MH370 search: How new satellite data confirmed Malaysia Airlines plane was lost

Date

March 25, 2014 - 6:42AM

 London: A new, unprecedented satellite tracking technique is what gave Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak enough confidence to announce that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went down in the remote south of the Indian Ocean.

British firm Inmarsat was behind an earlier analysis that indicated the plane had been flying in one of two big ‘corridors’, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern.

Graphic: Jamie Brown

However last week it went back to its data and tried a new mathematical analysis, which concluded on Sunday.

 The new analysis allowed them to discard the northern corridor, and focus more precisely on the southern route.

Based on this new information, Mr Najib announced on Monday that MH370’s last known position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.

 

UK firm Inmarsat was behind an earlier analysis of the path of missing flight MH370. Photo: Fairfax

The nature of the pings indicated that the plane was still moving during that time.

“This is a remote location far from any possible landing sites,” he said. “It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that … flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.”

The aeroplane had Inmarsat’s ‘Classic Aero’ satellite system, which collects information such as location, altitude, heading and speed, and sends it through Inmarsat’s satellites into their network.

This ‘ACARS’ (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) was switched off or interrupted early in the flight, meaning no such information was available to track the plane.

However the Classic Aero system still sent hourly ‘pings’ back to Inmarsat’s satellite for at least five hours after the aircraft left Malaysian airspace, the company discovered.

These pings contained no data – they were just a simple ‘hello’ to keep the link open – however their timing and frequency contained hidden mathematical clues.

The company looked at the ‘Doppler effect’ – tiny changes in the frequency of the ping signal, caused by the relative movement of the satellite and the plane (the Doppler effect is the reason why, for example, police sirens are a different pitch or frequency depending on whether they are travelling toward you or away from you).

This analysis allowed Inmarsat to map two huge ‘corridors’ for the plane’s possible location, in big arcs stretching thousands of kilometres north and south of the point where the last radar contact with MH370 was made.

Australian and US experts took this information, added some assumptions about the plane’s speed, and narrowed the southern option into an area of ocean that could be realistically searched.

Meanwhile, Inmarsat went back to its satellite data. Its new analysis found that the northern route did not quite correlate with the frequency of the pings from the plane – meaning the plane must have been heading south.

It also suggested that the plane had been travelling at a steady cruising altitude above 30,000 feet.

They compared satellite data from MH370 with that from previous Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 flights, going back a few weeks, in order to better model the movement of the plane.

“This really was a shot in the dark,” Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat told the BBC. “It’s a credit to the scientific team that they managed to model this.

“Just a single ‘ping’ can be used to say the plane was both powered up and travelling. And then by a process of elimination comparing it to other known flights and established that it went south.”

The UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch also contributed to the analysis. 

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-search-how-new-satellite-data-confirmed-malaysia-airlines-plane-was-lost-20140325-hvme8.html#ixzz2ww16YB6G

Read what Foreign News Said about MH370: MH370 crashed in 'suicide mission'??

MH370 crashed in 'suicide mission', Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper reports

Date

March 25, 2014 - 9:30AM

How The Daily Telegraph in London reported the story in its newspaper.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was deliberately crashed into the ocean in ‘‘an apparent suicide mission’’, according to a report in Britain’s The Daily Telegraph.

The newspaper report, which appears on the front page of Tuesday's edition, was based on what it claimed were ‘‘well-placed sources’’. Fairfax Media can not vouch for the veractiy of the story.

The report said sources had revealed that the team investigating the plane’s disappearance believed that no malfunction or fire was capable of causing the Boeing 777’s unusual flight path after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, or the disabling of its communications systems.

It does not speculate as to who might have been responsible for causing the crash, and whether there were links to terrorism or mental illness, but rather states that it must have been a deliberate - and therefore suicidal - act. 

The Telegraph report was written by Australian journalist Jonathan Pearlman, a former reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.  

While claiming the story was verified by multiple sources, The Daily Telegraph quoted just one unnamed official source as saying that investigators believed "this has been a deliberate act by someone on board who had to have had the detailed knowledge to do what was done ... Nothing is emerging that points to  motive."

Asked about the possibility of a plane malfunction or an on-board fire, the source told the newspaper: "It just does not hinge together..... [The investigators] have gone through processes you do to get the plane where it flew to for eight hours. They point to it being flown in a rational way."

The Daily Telegraph claimed the revelation came from ‘‘well-placed sources’’, but only quoted one unnamed source in its report.

The worst fears of families were confirmed last night when Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the plane crashed into a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board.

