MH370 search extension comes with a not so subtle hint
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No wreckage means no closure for furious next of kin
While there were no surprises in the official statement at the end of today’s tripartite review of the MH370 search, there was one not so subtle hint from Australia’s deputy PM Warren Truss.
Mr Truss said he was confident that the search effort would find the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 ER ” if it is there”.
This is a significant change from the prior official line that ‘it is there, although precisely where is the issue’.
However the expected headline announcement, previously sent by text to the next of kin of the 239 people who disappeared with the jet when it diverted from its KL to Beijing flight on 8 March last year, is that there would be a phase two extension of the search if the current priority zone turns up nothing by the end of this May.
Mr Truss said phase two if needed would involve another 60,000 square kilometres of deep water towed sonar scanning of sea bed, which would on completion mean ALL of the area deemed most likely to contain the wreckage of the jet would have been searched.
Malaysia’s transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, said the search so far had found 220 category three, six category two and a single category one object of interest on the ocean floor, all of which could have been from MH370 and on closer examination were found to be natural objects or from shipping.
Going through the comments made at the media briefing, Mr Truss also mentioned that the search effort would not just find any wreckage if it was there, but was ‘within the range of the equipment’. This appears to be recognition that in the very deepest or most complex parts of the sea floor, in places up to 6500 metres below the surface, and with 2000 metre cliffs, it could be that MH370 might be missed.
This concern has been mentioned in passing on several occasions in recent months.
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“…if it is there.”
Sounds like doubt…but it looks more like something else.
As you say, in the context of his previous statement.
I really hate to say it, but it just occurred to me that its only a matter of time before someone suggests this was (purposely?) dumped in Australia’s lap because of an internationally well-known flair (well-polished proclivity, or, um, ‘competency’) to keep all things aviation mishap-wise unresolved.
oh dear. I guess I just did.
Along that vein, the potential ramifications would be unthinkable.
I don’t buy it…so its a benign addition to the many crackpot/conspiracy theories so well larded with absolute certitude.
Interesting that the crackpot contingent seem not to have the imagination to have latched onto this possibility yet, although I’m confident they will…but isn’t it interesting that its potentially more intriguing than the dramatic scenarios they constantly dispense?
On the other hand, an overcast of dread has gradually drifted in as this debacle has remained unresolved: there is a truism that states that the reality is always worse than can be imagined.
This thing has long since started to smell worse.
Ben,have you had the opportunity to review Br Bobby Ulich and Kirill Prostyakov’s analysis of con-trails using infra red imagery?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUWEtvSjBVS2JWX0E/view
It may prove to be quite useful.
discus,
Agree it could be very useful. I made the following comment in the previous post (reply 7)
The contrails issues are fascinating and incredibly frustrating. A search for ‘MH370 contrails found’ will show what I mean, and over a long period.
When the White House said on 12 March 2014 that MH370 was thought to have crashed in the Indian Ocean west of Perth I was made aware of rumours that the US had satellite imagery that routinely looked for something unusual in contrails and attempted with unknown success or otherwise to relate heat and vapour signatures in the atmosphere with known scheduled movements.
It all sounded a bit suss, like seemingly plausible explanations often do. The inference that US had ‘seen’ in some way a contrail or similar signature that could have been MH370 going south wasn’t sustained over the following days, weeks and months.
It seemed to fade away as one of those plausible things people say.
However it needs to be kept in mind. As does the probability that such intelligence analysis would have been concerned with the northern not southern hemisphere. UNQUOTE
However to add to that, I’m definitely not qualified to offer any expert analysis of the paper, and after looking so hard it hurt at the images on pages 7 and 8, I do have some doubts it is a contrail shadow. In part because I can see what might have been other contrail shadows on the images, but also in part because of the time of local sunrise. If these are shadows cast by the just risen sun they are either shadows cast on a higher level of cloud, or a lower level some distance displaced to the east and therefore we would have to assume the shadow is really smeared or extended to the left of the images.
