[Jabberwalker]

If they know exactly when the flight ended ... it sounds like it ... then they now have a range which is a line of arc rather than a huge enclosed area. That increases their chances of finding the aircraft fairly dramatically, I would think.

[Regina]

If they can find the debris then I suppose they use water current and speed to determine where it was 2 weeks ago and start there. A US ship which is on it's way to the area has the ability to hear the ULB at depths of up to 20,000' which is great considering the ocean depth in the search area ranges between 1,150 and 7,000 metres.

It's being reported that confirmation came from a British company called Inmarsat. Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications company. Aside from its commercial services, Inmarsat provides global maritime distress and safety services (GMDSS) to ships and aircraft at no charge, as a public service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat

[DrCaleb]

Regina Regina:

The it's being reported that confirmation came from a British company called Inmarsat. Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications company. Aside from its commercial services, Inmarsat provides global maritime distress and safety services (GMDSS) to ships and aircraft at no charge, as a public service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat

There is a company that sells real-time telemetry satellite based service that can be fitted to planes instead of 'black boxes' for about $100k per plane. Much more detailed information than 'black boxes' too.

[Regina]

I bet this crash will change what flight data is recorded and or transmitted in the aviation industry from now on. I doubt pilots will have the ability to turn off transponders in the future and airlines may have to subscribe to transmitted data collection centers like the one Rolls-Royce has.

[Jabberwalker]

Regina Regina:

If they can find the debris then I suppose they use water current and speed to determine where it was 2 weeks ago and start there. A US ship which is on it's way to the area has the ability to hear the ULB at depths of up to 20,000' which is great considering the ocean depth in the search area ranges between 1,150 and 7,000 metres.

It's being reported that confirmation came from a British company called Inmarsat. Inmarsat is a British satellite telecommunications company. Aside from its commercial services, Inmarsat provides global maritime distress and safety services (GMDSS) to ships and aircraft at no charge, as a public service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat

I believe that in that part of the ocean, the speed and direction of the current are pretty predictable. The winds of their Fall weather might change to course of the wreckage, some but they will be able to draw a much smaller box to search, now. I was at a party on the weekend that had an RCAF Vet who flew the Argus. As he pointed out, that part of the ocean is so far from anywhere that they only have a couple of hours sortee time over it. The Orion flies for 20 hrs, approximately. It looks like a naval vessel is more likely to find traces of this flight. If you look at the maps that are being published today and look a t a chart of the sea bottom, there are some massively deep canyons where tectonic plates meet down there. maybe, they'll get lucky as did the Air France recovery.

[andyt]

Sure hope they find that box, because finding it is just the beginning of trying to unravel this puzzle. It doesn't sound like the plane was on autopilot, at least until it headed south. What went on in that cockpit? Did hijackers manage to get the pilots to fly back toward Malaysia, probably to fly into the tower there, then struggle with the pilots and kill them and the hijackers had no idea how to fly the plane? If the plane was flying on autopilot toward the end, wouldn't it have had to have been reset?

[Regina]

The black box should answer all the questions.
If you don't know how to fly a plane you sure as hell couldn't fly one at night for much more than a few miles.........straight down. They also would have no idea how to set the autopilot, so to me the finger is still pointing to one or both of the pilots. They turned off the transponder while still on course and had contact with the ground shortly after that. It was flown professionally at least till the final settings of the autopilot were entered........if it was on autopilot. If the autopilot is set, it would continue on the heading and altitude set by the pilot and continue flying till it ran out of fuel. About 5 years ago two American pilots overshot their airport by 15+ minutes while on autopilot. They said they were in a heated exchange of words, but it was believed they both nodded off.

[Regina]

Here it is. They were surfing the net on their laptop.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 1859815586

[Jabberwalker]

.. probably a couple of our fellow posters ...

[bootlegga]

A writer at Wired posited an electrical fire - which provides a logical reason why the plane went dark...the crew started pulling busses to find out which is the faulty one. According to him, the Swissair crew did the same thing bck in '98.

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh ... ical-fire/

[Regina]

The plane didn't go dark all in one shot. The transponders went "dark" probably by switch and it was after that, that the co-pilot spoke with ground control. Plus a dark plane doesn't fly for long when the electrics are out. Certainly not for another 7-8 hours on dead straight headings.

[commanderkai]

So...suicide, or terrorism? I highly doubt it was an accident considering how far off course that airplane went.

Either way, it's a tragic loss of life, and I highly suspect one of the pilots being responsible for this.

[Regina]

If you don't have electrical you don't have the avionics to know your attitude, speed and heading. This screen shot is from my panel while in the "bag" which means I can't see outside. On the right you see the G-meter that shows I am at +.6 G which feels normal but by looking at the panel and ground you can see that it's trouble. The instructor has you close your eyes till this point so your eyes don't see the screen and tell your brain what is going on. Right at this point I only felt a little lean.
JKF Jr. crashed at night for similar reasons.

[DrCaleb]

$1:

UK satellite operator used 19th century physics to trace missing plane
(Reuters) - Britain's Inmarsat used a wave phenomenon discovered in the 19th century to analyze the seven pings its satellite picked up from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 to determine its final destination.

The new findings led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to conclude on Monday that the Boeing 777, which disappeared more than two weeks ago, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.

The pings, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems had stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

From the time the signals took to reach the satellite and the angle of elevation, Inmarsat was able to provide two arcs, one north and one south that the aircraft could have taken.

Inmarsat's scientists then interrogated the faint pings using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite, a spokesman said.

The Doppler effect is why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and then overtakes an observer.

Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch was also involved in the analysis.

"We then took the data we had from the aircraft and plotted it against the two tracks, and it came out as following the southern track," Jonathan Sinnatt, head of corporate communications at Inmarsat, said.

The company then compared its theoretical flight path with data received from Boeing 777s it knew had flown the same route, he said, and it matched exactly.

The findings were passed to another satellite company to check, he said, before being released to investigators on Monday.

The paucity of data - only faint pings received by a single satellite every hour or so - meant techniques like triangulation using a number of satellites or GPS (Global Positioning System) could not be used to determine the aircraft's flight path.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/ ... OJ20140324

[Regina]

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Satellite spots possible debris field

A French satellite scanning the Indian Ocean for remnants of a missing jetliner found a possible plane debris field containing 122 objects, a top Malaysian official said Wednesday, calling it "the most credible lead that we have."

Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the objects were more than 2,500 kilometres southwest of Australia, in the area where a desperate, multinational hunt has been going on since other satellites detected possible jet debris.

Clouds obscured the latest satellite images, but dozens of objects could be seen in the gaps, ranging in length from one metre to 23 metres. Hishammuddin said some of them "appeared to be bright, possibly indicating solid materials."