Posted on 03/24/2014 10:34:25 AM PDT by don-o
snip
"We looked at the Doppler effect, which is the change in frequency, due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route," explained Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat.
This information was relayed to Malaysian officials by 12 March, but Malaysia's government did not publicly acknowledge it until 15 March, according to the Wall Street Journal. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day, to focus on the areas the information described. However, some officials involved with the probe warned that the lost days and wasted resources could impede the investigation.
Meanwhile, Inmarsat's engineers carried out further analysis of the pings and came up with a much more detailed Doppler effect model for the northern and southern paths. By comparing these models with the trajectory of other aircraft on similar routes, they were able to establish an "extraordinary matching" between Inmarsat's predicted path to the south and the readings from other planes on that route.
"By yesterday they were able to definitively say that the plane had undoubtedly taken the southern route," said McLaughlin.
These pings from the satellite – along with assumptions about the plane’s speed – helped Australia and the US National Transportation Safety Board to narrow down the search area to just 3 per cent of the southern corridor on 18 March.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
With the FMS on a 777? I’d hazard “yes,” as long as they don’t run into icing or turbulence. The FMS on modern airliners has reduced the pilots to being glorified bus drivers - except the bus drivers have to do more work in the middle of their route than many airline pilots need to do now.
The one wrinkle in your theory is that Boeing designs the flight deck of their aircraft to have positive pressure differential from the cargo deck and passenger space - to prevent intrusion of gases into the flight deck.
What I’m wondering is if the fire could disable enough of the circuitry of the 777 to effect a loss of power to the transponder and some other flight systems to result in what happened.
All of this speculation still doesn’t answer the question of “why the climb to FL 450?”
It depends at what latitude the satellite is positioned. They don’t have to be exactly on the equator.
There was mention of a flight a few days ago where a similar ascent-decent pattern took place when there was a fight over who controlled the airplane.
When did this pattern take place in 730. After turn, sign off and loss of contact ? Did the pilot return?
You are missing my point. It isn’t “found,” and the field isn’t proven to have been “reduced,” until actual pieces of wreckage are found. Until then, while I agree there is a good chance the search area is greatly reduced, it’s just another conspiracy theory.
Like I said, I’m a stickler for details.
The search teams don’t “find” the material unless they narrow it down to a viable search area. That’s what this does.
That’s what I agreed with you about in my last post. I think they are more likely to find something now, and I think it’s because of this new thing brought to bear. But “bragging rights” don’t attach until there is something tangible in hand. Let’s wait and see.
I don't know. But Inmarsat claims to have examined comparable data from safe flights in the region going north and south and to have observed some sort of systematic difference between the known flight directions that lead them to conclude MH370 headed south.
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