“orderly path” on autopilot through those Inmarsat arcs — who are they kidding???
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You must not believe the satellite data. That data is ambiguous in only two areas. Based on what I have read here is what I believe.
1. The plane could have flown a northern route and magically avoided many radar systems or a southern route where it would not pass any surveillance radars. The satellite system cannot on its own resolve that ambiguity. But it rules out any other routes.
2. Since the satellite system is a time of arrival system there is an error margin on the actual location of the aircraft for each data point. It is probable that taking the speed of the aircraft into consideration would reduce the size of these error margins. Drawing a line north to south through the center points of the error circles/ellipses for each data point will show the most likely northern and southern routes.
What this article says is that, even considering the error margins, the range of possible paths appear to look like the aircraft was on autopilot. That would apply to either a northern or southern route. The lack of radar detection makes the southern route the obvious choice.
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Here are the Inmarsat arcs:
http://www.duncansteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/V_2D_2.png
The place where it allegedly went on autopilot is ~S4E93 at 4:11 and dropped in the ocean ~S32E97 at 8:11 — that’s 1940 miles over 4 hours.
I would love to see a straight line from point to point through those arcs that allows for a fixed speed hour by hour over those 4 hours.
If I’m reading that chart correctly, the autopilot would have had to fly the first hour at 307 mph and the last hour at 700mph — and that not only bad autopiloting, but it’s also impossible.
