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MH370: Report of Jet flying over Maldives Island Kudahuvadhoo

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Especially considering even Inmarsat has acknowledged also the possibility of that data being spoofed (although they think it's very unlikely):

In terms of evidence the data suffers from the same contamination issues as any crime scene investigation: chain of custody (CoC). Who handled it? Could anyone have misplaced or mangled it, even just by accident? Is there a clear trace from receiver to storage with checksums and fingerprinting of every action? Probably not as the pings were not used for this kind of investigation before. Only for that reason it should be treated as a promising but still single line of evidence no matter how sound the mathematics would be. It's only as good as its source, after all, a source which without proper precautions and protocols in place is simply not a closed case (but all they got here).
 
That's all quite informative. Bear in mind however the Balassa-Samuelson effect on purchasing power parity - $65 in a low-income country buys considerably more than does $65 in its high-income counterparts. In the case of the Maldives, Wikipedia puts the nominal GDP per capita at $5900 and the PPP-adjusted GDP per capita at $8700 (I'm on a mobile and therefore cannot post the link, sorry about that), so there's a rather significant difference there (and this difference may be even more pronounced outside of the major urban centres).

In any case in my opinion the picture painted there is reasonably consistent with something that could be called a sleeping fishing village. So at least based on that info, I wouldn't blame the reporter of misleading his audience.

And it also sounds like the kind of place you wouldn't expect everyone having an iPhone in their pocket (with Apple pricing that would likely cost just as much there as everywhere else ;) ). So I'm not really surprised there's no photographic evidence of whatever flew there.
 
In terms of evidence the data suffers from the same contamination issues as any crime scene investigation: chain of custody (CoC). Who handled it? Could anyone have misplaced or mangled it, even just by accident? Is there a clear trace from receiver to storage with checksums and fingerprinting of every action? Probably not as the pings were not used for this kind of investigation before. Only for that reason it should be treated as a promising but still single line of evidence no matter how sound the mathematics would be. It's only as good as its source, after all, a source which without proper precautions and protocols in place is simply not a closed case (but all they got here).

What sort of data Inmarsat has actually provided to independent experts at the moment? Do they have some sort of "raw" data, or only something Inmarsat has already processed in a significant way? Earlier I quoted the PM of Australia saying:
The expert panels all around the world are so convinced that the satellite connections and seventh arc is where it is, they’re talking about basically zero per cent options for anything else
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That doesn't really paint the same picture as Jason Middleton (an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney) does in this article: http://time.com/3826131/mh370-malaysia-airlines-missing-jet-stop-search/

Compounding matters, the current search area is based almost entirely on satellite-data analysis from British telecommunications firm Inmarsat. This tracked a series of maintenance pings using groundbreaking analysis techniques as MH370’s own secondary radar was disabled in the cockpit. However, corroborating the Inmarsat data is impossible, meaning the search could be taking place in entirely the wrong place.

“The total lack of debris is a puzzle,” says Middleton. “And the Inmarsat information cannot be tested by intelligent and capable people because they do not have access to the proprietary information from Inmarsat.”

He adds: “The Inmarsat stuff is untestable. And although I’m not suggesting they’ve done anything improper, the search area relies very much on their calculations, and if they have made errors, we are not able to replicate their calculations. And there’s a chance they’ve stuffed up and the plane is not there at all.”
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Well, most current FMCs have capacity for two Routes to be stored. Keep in mind, though, that if only one pilot intends to perform some illegal act (for example), having a flight plan pre-loaded into "RTE 2" is going to be noticed by the other pilot.

You gave me a great idea for a YouTube search (I used the abbreviation "rte") and came up with a bunch of explanatory videos. These are designed to help instruct the many Flight Sim hobbyists, apparently. (And not pertinent, perhaps...and the bloke is a bit confusing, and does it in ways that aren't exactly correct).





The example uses a past version of FMC software (similar to when the first B-737-300s were introduced, in the 1980s) with only one RTE capability. On the CDU in most modern versions when you press the 'RTE' key you are given a choice to cycle between 'RTE 1' or 'RTE 2'.

But, the videos can be a bit informative for the layperson, at least.


ETA:


I should clarify that. You are correct. When it comes to airline scheduled routes, in the past there were what we called "canned" routes, and they were printed out, and assigned a shortcut alpha-numeric code. We'd refer to the correct shortcut, and enter that. The computer databases 'knew' these, and would then load and propagate all the various waypoints.

But, starting in the 1990s we began to have a 'DataLink' capability (through the ACARS) so our specific Flight Plan was uplinked and loaded, when requested by the crew. Some long-length flights may have various routing options, depending on weather, winds, and even time of day traffic conflicts. So, what is uplinked is based on what Dispatch has already determined to be THAT plan for that flight. Make sense?


Interesting that Kula Lumpur International Airport runway is exactly the same latitude as this small island atoll in the Maldives. Also, if you set a route to a waypoint Zero Lat. Zero Lon.,(that happens to be on the West side of Africa), from Penang Malaysia, it cuts through the Maldives, North, above this island atoll. This is exactly the case for fuel exhaustion and flame-out first of the left engine. The reported quote specifies a North to South path and a turning bank to the East. An autopilot would throttle the remaining engine to maintain altitude, explaining the loud noise! The residents could be right and the Southern route to be bunk. Whoever imagined that an autopilot would fly a curved route to match a satellite signal propagation arc?

It is interesting that news reports suggest that multiple circuit breakers were turned off by the crew. Isn't the primary purpose of a circuit breaker to trip on over-current and is only secondarily used as a switch? The obvious thing to look for is an "over-voltage", causing "over-current" in multiple breakers. There are multiple back-up power sources for "brown-outs". But would they respond correctly to an "over-voltage"? Some pieces of electronic equipment even have built-in "crow-bar" circuits that sense "over-voltage" and intentionally create a short-circuit to trip a breaker, thereby protecting equipment from a damaging situation. Why would an official jump to the conclusion that a human pulled circuit breakers? Did they do a failure analysis of voltage regulators, alternators, or power inverters?
 
Whoever imagined that an autopilot would fly a curved route to match a satellite signal propagation arc?

Do you mean a curved path there could result similar ping calculation results as assumed linear path to SIO? Or what did you mean by propagation arc?
 
BTW: Has this theory by Stuart S. Yeh been discussed here?:
http://trendvector.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/new-theory-for-mh370-oxygen-fire-west.html
There's a link to a more detailed document at the end.

In short it proposes an oxygen fire, seen first by that oil rig worker, then plane flying alone to Maldives, seen by eyewitnesses there. The really interesting bit is that it claims to be compatible both with the eyewitness accounts but also Inmarsat pings.

It proposes that the time increases between pings wasn't the result of the plane flying further from the satellite, but on the contrary, closer to it towards Maldives. Apparently the signals would be weaker underneath the satellite and there would be more interference due to signals reflected from the ocean. These in turn would result transmission delays similar to network congestion.

I really don't know if he knows what he is talking about, but on the surface at least it sounds quite interesting.
 
I'm sorry, but this is not a speculation forum. It's a debunking forum where we look at individual claims of evidence. This thread no longer meets the posting guidelines, and will be closed.
 
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