On December 30, 2025, Ocean Infinity (OI) begin its third campaign to find MH370 on the seabed in the Southern Indian Ocean (SIO). The search vessel is Armada 8605, which is equipped with a team of three Hugin Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). This search continues in the general area that was started in March 2025 using the vessel Armada 7806.
The map above shows how this campaign relates to previous efforts, including:
Original area searched by the ATSB. This part of the 7th arc was searched by GO Phoenix ship using a towed vehicle (“towfish”) with synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) starting in October 2014 and completing its mission in June 2015.
Area searched by OI in 2018. In early 2018, OI expanded the area searched previously by the ATSB. The area was extended outwards to around 59 km (32 NM) from the 7th arc and inwards to around 46 km (25 NM) from the 7th arc, and along the 7th arc between 36S latitude to 24.7S latitude. After searching around 120,000 square kilometers, which matched the total area covered previously by the ATSB, the MH370 debris field was not found.
UGIB Last Estimated Position. In March 2020, an extensive data-driven study was released by Ulich, Godfrey, Iannello, and Banks (UGIB 2020) which reconstructed the path of MH370 based on data sets and information from satellite, radar, aircraft performance, navigation systems, drift analysis, aerial search results, and archived weather. Assuming no pilot inputs after 19:41z, the study predicted that MH370 crossed the 7th arc around 34.23S, 93.78E, designated the Last Estimated Position (LEP). In June 2023, Ulich and Iannello subsequently incorporated results from an updated drift model that was used to refine the search area recommendation, including the possibility of a 70-NM glide after fuel exhaustion.
High Priority Search Area. In February 2023, Iannello recommended a search area that should be prioritized. Located on a steep slope about 33 km due south of the LEP and 27 km from the 7th arc, the area was not scanned by GO Phoenix’s towfish and appeared to have been only partially scanned by Ocean Infinity’s AUVs during the first campaign in 2018.
OI Proposed Search Area. At the 10th anniversary of the disappearance in March 2024, OI announced its intention to conduct another search for MH370. The area proposed by OI at that time centered approximately around the specific location (34.23S, 93.78E) from UGIB 2020, designated on OI’s map as the “IG Hot Spot”.
Track of Armada 7806. This track can be used to estimate the areas searched during the OI campaign that began in March 2025. Although the exact area scanned by the AUVs is not known, Armada 7806’s path to launch and recover the AUVs gives us a good idea of the area covered. The search area includes the UGIB LEP, the High Priority Search Zone, areas where data quality from previous searches was poor due to rough terrain or equipment malfunctions, and other unsearched areas within the OI Proposed Search Area.
Likely Progression Armada 8605. The current search seems to be methodically progressing to complete the areas within the OI Proposed Search Area that were not searched in March 2025. The search began on December 30, 2025, with unsearched parts of the proposed area (red rectangle) that is outwards (southeast) of the 7th arc. This area would include an unsearched area due south of the UGIB LEP and the High Priority Search area. These locations (the LEP and High Priority Search Areas) were based on a reconstructed flight path that was determined to statistically favor due south, so unsearched areas further along the due south trajectory is of high interest and will be reached soon by Armada 8605 and its AUVs.
Acknowledgement. This article has benefited from the many private discussions with Mike Exner, Don Thompson, Bobby Ulich, and Andrew Banks.
@Victor
I presume you mean 128000 km**2 for the 2018 OI search.
@Viking. Yes. Thank you.
@Ed
Concerning your 16s window for the FFT I initially thought that was a good value, since it includes the entire (expected) dispersion broadening in ‘dirty’ cases. However, after thinking deeper about it, I am increasingly convinced that it is not a good value to use.
The reason is that if you make a FFT for a signal with the width dominated by dispersion broadening you affectively distribute its contribution to the heading over the entire time window. If the (dispersion free) width is just a few seconds that leads to a relative weight reduction (compared to a signal with no dispersion arriving at the same time) is reduced by the ratio of the original duration and 16s. That is effectively around 4-6 times reduction in contribution (naively).
With imperfect treatment of related boundary problems (filters, etc.) this factor may get worse.
I therefore suggest you try a shorter time window.
