Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane: What We Know Now

ABC News ^ | 03/25/2014 | By COLLEEN CURRY

[SeekAndFind]

The search for evidence of Malaysia Airlines flight #MH370 was suspended today because of rough weather, but the number of ships and planes heading to the area to hunt for the missing plane is growing.

The lack of concrete data about what happened to the plane and its 239 passengers has left their families - and the world - with more questions than answers.

Here's what we know now as of now about the investigation into missing flight MH370.

Check out ABC News' photos of the search for the flight here, too.

Satellite Data Shows When, Where Plane Went Down
• The Malaysian government announced Monday that new data, analyzed in a groundbreaking way by British company Inmarsat, showed the flight ended in the south Indian Ocean, 1,500 miles off the coast of Perth, Australia.
• The data also showed that the plane went down between 8:10 a.m. and 9:15 a.m. local time.
• Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Monday that there were likely no survivors of the flight, sending shock waves through the families of passengers who had gathered in Beijing to await word on the search for the plane. Many family members protested Malaysia's handling of the investigation and accused the government of lying and hiding the truth.

Search Focused on Alaska-Sized Area Off Australia
• The search along a possible "northern corridor" has been called off. Search teams are now squarely focused on the area in the south Indian Ocean.
• The current search area is some 469,407 square nautical miles, which is equal to 621,000 square miles on land. It is an area about the size of Alaska.

[Capt. Tom]

I wonder if this was a cyber attack—somehow terrorists were able to turn things off and change direction from the ground.

The big advantage to that, would be you could fly a commercial passenger plane into a designated target. (Like the White House, the Pentagon, Disney world, a Nuclear Power plant etc.)-Tom

[kidd]

You are correct that the satellite cannot ascertain a direction, unlike human ears which can because we listen in stereo.

The northern mirror image route would take the plane over areas that would be covered by other sources (like Indian military radar). The lack of a signal from the northern route leaves only the southern route.

However, if the plane had changed speed, it may have been possible for the plane to go on a northern path that didn’t cross airspace that wasn’t monitored. I don’t know those details.

[Jaded]

After watching the TWA800 documentary last night, I am waaay skeptical of anything in the press.

Normally I’m just skeptical of the histrionics on ABC. This morning, for example, I thought the guy in KL was gonna cry when he closed his eyes while holding the newspaper. Then he said “Back to you Robin and.... Was this something new?

[pfflier]

Still missing. Will some information eventually come out? Probably.

[Jaded]

I read somewhere Inmarsat dismissed the norther route as “too trafficked”. Yeah.

[Talisker]

Nice critique of the speed variation vulnerability of the Doppler technique - thanks.

[cynwoody]

I think Inmarsat sent another plane on the same course, then they gathered the ping data from that plane and compared it to MH370 to double check their analysis.

They actually said they analyzed logs they have from other 777 flights in the region and noticed differences in the data depending on whether a flight was heading north or south. The MH370 data looked like the data from flights known to have been heading south. Hence their conclusion.

[ladyjane]

I wonder if this was a cyber attack

Remember the newspaper writer in the Mercedes in Los Angeles. Soon after there was the brilliant hacker who was able to program ATMs remotely and interfere with pace makers. Somehow I thought it was our guys who wiped them out. Maybe not.

[Uncle Chip]

Well that makes sense — especially since that flight route is apparently well-travelled.

[Uncle Chip]

Flight 370’s altitude dropped after sharp turn

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

First we are told that they didn’t track the plane — now they tracked it from 1:19 to 2:40. So what was its heading and altitude at 2:40 because they said they had it on radar at 2:15 and Inmarsat collected the ping at 2:11 and then at 3:11.

Then they said it went from 35,000 to 43,000 and stayed there for 23 minutes — time enough for the oxygen alotted to each passenger [12 minutes] to be used up.

Now they are telling us that it dropped to 12,000 ft and for how long — they are not saying.

The last ACARS transmission, sent at 1:07 a.m., showed nothing unusual. The 1:07 a.m. transmission showed a normal routing all the way to Beijing

Had the plane been reprogrammed to change course, the ACARS system should have reported it during its last communication at 1:07. The ACARS is supposed to report new information every 30 minutes, but it was silent at 1:37.

[Hetty_Fauxvert]

I wonder if this was a cyber attack—somehow terrorists were able to turn things off and change direction from the ground.

The big advantage to that, would be you could fly a commercial passenger plane into a designated target. (Like the White House, the Pentagon, Disney world, a Nuclear Power plant etc.)-Tom

* * *

I’ve seen variations on this theory before but it didn’t make sense to me. Most terrorist groups can’t WAIT to yap, “We did it! We blew it up! Us! Me! We’re such big bad terrorists!” But there hasn’t been a peep out of anyone, so I’ve been assuming some group actually wanted to steal this plane for later use, and therefore have been keeping quiet on that account.

However, if the point was not to actually have the plane in hand . . . but instead to see how successfully one could control a plane remotely . . . a dry run, basically . . . then this makes sense. Perhaps what they wanted to know was (a) could they control a plane at a distance, for a long period of time, and (b) could the authorities catch up with them to punish them?

So if this was a dry run, the next plane to “disappear” will show up a lot sooner — doing a lot of damage to some major landmark.