“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites,” Mr Najib told a media briefing.

"It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.’’

Confirmation the Boeing 777, one of the world’s most sophisticated airliners, crashed into the sea came from Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch which had been provided information from the London-based satellite company Inmarsat.

According to the analysis the plane flew for more than seven hours after it had turned back from its scheduled flight path over the South China Sea.

Officials said it was likely the plane ran out of fuel before crashing.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh370-crashed-in-suicide-mission-britains-the-daily-telegraph-newspaper-reports-20140325-hvmf1.html#ixzz2wvUIzV2U

Missing plane familes texted 'it's lost' news

MEGAN LEVY

A family member of a passenger from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leaves on a stretcher after fainting at Lido Hotel.

Some relatives of those on board MH370 learned in a heart-breaking text message that the missing passenger jet was believed to have ditched into the southern Indian Ocean, killing all 239 on board.

Malaysia Airlines sent the message to the relatives of those on board the plane, stating it "deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived".

The message was sent in English and Chinese.

Shortly before the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak made the announcement at a briefing at 10pm in Kuala Lumpur (3am NZT), Malaysia Airlines said its officials informed relatives of the missing passengers and crew.

The airline said most of those people were informed in person or by telephone, but some were sent a text message.

The text message read: "Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived.

''As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia's Prime Minister, we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean."

Both the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines have been criticised during the two-week investigation into the disappearance of MH370. 

The airline later defended sending the text messages, saying all efforts were made to contact all families to inform them in person beforehand.

At Beijing's Lido Hotel, harrowing scenes of grief and distress unfolded as about 50 or so relatives watched Najib's announcement in the hotel's cordoned-off conference room.

One elderly woman burst out of the room wailing, crying out for her son, her daughter-in-law and her grandchild who were on board the plane.

"My whole family is gone," she screamed, as loved ones and police struggled to restrain her.

"My son, my son, my son," another woman was heard yelling.

Others were angered by the abrupt nature and brevity of Najib's statement, which deferred to a further press conference to be held later today.

"I've been waiting half a month, and they just give us one sentence?" one woman said.

At least two people were wheeled out on stretchers and taken to hospital.

The Malaysian transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, later tweeted his sympathy for the families of the passengers and crew on MH370.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9865055/Missing-plane-familes-texted-its-lost-news

Flight MH370 crashed in Indian Ocean, no survivors

AIMEE GULLIVER AND LINDSAY MURDOCH IN KUALA LUMPUR

The devastated relatives of passengers on board missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 must assume the plane is "lost" and the flight crashed in the Indian Ocean, the Malaysian prime minister says.

The families were called to meetings this morning to be told the fate of flight MH370, which vanished on March 8 with 239 people, including two New Zealanders, aboard the flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

Those who could not attend received a text message or phone call from the airline confirming the terrible news.

New satellite analysis showed MH370 flew along the southern flight corridor identified by searchers and its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean west of Perth, representatives of the British Air Investigation Branch had told Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

"This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites," Najib said today.

"It is, therefore, with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that according to this new data flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean."

Families have been booked on chartered flights to Perth. 

Najib said in a first, "pings" sent out by the plane had been pieced together to shed more light on its flight path.

According to this data, provided to UK officials by London-based satellite company Inmarsat, the plane flew for more than seven hours after it had turned back from its scheduled flight path over the South China Sea.

Officials said it was likely the plane ran out fuel before crashing. It is not known whether the pilots were still in control during the long flight into the Indian Ocean.

In Beijing, where relatives of the missing had gathered at a hotel to hear the latest update, screams could be heard as the news was delivered. A steady stream of paramedics brought in stretchers.

Soon after, family members left the room wailing, with some collapsing on the floor and refusing to get up. One man threw himself on to an escalator and refused to move.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9863247/Flight-MH370-crashed-in-Indian-Ocean-no-survivors

Screaming, tears, disbelief at news MH370 is lost 

CHRISTOPHER BODEEN AND ARITZ PARRA

A family member of a passenger from the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 leaves on a stretcher after fainting at Lido Hotel.

Relatives shrieked and sobbed uncontrollably. Men and women nearly collapsed, held up by loved ones. Their grief came pouring out after 17 days of waiting for definitive word on the fate of the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

Malaysia's prime minister gave that word late Monday in an announcement from Kuala Lumpur, saying there was no longer any doubt that flight MH370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

Relatives of passengers in Beijing had been called to a hotel near the airport to hear the news, and some 50 of them gathered there. Afterward, they filed out of a conference room in heart-wrenching grief.