Alternatively you might try adding a simple linear dispersion correction corresponding to 10-15s broadening. Please try both positive and negative sign for the dispersion for each peak.
For a given (dirty) peak only one sign will work, but which one it is will vary among the peaks.
I am not an expert or anything like that, but am very curious about what happened. I am wondering if someone knows how often Ocean Infinity is analyzing data from the submersibles? Is it everyday? Is it possible they could find something and alert people in real time from their ships, or do they have to collect the data, and bring it ashore for analysis? I am also noticing they are spending more time in some places but not others within specific search zones. Is this indicative of seeing something that could potentially be debris or something like that? Please forgive my lack of knowledge and expertise.
@Victor Iannello et al
G’day Victor, by way of a bit of a straw-poll/sanity-check, might I trouble you (and others) for what likelihoods you assign to each of the following:
1. The seventh arc is accurately (±10km) mapped.
2. At the seventh arc, MH370 was in a state of unpowered flight subsequent to fuel exhaustion.
3. MH370’s flight path from the seventh arc followed one of the spiral descent profiles provided by Boeing to the ATSB (±10km to end point).
And yes, I understand that there were 10 descent profiles provided by Boeing, but they all placed the end point within 60 km of the arc.
Thank you in advance.
@Greg Hood,
Greg, Neither am I, but the link below may assist.
The mission is largely robotic. The ship is manned, but the searching is being done by three (I think) autonomous submersibles. The ship (and crew) is not doing the first of the searching “itself” but supporting the underwater searchers. They can report some data from below and the ship/crew can communicate from above.
The ship/crew also are in remote contact with land based facilities and personnel.
“Is it possible they could find something and alert people in real time from their ships”: Yes.
“I am also noticing they are spending more time in some places but not others”. The surface ship is in support of the underwater robots doing the searching. In particular (I think) it is necessary to be virtually at a standstill to retrieve any one of the underwater vehicles, if “virtually at a standstill” makes any sense in terms of the likely prevalent sea states (ha,ha).
The underwater robots have an endurance of days, if that is advantageous to the task at hand. So, if a submersible is to be retrieved, serviced and data transferred before being re-inserted into the water to continue the search, then the ship may appear to be at that “virtual standstill”, again if that is advantageous to the task at hand.
https://oceaninfinity.com/technology/#:~:text=%E2%9A%A0%EF%B8%8F-,ADVANCED%20ROBOTICS,-Remote%20command%20and
@Mick
1. 100%
2. 100%
3. Unknown as stated. But 90% within +/-20nm.
@airlandseaman
Thanks Mike.
Is anyone else tracking the OI ship?
They are certainly very focused on a specific location at the moment.
https://www.mh370-caption.net/index.php/armada-tracking/
@Mick.
1. 100%
2. 100%
3. Uncertain whether final descent matched Boeing simulations. BFO tells us beyond reasonable doubt that it was in steep and accelerating descent at 00:19:30 and would have exceeded MMO and/orimpacted the water within about 30 seconds. The notion that impact point is more than 10NM from the arc is fanciful. More likely it was <5NM.
@Paul Smithson
Thanks Paul.
I could add that by UGIB’s fuel analysis there is no way that the packs were running after 20:00 – so no live pilot to glide the aircraft. I find it, frankly, baffling that an area only reachable by glide is now being prioritised and would be glad if anyone can explain the logic.
Enjoying following these updates, thanks.
Has there been a review of the Turner 2016 scenario? this was ‘Failed Diversion to Banda Aceh airport with Hypoxic crew’, with a crash site just west of the IG 2020 location. I ask as a video of his presentation recently appeared online last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxkL7GG3k-A
I think the presentation was from March 2025, but he did another in Oct ’25 in Perth.
@Theo: I haven’t reviewed it as some of the fundamental hunches are unlikely.
There is an “internet personality” that has appeared on various platforms that keeps pitching the hypothesis that a ruptured oxygen bottle was responsible for a long-list of system failures that led to the disappearance. That character goes by the names Pete Noetic, Paul Onions (on this site), Captain Ripari (Reddit), and most recently Captain Peter Turner. Although the point of impact has moved over the years, the basic premise of the scenario remains the same. That person was banned from this site after being repeatedly warned that some of his facts were erroneous.
