13y agoIt 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?
- kghose 13y agoOne 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?)
- tuan5 13y agothis announcement makes Malay government's unrealistic well known. Good job Malay Gov~
- joering2 13y agoYou 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.
- ufmace 13y agoDoes 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.
- zimmern 13y agoThere 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.
- Dysanovic 13y agoAmerican and Russian submarines are renowned for their sonar equipment. If they were to navigate to the southern Indian Ocean, could they detect the transmissions from the black box?