One woman collapsed and fell on her knees, crying: "My son! My son!"

Medical teams arrived at the Lido hotel with several stretchers and one elderly man was carried out of the conference room on one of them, his face covered by a jacket. Minutes later, a middle-aged woman was taken out on another stretcher, her face ashen and her blank eyes seemingly staring off into the distance.

Most of the relatives refused to speak to gathered reporters and some lashed out in anger, urging journalists not to film the scene. Security guards restrained a man with close-cropped hair as he kicked a TV cameraman and shouted: "Don't film. I'll beat you to death."

Some relatives staying at hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur were notified in person of the imminent late-night news conference by Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and some heard over the phone.

Some received a heads-up by text message, said Sarah Bajc, who has been awaiting news of the fate of her boyfriend, Philip Wood, ever since the plane disappeared March 8 on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

"Malaysia Airlines deeply regrets that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and that none of those on board survived," the text message said. "As you will hear in the next hour from Malaysia's Prime Minister, we must now accept all evidence suggests the plane went down in the Southern Indian Ocean."

The message was sent in English, merely compounding the confusion among Chinese families.

The airline later defended sending the text messages, saying all efforts were made to contact all families to inform them in person beforehand. Others were angered by the abrupt nature and brevity of Mr Najib's statement, which deferred to a further press conference to be held on Tuesday (local time).

"I've been waiting half a month, and they just give us one sentence?" one woman said.

Bajc noted in an email that the prime minister's announcement made no mention of confirmed wreckage, "so no real closure", but she also said the time for grief had begun.

Wang Zhen, whose father and mother, Wang Linshi and Xiong Yunming, were aboard the flight as part of a group of Chinese artists touring Malaysia, said he heard the announcement on television in the hotel where he has been staying.

"My mind is a mess right now. Can we talk later?" he said by telephone.

Nan Jinyan, whose brother-in-law Yan Ling, a medical company engineer, was aboard the flight on a business trip, said she was prepared for the worst when she heard the Malaysian prime minister would make a statement.

"This is a blow to us, and it is beyond description," Nan said.

At the Lido hotel, where many of the Chinese relatives have complained about what they have described as incomplete or contradictory information provided by the airline and Malaysian authorities, two distraught women and a man came to address journalists nearly two hours after the announcement.

"I tell you, this was the wrong way to release this information," one of the women said between sobs, speaking over the bellows of security guards trying to hold back the crush. "It's all so black," she said, using the Chinese expression for opacity and deceit.

In Kuala Lumpur, screaming could be heard from inside the Hotel Bangi Putrajaya, where some of the families of passengers have been given rooms.

Selamat Omar, father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer aboard the flight, said in a telephone interview that Malaysia Airlines had not yet briefed the families on whether they will be taken to Australia, closer to where the plane is believed to have gone down. He said they expected more details on Tuesday (today, NZT).

"We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate," Selamat said.

- AP

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9863297/Screaming-tears-disbelief-at-news-MH370-is-lost

How flight MH370's path was confirmed?

Just how did the British firm behind the confirmation of flight MH370's final path solve the mystery?

Inmarsat's engineers began searching for any trace of the plane immediately after its disappearance.

While it was quickly confirmed MH370's normal reporting system was switched off, one of the company's satellites picked up hourly "pings" from a port on the plane.

It then used these to piece together possible flight routes. The company deduced the plane continued to fly for at least five hours after leaving Malaysian airspace.

Space engineers compared the satellite handshake "pings" from missing jet MH370 with other tracked commercial flights to determine it had crashed into the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najiv Razak today (NZT) revealed that analysis "never before used in an investigation of this sort" had shown the Malaysian airliner had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

That analysis was undertaken by mobile communications company Inmarsat, which provides satellite data for Malaysia Airlines.

Even though the plane's transponder and ACARS system were turned off, the company's box on the Boeing 777 - equivalent to a mobile phone handset - stayed on and was polled every hour by Inmarsat's satellite.

The British company initially looked at the amount of time these handshake pings took to travel from the plane to its satellite 35,000 kilometres above the equator to determine the aircraft was moving along either a north or south corridor.

It passed on that discovery on March 11.

"Effectually 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," Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat, told the Daily Telegraph.

"They've tested it off against a number of other aircraft known flights and come to the conclusion that only the southern route was possible,"  McLaughlin told Sky News on Monday (local time).

"We refined that with the signals we got from other (777) aircraft and that then gives you a very, very good fit.