Perhaps in the latest incarnation of the scenario, some of those errors were corrected.
@jip17
Yes I noticed this as well. I don’t think we should take it as much until a few days from now, if they continue darting over and staying at that spot instead of continuing the search north similar to the pattern observable from their last search, it would be fair to speculate at that point that there may be something going on. Here is hoping, but i’m not holding my breath, too early to tell anything at this point. Wishing the OI team luck.
@Paul Smithson @airlandseaman
We’ve already arrived at a point in time where those who believe that the plane somehow crashed in a high speed, no fuel dive are complete lunatics. Where was the debris field? How is the flap, flapperon in perfect condition? Even if fluttered off, there would still be water impact deformaties which are not visible. The leading edges are perfect, but the trailing edges are eroded pretty much exactly as they found the control surfaces on flight 1549. There is too much going for a ditching to defend without any evidence or reason that it fell out of the sky. There is a reason why searches have moved from directly underneath the 7th arc, which has mostly been covered, to outside it where a glide would have taken it. If it had been in a high speed crash, the ATSB would have found it, because thats where they were looking for it. Ocean infinity isn’t wasting its money searching in a place they don’t think the plane could be, they want that 100M.
Happy new year 2026 to all as well
@Darius Tanz, where’s the evidence, you ask?
1. Witness marks confirmed retracted position of Flaperon (Reunion) and Flap (Pemba) – ref expert analysis by qualified investigators.
2. Fuel exhaustion occurred (SDU power-cycled between 00:11 and 00:19) around time of expected fuel exhaustion – yet no descent ongoing at 00:11 (ref BFO)
3. Autonomous straight glide impossible with AP disengaged (ref autopilot logic).
4. Pilot unlikely to have been alive (ref fuel endurance to 00:11+ impossible without bleed air/packs off for several hours).
5. If pilot HAD been alive and intended to ditch an idle descent would have occurred followed by ditching before fuel exhaustion – neither of which happened. (ref BFO and BTO).
5. Final BFO data prove a steep and accelerating rate of descent at 001930 (ref Holland). Extrapolate by 30-40s and you either approach M1 or hit the water.
6. Recovered debris consistent with high energy impact (ref recovered debris fragments)
7. Trailing edge damage consistent with flutter (ref expert opinion – not mine)
I don’t see that there’s any reasonable alternative inference than fuel exhaustion, uncontrolled descent and hard impact close to the arc.
@Darius Tanz: In my opinion, the MH370 debris most closely resembles the parts recovered from Silk Air 185. Fragmented parts were recovered from a debris field about 60m x 80m, and flight control surfaces that separated during the high-speed descent due to flutter were recovered some miles from the debris field.
@Mick
From my work, as you may know-
(1) 99% BTO/BFO accuracy: Looks A-OK to me. We benefit from Inmarsat with IG assist helping to refine the data to make it as accurate as possible
(2) Zero. Active pilot intentionally flew some distance away from what we call Arc7…after about Arc5, MH370 merged onto the home sim path to Arc7, and kept going with a little fuel. SATCOM off’ed by active pilot, probably twice.
(3) Descent did not follow the Boeing simulations, because this was not a ghost flight falling from high altitude. Instead it was a manned flight with descent, slow-down well before Arc7. I am somewhat open-minded on final crash strategy, given no ELT signal, but I do feel it is possible that the pilot had a hold pattern descent at the end, which I infer from the home sim data. In general crash looks like it could be like Ethiopian 961 with a flaps-up, high-speed, wings-semi-level catastrophic “ditch”, sort of similar to CAPTION’s vision there. In that sense final entry to water could look a little like a Boeing sim case.
@TBill
Thanks Bill. I would have lost money there; I had you down as assigning a small but non-zero value to 2.
@Victor
Thank you for the updated diagram. Would it be possible to include the lat/long coordinates for the search boxes and also a north arrow for reference? Or if this already exists, a link would be helpful.
@Mick Gilbert: I guess I’m less certain than other people about what I consider to be most likely scenario.
>1. The seventh arc is accurately (±10km) mapped.
95%. We don’t know what we don’t know, although this seems the most solid of the evidence we have.
