Satellite data analysis suggests MH370 flew inverted to site of acoustic signals


The Malay Mail Online
April 8, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, April 8 ― New analysis of partial satellite communications with Flight MH370 that places it in the Indian Ocean location where acoustic signals were detected by search teams have led authorities to believe they may have found the site of wreckage.

British daily, The Telegraph, reported today that the final satellite contact or “half-handshake” ― as it is referred to in aviation jargon ― could have been the moment when the plane ran out of fuel, turned upside down and plunged into the water.

Citing Chris McLaughlin from British satellite company Inmarsat, The Telegraph reported that analysis of the new signals were made at 00.19 GMT ― 8.19am Malaysian time ― on March 8, just eight minutes after Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370’s last regular hourly handshake.

The daily reported that the signals were further scrutinised by an international team of experts and the latest analysis showed the plane to be travelling faster than previously presumed, burning up more fuel, and would have landed even further north along the same arc.

“The partial handshake would be the plane running out of fuel and faltering for a moment, so the system went off network and then briefly powered up and had communication with the network. The plane looked for a final communication before it went off ― and that was it,” McLaughlin was quoted saying.

The daily also cited a former British Airways pilot who flew Boeing 777s, Stephen Buzdygan, as saying that the jetliner would have continued staying airborne but may have turned over on its back as the engines shut off one after the other.

“Without fuel, assuming the crew were unconscious and no one was flying the plane, it would glide.

“Engines have separate fuel supply, so the chances are it won’t go in with the wings level. With no autopilot correction, it would slowly turn on its back and go down at an angle and the wings will be ripped off,” the pilot was quoted saying.

International searchers are racing against time to find the crucial flight data and cockpit voice recorders that may hold the only clues in the “unprecedented mystery” of the disappearance of the Beijing-bound plane carrying 239 passengers and crew on board.

Batteries powering the emergency locator transmitters equipped on the black boxes have a rated life of 30 days; the plane went missing on March 8 or 31 days ago.

An Australian ship, Ocean Shield, had picked up two sets of signals consistent with the beacons from aircraft black box recorders over the weekend had not registered any further pulses and are reportedly separate from those picked up by a Chinese search ship that had placed the site farther south.

The first set was heard on Saturday and lasted for two hours and twenty minutes; the second set lasted 13 minutes.

Ocean Shield, which is towing a deep-sea pinger locator, has since lost track of the pings but is trying to relocate the signals.

Retired Australian Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the multinational search, said the second set included two distinct sounds which would be consistent with transmissions from separate pingers attached to the black box’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.

“In the search so far it is probably the best information that we have had,” Houston was quoted saying by The Telegraph.

“We are encouraged that we are very close to where we need to be. I would want more confirmation before we say ‘this is it’.”

  1. #1 by albertloh on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 5:08 pm

    Could not find the black box? Time running out?

    Just think outside the box. Have we already found the haystack? Ask yourself frankly before trying to look for a needle.

    Truly speaking, many of us are already very tired of all these confusion, disorientation and derangement on the part of the relevant authorities in the MH 370 crisis management. Most of the times, they are shooting their own foot by issuing contradicting news.

    • #2 by cemerlang on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 9:07 pm

      Think out of the box and think of training deep ocean creatures from whales to whatever creatures that can swim right on to the ocean floor and still be able to swim to the surface. You can insert a chip into it and train it and command it to look for a huge thing that has the colour of white, grey, red, blue and later report to humans on the surface or just scout the whole planet’s ocean and sea floor if the plane is not there

  2. #3 by kaytee on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 6:28 pm

    The following statements sound contradictory:

    “Without fuel, assuming the crew were unconscious and no one was flying the plane, it would glide.”

    “Engines have separate fuel supply, so the chances are it won’t go in with the wings level. With no autopilot correction, it would slowly turn on its back and go down at an angle and the wings will be ripped off,” the pilot was quoted saying.”

    Firstly they talked about “Without fuel ….. the plane … would glide.”