"Previous aircraft provided a pattern and that pattern to the south is virtually what we got in our suggested estimates.

"So the fit is very, very strong."

McLaughlin said the company was relying on a 1990s satellite over the Indian Ocean that wasn't GPS equipped.

But scientists could work out the approximate direction of travel "plus or minus 100 miles to a track line".

"All we can do is to say we believe it is in this general location.

"We can not give you the final few feet and inches of where it landed. It's just not that sort of system."

While the company was able to work out where the last ping was sent from, the aircraft likely still had some fuel remaining.

But it would have run out before the next automated handshake.

Inmarsat has been appointed a technical advisor to the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch.

It passed on the new analysis after it was peer-reviewed by other experts in the UK space industry and compared with Boeing.

McLaughlin said systems that kept track of a plane's precise location should be mandated world-wide "and it could be delivered tomorrow".

- AAP, Stuff

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/9863325/How-flight-MH370s-path-was-confirmed

Cutting-edge methods in search for flight MH370

By Jonathan AmosScience correspondent, BBC News

British firm Inmarsat compared data sent back from flight MH370 with similar aircraft

The British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat has now pretty much confirmed what the world had feared - that Malaysia Airways flight MH370 was surely lost in the southern Indian Ocean, south-west of Australia.

The satellite operator was receiving hourly "pings" from equipment on board the plane for at least five hours after the aircraft left Malaysian airspace.

Initially, these pings - which were essentially just "I'm switched on" messages - were used to plot two broad arcs of possible travel - one arc going to the north, the other heading south.

The northerly route always looked doubtful because it would have taken the plane towards countries with sophisticated air-defence systems. The chances of it avoiding detection seemed slim.

Inmarsat, which is feeding into the official investigation, spent the weekend reviewing all of its flight MH370 data.

Doppler effect

In particular, it examined the frequency spectrum of the ping transmissions and how they differed from pings emitted by previous Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flights.

This allowed engineers to model how the frequency might change very slightly as a plane travels through the sky.

This is the famous Doppler effect, which acts to "stretch" or "compress" radio waves emanating from moving objects. With a moving police car, the equivalent sound effect is to change the pitch of the siren.

The analysis is cutting-edge and has never been done before, but it has enabled Inmarsat's engineers to confirm that the southerly arc was the path taken by flight MH370.

The analysis tells us nothing about the location of the ill-fated plane. It tells us nothing about any changes in altitude that the plane flew, other than it was airborne.

Neither does it tell us about its speed or its fuel capacity at the times of those pings. All this technique really does at the moment is tell us that the plane was moving one way rather than the other.

But that in itself is a stomach-churning realisation for the families of flight MH370 because it means the plane was moving far away from any landing possibility. The only conclusion can be that it eventually ditched in the ocean.

Right 'haystack'

Chris McLaughlin, senior vice-president at Inmarsat, told BBC News it was "dealing with a totally new area". Analysts will continue to probe the available data, but it is uncertain whether anything more can be drawn out.

The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), which has worked with Inmarsat on the pings, is expected to go into more detail on Tuesday.

At least now search planes and ships know they are likely looking in the right "haystack", even if it is still a huge one.

But there is urgency. A lot of time has elapsed between the loss of the plane and confirmation that it surely fell into the southern Indian Ocean.

The priority is to get ships into the area to retrieve purported debris items, to help narrow the zone of the probable of impact.

The flight recorders from flight MH370 will be close to that location, albeit about 3,500m down.

The batteries on these "black boxes" have a 30-day, or perhaps even a 40-day, lifetime, meaning they will continue to ping their existence to searchers overhead for only a limited period.

When the batteries go flat, we move into a much more difficult phase - that of using remotely operated vehicles to actively look for the devices.

'Remoteness of area'

"The data on them should last for many years. We saw with Air France flight 449 that the black boxes were recovered two years after the fact, and the French were able to pull all the data off them," said Van Gurley from the Metron company, which took part in the search for flight 447.

"In this region of the Indian Ocean, the bottom is about two miles down. There are a number of technologies - sonar sleds and robotic vehicles - that can access that depth.

"The problem is the remoteness of the area because those robotic vehicles need a support ship and a support ship needs to occasionally go [into port] for fuel, water and food.

"So, given that the search area is 1,500 miles off Perth, just keeping ships on station for an extended period of time will be very challenging."

And Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton, added: "We don't have very good maps of this region. It hasn't been surveyed much in the past.

"It doesn't have a strong interest in terms of the resources on the seabed. We've probably got better maps of the Moon's surface than this part of the seabed."

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26724966