Posted on 03/28/2014 6:57:19 AM PDT by yldstrk
Cable Highlights: Was Flight 370 Flying Much Faster? NBC News' Bill Neely reports about a new credible lead from Australia on the speed and new search area for Malaysia flight 370.
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/was-flight-370-flying-much-faster/17wo50dha
It’s only been “all over the place” because different people who have different theories say it has ... LOL ...
That’s not what the engineers at Inmarsat and the AAIB (UK Air Accidents Investigation Board) say ... :-) ...
I’ve been saying for a long time that they may never find anything. It may remain a mystery forever.
It may never be found to even prove ANYTHING one way or another.
They were lucky to get it narrowed down THAT FAR ... so that they didn’t have to say, “it’s ‘somewhere’ in the ‘world’!” ... LOL ...
How about, “We’re not as smart as we thought we were, and we just can’t find it!” ... :-) ...
Just because the plane is missing doesn’t mean that anyone will find it. I’m not sure why ANYONE has the assumption that just because something is missing that human beings have to then ... be able to and have the ability to find it.
I vote on ... “Human beings are not ‘all-knowing’ like our Creator God is.”
I actually agree with what you say. At the same time, nobody should claim they know what happened or have answers.
This in itself, will keep the mystery and speculation alive for a very long time.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
I think someone is jerking a chain in all this now. I wonder what the folks at Inmarsat think of the new calculations.
First of all, if the partial ping reported a day or so ago marked the end of the flight time then regardless how much fuel it burned, we know how long it flew.
Secondly, if the pilot was in control he could have conserved fuel by flying higher and/or slower during the last five hours, or he could have burned fuel by flying fast and low. And we don’t have a clue which of those he did.
So, like I said, I think there’s a chain being pulled here. It would be interesting to read a thread like this where the only participants were the engineers with the data in hand. I’ll bet there are differing opinions even within that fraternity. I wonder if the new assumed airspeed just resulted in them tweaking their doppler dataset, resulting in a new location?
(By the way, I think the graphic you linked to where the speed was 400 knots to the new location was probably done before this latest info. It would have just indicated a likely spot on the 8:11 arc given the two different speeds. So 450 knots would have put it further south.)
I thought maybe she was a Freeper with some plane expertise from the way you said it.
Exactly -- it was done weeks ago -- and that's the point.
It would have just indicated a likely spot on the 8:11 arc given the two different speeds. So 450 knots would have put it further south.
Exactly -- and the only way to get to that new search area is to plug in the slower 400 knot speed for the last 5 hours.
It flew faster during the first two hours as the pilot was anxious to get out of that busy air corridor as quickly as possible before he was spotted, flying as low as 12,000ft to avoid planes flying at the upper altitudes.
Okay, that makes sense.
Where the news program was misleading was that it implied that the plane flew faster the entire time. Obviously, it couldn’t have, or it would have ended up farther south than the original search area, not farther north. (But I only watched the first minute; maybe they cleared it up later in the report?)
Yep —
According to the Malaysian military thus far, after taking 2 minutes to turn around, the plane went up to 45,000ft and flew at the new western heading for 23 minutes — but how fast they didn’t say. Apparently they are saying now and it was faster than thought.
Then after those 23 minutes it dropped down to 12,000ft and as low as 5,000 — but how fast it was flying and for how long at that altitude Malaysia would not say. Apparently they are saying now and it was faster and longer than thought.
If it then flew faster at 12,000ft it would have not only used up more fuel but also have gone further toward waypoint IGREX than their 450 model was assuming.
Note that on that graph the 400 red line south begins up further northwest than the 450. The 450 yellow line also shows a flight path over Indonesia which I don’t think this pilot would risk.
The faster it went for the first 2, hours, the slower it had to go for the last 5 hours to hit those Inmarsat pings rings.
Hence the 400 knot route and the new search area. They should have been in that area 3 weeks ago.
Here’s another way to look at it, assuming they knew the original fuel load:
They could calculate the fuel usage given the know route and altitude for the time until it left radar range. Deducting that from the original fuel would give the fuel remaining.
Now, they know the approximate time the plane was in the air with that remaining fuel load. From that, they should have been able to deduce the plane’s average airspeed over the remaining time, knowing the fuel usage statistics of the engines involved.
For example, if you’ve got 20 gallons of gas in your car and run out of gas in five hours, you then used 4 gallons per hour. If driving at 60 gives you 15 mpg, and at 72 gives you 12 mpg, you know you averaged 60 mph because you were using 4 gallons per hour over five hours. If you’d have averaged 72 mph, you’d have used 6 gallons per hour and run out of gas in 3 hours and 20 minutes, but the 5 hours is a given so you couldn’t have gone 72 mph.
So knowing the fuel remaining and the time in the air would allow calculation of an average airspeed, just as driving 5 hours on 20 gallons would imply an average speed of 60 mph given the characteristics of the car engine involved.
For what it’s worth, I still this this is a crap shoot because if the pilot was still in control he could have varied the altitude which would blow the calculation. It would be similar to being on a 5 hour downhill grade in the car example. You’d get a lot better mileage.
I think this new search area is indicative that the pilot was at the helm at the crash and that it may have been a controlled crash in an area where the plane would not be found but also where the pilot could swim away.
If they find that plane largely intact that will be a big tell —
Yes, and it was even suggested by a reporter somewhere, that the flaws were due to global warming, and the changes in currents, etc., from it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.