    In the next paragraph, they said “Engines have separate fuel supply, so the chances are it won’t go in with the wings level”, but if the plane is “without fuel” what does it matter that the “Engines have separate fuel supply”. That has been the contradiction.

    I suspect the author or the pilot who was quoted had wanted to say (my speculations): “As the B777’s engines each has separate fuel lines (or supply), it is likely that the engines would have run out of fuel separately, causing an asymmetric problem.”

    Continuing with that speculation of what the quoted pilot might have said (because while the reporter could have gotten the explanation on the flight event wrong, and reporters not being pilots very often do, the pilot is unlikely to): “In an asymmetric situation the aircraft would yaw and roll towards the failed engine, with the plane entering a spiral dive, until the other engine failed as well, whence then the aircraft would no longer have an asymmetric problem. Whether the B777 would remain in a spiral dive or regain symmetric flight in a glide would depend on how much altitude it had or whether it had exceeded its maximum structural limiting speed.”

    Yes, in an controlled spiral dive, it’s possible the B777 might have exceeded its structural limiting speed and thus breakup with perhaps its wings being torn off. If such has been the case, then how could there be an inverted flight? The plane would have dropped down in an unknown configuration,

    But if the B777 did not exceed its structural limiting speed in the spiral dive and had enough altitude to lose and regain symmetric flight in an engineless glide then there would not be an inverted flight as it contacted the sea in a gliding configuration.

    Just going back to the beginning when one of the engines failed as it ran out of fuel, I believe the B777 like most modern high powered jetliner has a device called Thrust Asymmetry Compensation (TAC) which would have automatically prevented or at least minimized asymmetric flight when one of the engines ran out of fuel. In the TAC was working effectively, then less or even no altitude loss would have been involved to regain symmetric flight in an engineless glide.

    I feel the news report has been too sensationalized. Not nice for the families of the missing to read of such a report that Flight MH370 ended up in an inverted position in its final stage of the flight.

  3. #4 by worldpress on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 10:16 pm

    Really! There is people mad enough specially fly the plane to south indian ocean in order to run out of fuel

    It is truth or It is bulshit

  4. #5 by yhsiew on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 10:32 pm

    The cockpit voice recorder, even though retrieved, may not be useful any more because it can only hold 2 hours of voice data and new data overwrite the old data continuously. The final data in the voice recorder represent sound data of the last 2 hours of the plane’s journey, which could be without human voice if everybody had fallen unconscious. The flight data recorder only gives the path taken by the plane.

    • #6 by cemerlang on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 11:07 pm

      If the black box is found and any other concrete evidence like the tail showing the MAS logo, that would solve a big part of the disappearance of MH 370. At least we know that the plane ended in the Indian ocean. The voice recording might be gone but in life we can ask a million times; why, why, why and yet the answer will still come back as silence. And we would like to think that somewhere out there is Gilligan’s island and who knows someday, somehow, somewhere, some plane flying past will see some hands waving for help. That’s miracles.

  5. #7 by worldpress on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 11:07 pm

    It is wiser to check, recheck, with the available sources to confirm the date is true or false

    rather to go to search deep into ocean to check with false report

    • #8 by cemerlang on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 11:10 pm

      I am sure the wisest, cleverest men are in the P.M.’s team because if you are the leader, you stick by your words when you utter the plane ended in Indian ocean because you cannot go back on your words because you are the leader

  6. #9 by worldpress on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 11:08 pm

    It is wiser to check, recheck, with the available sources to confirm the data is true or false

    rather to go to search deep into ocean to check with false report

  7. #10 by worldpress on Tuesday, 8 April 2014 - 11:24 pm

    Most people in plane educated human being

    Is it logic someone educated specially fly the plane 7 hours to south indian ocean to target to ran out of fuel?

    Any logic?

    Confused?

