Missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 - Thread 5

[KenAdams]

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Even though it seemed this would be the most likely outcome, I still feel a bit sick to have it confirmed that the plane crashed into the ocean. My heart goes out to the families and friends of all those on board, what a rollercoaster it must have been for them.

I hope they can recover the wreckage- I wonder if they have positively IDed some of the debris, or if the statement is purely based on the inmarsat pings. I can't believe it's taken this long to verify their data though.

I agree that someone directed the plane to that location, but we may never know who or why.

That crossed my mind Viva.

Just been scouring the news sites. The Inmarsat data is the pings we've been discussing all along. These have never before been used to identify the locations from which the pings returned. That is, the company could deduce how far from their satellite the plane was by analysing the time it took to answer the satellite's query. Although the pings only take a split-second, they analysed this data to see whether there was a doppler effect that would indicate which direction the plane was moving.
Telegraph article.

I doubt we'll ever know, Beaver.

My DP received the first text with tasteless joke about the victims a couple of days ago. I was furious. Who the hell thinks that's funny? Who the hell actually makes these things up?

BBC:

"The Malaysian prime minister said Inmarsat had been able to shed further light on the plane's flight path by performing further calculations on the MH370 data "using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort". According to Inmarsat, this involved a totally new way of modelling, which was why it took time. The company told the BBC the new calculation involved crunching far more data, which included what other aircraft were doing at the time.

Inmarsat gave the AAIB the new data on Sunday, it said, which had to be checked before it could be made public. Officials said earlier that the plane automatically sent an hourly "ping" - a brief signal - to the Inmarsat satellite even after other communication systems on the plane shut down.
Initial analysis showed the location of the final "ping" was probably along one of two vast arcs running north and south."

I don't understand why people are sceptical about the data analysis time? Any scientific analysis involves reams of data and processing and people time - and if the searches had been given up whilst there was still any chance the plan had made it back to land, that would have been wrong.

Loopy - the above says Sunday (preseumably yesterday) not Wednesday and the verification was by the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB).

In retrospect, it's quite interesting how they made the final announcement. Giving an announcement that put an end to speculation. I wonder if it should have been done earlier because it was becoming obvious that nobody survived whatever happened, but the uncertainty seemed quite cruel and went on far too long.

2 things strike me about this data:

• maybe they can use pings they got from other known aircraft to see exactly how those pings 'sounded' compared to the known paths they were on and then look at the mh370 pings.

• as lotsof pilots didn't seem to know about these pings I think it's worth considering that whoever flew that plane to the 'worst possible place to search' would have thought they disappeared back to the west of Malaysia. The question would be why did they want to disappear??

According to 5Live the info given by Inmarsat was provided to the Malaysian authorities on 11th March and the authorities acknowledged receipt on 12th March. You may remember that the head of Inmarsat was very critical of how long it took the authorities to acknowledge they had their data.

Nothing new has been provided. The only difference is Inmarsat followed up with British intelligence who passed it on to US intelligence. Maybe that made the Malaysian authorities take this old data more seriously?

I can't understand why the families have been holed up in a hotel for 2 weeks, magnifying and intensifying the agony of it all.

Can I ask a daft question please? Sorry if its been mentioned before, on sky they keep showing a shot of the sea from a plane and there is smoke coming off something? Is this the wreckage or a smoke marker? If its wreckage how is is still smoking?

I think it's a smoke marker Nick , they said they'd 'tagged' some of the debris with flares so that they could find them again.

They definitely haven't released any images of any wreckage other than the satellite images.

No need to apologize for asking a question (and it hasn't been asked before as far as I'm aware), it pisses me off when people tell posters off for asking an innocent question!

Thanks MichonnesSamuraiSword, I'm trying to keep up but have a sick little one so missing lots of info. Yes a smoke marker would be logical.

When I first saw it I thought it wassmoking wreckage too - they didn't make it very clear on the news.
Tbh I couldn't see anything where the smoke flares were.

it may be that the families have chosen to stay in the hotel - not wanting to go back home until they have some news.

It may be that they suspected the plane of having gone down wiith no possible hope of life, but without evidence they couldn't possibly confirm that.

All the talk of syber highjacking is too far fetched IMO. How would they disable the pilot/co pilot and ensure they couldn't communicate that the aircraft wasn't performing as it should, for instance? Most computer-based systems on a plane can be overridden manually so if something changed it could likely have been changed back or at least a distress signal sent.

Such a sad outcome. Poor families :(

:(

Really sad ending can't imagine what the relatives have went through think the whole investigation has been handled so poorly.

Plane transfers from Malaysian to Indonesian ATC except it doesn't, someone turns off all the comma systems, deliberately changes course twice then flies the plane for 7 hours into the Indian Ocean when it runs out of fuel and crashes.

Don't want to think about what was going on onboard and she those poor passengers realised what was happening

I think we'll never know the entire true story

I have to think that the passengers didn't know. That somehow it was all done without them guessing, please let them have been asleep and no-one notice that they were going in the opposite direction and flying over sea instead of land. I know, not likely but the alternative is too awful to bear thinking about .

Poor passengers. Just hope they weren't conscious on impact. What a very sad outcome.

If the communications systems were turned off then they probably also turned off the system that updates the maps on the televisions to show where you are on the route.

Here was someone on bbc news (I think) saying that such a plane could glide for hundreds of miles and for 40 mins after it ran out of fuel. I find that absolutely harrowing. I'm praying the passengers didn't realise what was happening until the moment of impact.

The tv thing that shows them where they are is based on the transponder (I think) so it wouldn't have been working

I'm hoping that the plane diverted back due to some emergency that knocked out communications, the pilot realised they weren't going to make it and put in a flight path that would take the plane over empty sea, and that the passengers never knew anything about what was happening and died in their sleep of hypoxia.

Whatever really happened, trixy, I'm betting your hypothesis is what we'll be told.