In short, I’m surprised the research doesn’t tell us where on those images the actual contrail is located so that an analysis taking into account the geometry of just risen sun and exactly how high above, below and to one side of the path of the jet the perceived shadow line is can then be provided.
I would have expected some additional images that are blown up to reveal the individual pixels. Keep in mind the geometry of sun angle and assumed altitude of MH370 will impose some very inelastic limits on just where that contrail has to be in relation to the shadow.
Nor could I see a middle channel in the shadow. If you observe contrails you will see they come bunched in pairs, from either side the jet and these seem to have spread into a uniform blur which may not have been consistent within the time constraints of the images.
In short, they may have great value, but for a scientific analysis, it is remarkably lacking in detail which ought to have been of immediate and integral interest.
Perhaps this work has been done, but was considered too detailed to be released, and we have what is a summary.
(Edited several times for typos etc)
Those many linear features look typical of a common kind of crosshatching effect that you sometimes see in high stratus clouds. But there doesn’t seem to be quite enough resolution to say either way.
Regarding shadows of contrails at dawn…I am very sceptical that a shadow would find a lower cloud layer in the very brief time window from dawn to engines off.
A final comment…sometimes it is possible to create a kind of negative contrail when just touching the top of a very stable cloud layer…the wake of the aircraft ploughs a furrow in the cloud, leaving a dark trench. But that is a pretty short lived event which fills in after a few minutes.
Ben, yes it is lacking in what was released. Research is ongoing but has been sent to the ATSB.More info is on another forum but hesitate to post it here.
The science looks to be well proven from data available from nasa satellites. Other techniques are being used also.
The inmarsat data for the final turns tally quite well with the possible con trail / disstrail data according to Dr Ulich.
Dr Ulich has also produced detailed inmarsat data that differs somewhat from the ATSB and Independent Group. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzOIIFNlx2aUOEd1UmtlbFVJN00/view?pli=1
It will be interesting to see if the expanded search area will eventually reach Dr Ulich’s predicted impact zone.
I don’t have the background to support of refute any of the data sets, but I am encouraged that other methods are still being worked upon.
Warren Truss should be taken to task why investigators rushed in March 2014 to exclude alternatives to the INMARSAT track theory – even excluding alternative BTO transmission bias assumptions?
As soon as they concluded MH370 flew as if decompressed enquiring minds should have asked how (or even whether) a decompressed aircraft made bizarre manouveres through the Straits?
Decompression and manouvering are mutually exclusive scenarios. Both can’t be right.
In the 2015 report “Factual Information at page 29 is an image of radar returns by an aircraft flying towards Penang at GS 594 knots which the report suggests was MH370.
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh212/727Kiwi/MH370/2015%20report%20envelopeB772_zpss0netlaa.jpg
A Boeing 772 flying at 594kts Groundspeed requires about an 85kt tailwind at 40,000 feet and this too is a flight not seen by radar at Lhokseumwae, or Hat Yai. Either:
(A) there was no such flight, or
(B) this was not a Boeing 777, but a fast military A/C
This image may assist others to visualise the location of these contrails with respect to the seabed saerch area and also floating objects seen in March 2014
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh212/727Kiwi/MH370/Bobby%20Ullich%20with%20redrawn%207th%20Arc_zpsxogrswgk.jpg
Simon, what confidence do you place in the timing of the primary radar reports? Is it possible that a rounding error has caused the G/S to be in error of 10% or so? At normal Mach numbers you would need a 100 kt tailwind to get your required G/S, unlikely in the extreme.
Further on contrail shadows…the horizon is around 1.5º below the aircraft, so at dawn a contrail shadow would be inclined upward by that value. It would take about six minutes for the sun to be level with the contrail, casting a horizontal shadow. To cast even 10º down would take around thirty minutes, so if those images are of contrail shadows they would be several hundred miles from the impact site, given the delay.
Which coincides with your map.
@Confirmed Sceptic
I place zero confidence in these alleged radar tracks being anything more than fabricated evidence.
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