  8. #11 by cemerlang on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 12:59 am

    Everyone wants to know what happened to the plane. There was no distress call. Even if the plane was in a bad shape, the pilots will still have that few minutes or few seconds even to tell the plane is not functioning. And if the plane was in a bad shape, chances for the pilots to land the plane in the nearest airport were high. They were only 1 hour plus away from KLIA. Look at the map. West Malaysia has other airports or air strips for them to land. They could even land in a river if they are force to do so or any where near to Malaysia. From now onwards, all clear headed pilots and crew must learn defensive and fighting ways.

  9. #12 by undertaker888 on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 11:51 am

    Looking at all the “clues”, this sounds like suicide mission.

  10. #13 by worldpress on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 4:41 pm

    Only the fool would stupid wasting 8 hours to achieve suicide mission plus calculated exactly moment to turn off at exactly right moment from Malaysia radar to Vietnam radar

    Never mind many stupid out there believe this story

  11. #14 by undertaker888 on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 5:03 pm

    ///Only the fool would stupid wasting 8 hours to achieve suicide mission plus calculated exactly moment to turn off at exactly right moment from Malaysia radar to Vietnam radar

    Never mind many stupid out there believe this story///

    Unless you are flying everyday between Malaysia and Vietnam airspace to know the handshake, do you think everybody will know this at that exact moment including the hijacker(s)? Hijacker(s) do not need to go thru that handshake before flying off course. They can do it anytime.

    Hijacker(s) suicide mission, no? Now, the hijacker(s) could be anybody including the pilots. No?

    Are you a psychologist to determine how a person will commit suicide? Some will loiter around a bridge for sometime before they jump. Some will just jump right away.

    Do you mean we need to believe what you believe in order to make you happy? Now that’s stupid.

  12. #15 by worldpress on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 6:35 pm

    You mean over 230 people inside commit suicide mission no one stop it over the fly over 7 hours loiter around!

    What a story, indeed

  13. #16 by undertaker888 on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 7:26 pm

    it is red eye flight for goodness sake. people are sleeping. oh yes, i am sure the pilots or hijacker(s) will annouce on th PA, ‘ladies and gentlemen, we have diverted the flight and will crash this plane. thank you.’.

    even if you are awake you wouldnt know whats going on. what can you see outside at night? by the time you know it is already too late.

  14. #17 by worldpress on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 10:06 pm

    This fly about 6 hours over 4 hours was inland fly

    expect arrive Beijing about 6.25am

    This plane can fuel fill up to 13 and half hours fly

    How much fuel it stored before fly

    No surprise it fuel up full tank over13 and half hours go and return from beijing

    Was it over 13 hours?

    If it was how could it ran out fuel in 8 hours

    V confused?

  15. #18 by worldpress on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 10:19 pm

    This is a case for police to investigate.

    We do not need to guessing here.

    May the truth be told

  16. #19 by undertaker888 on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 10:59 pm

    which airline will fill up full tank for a trip that does not require full tank? carry more weight and burn up more fuel? i am glad you are not running MAS or any airlines. or are you? no wonder they are losing money.

    4,6,13 hours. is not that guessing? stop guessing.

  17. #20 by worldpress on Wednesday, 9 April 2014 - 11:46 pm

    China petrol price is double the price of Malaysia

    You think the china petrol price is the same as Malaysia, you must be dreaming

  18. #21 by worldpress on Thursday, 10 April 2014 - 12:05 am

    China fuel price is nearly double the price of Malaysia

  19. #22 by undertaker888 on Thursday, 10 April 2014 - 10:34 am

    That is why I said you should not run airline company. Modern passenger jets don’t run on petrol. They use jet fuels and the price is based on contracts.

    Stop dreaming. Is that the reason the plane crash? They use petrol instead of jet fuel.

  20. #23 by undertaker888 on Thursday, 10 April 2014 - 10:38 am

    That is why I said you should not run airline company. Modern p@ssenger jets don’t run on petrol. They use jet fuels and the price is based on contracts.

    Stop dreaming. Is that the reason the plane crash? They use petrol instead of jet fuel.

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