>2. At the seventh arc, MH370 was in a state of unpowered flight subsequent to fuel exhaustion.
70%. The last SATCOM data set is consistent with an APU power up after fuel exhaustion, but again, there is a finite possibility that there was manual intervention. This would also mean that our fuel model, which predicts the air packs were off and nobody was alive, is in error. That error is possible, although not the most likely.
>3. MH370’s flight path from the seventh arc followed one of the spiral descent profiles provided by Boeing to the ATSB (±10km to end point).
10%. None of Boeing’s descent profiles predicted the 0.7g downward
acceleration at the time of the final BFOs, presumed to be around 2 minutes after fuel exhaustion. However, this does not necessarily imply there were pilot inputs, as the Boeing model did not include provisions for engine restarts and perhaps other phenomena, which could result in a steep banked descent and an impact close to the 7th arc.
The simplest explanation of the data is that MH370 crashed close to the 7th arc after fuel exhaustion. However, we can’t discount the observation that the debris has not yet been found close to the 7th arc, which lowers the probability that the debris field is close to the 7th arc.
@Stuart: North is up in the figure at the start of the article.
The first image of this past article shows a similar map from the search in March 2025, except the Google Earth grid is turned on.
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2025/03/31/update-on-the-search-for-mh370/
@Victor Iannello
G’day Victor,
Thank you for your reasoned and considered response.
@Victor. You said “The simplest explanation of the data is that MH370 crashed close to the 7th arc after fuel exhaustion. However, we can’t discount the observation that the debris has not yet been found close to the 7th arc, which lowers the probability that the debris field is close to the 7th arc.”
An alternative phrasing of that ends:
“…which lowers the probability that the correct section of 7th arc has been searched.”
It seems to me that the most unequivocal data currently available are:
1. The BTO data (together with the various pieces of evidence that strongly support a terminus close to the arc).
2. The underwater search null result. This is by far the most robust “latitude discriminator” – ahead of BFO, drift, fuel or any other line of evidence that has so far been marshalled.
The combination of 1 * 2 tells you that the most probable residual is the 7th arc residual that has not been searched, ie 39.5-40.0S.
In DSTG’s pdf, this was classified as marginal – right out on the 5% tail. My subsequent analysis, which is fully consistent with DSTG’s “sans-BFO” pdf, is that the PEAK probability zone by BTO is actually 39.0-39.5. The published pdf peak at 38.0 is the direct result of attempting to optimise concurrently for BFO (optimum circa 37S) and BTO (optimum circa 39+). If we consider BTO to be more precise/beyond doubt than BFO, then we ought to be looking more closely at the BTO optimum. And that makes 39-40 OPTIMAL, not marginal.
As you and others have often pointed out, this terminus is less consistent with conventional expectations derived from drift, BFO and fuel predictions. I believe that I have now provided reasonable evidence on how each of the “mainstream” interpretations of these may be in error. And it is not as if they were “beyond doubt” in the first place.
Look at this another way. Using (previous) fuel model, drift model and BFO as latitude discriminators predicted segments of the arc which have been searched without success. Something is wrong.
So what it really comes down to is whether you are more inclined to believe:
a) correct latitude has been identified. The search has missed it / the flight terminated >40NM from the arc
b) wrong latitude was identified and their are defensible reasons why these predictions were in error.
I’d be more inclined to go with (b). The fact that BTO optimum lies in this zone – and that this coincides with the most parsimonious path models – makes it all the more compelling.
Happy New Year everyone
@Paul Smithson
Paul, I share your opinion on search priorities, just waiting for the moment if and when the Armada 86 05 is going to make a U-turn and continue searching along the 7th Arc. Moreover, I do not think that even the people who believe in the controlled glide are satisfied, current area is probably too close to the arc for that scenario.
@Victor Iannello @DrB
Victor, on the map above you marked a substantial number of former and potential new search areas. Among them is also the “Ulich-Iannello Search Area Based on 70-NM Glide,” which originates from yours and Dr. Ulich’s paper “Improved Prediction of MH370 Crash Location Based on Drift Modeling of Floating Debris,” where it is marked as “Zone 2.” Here is the map from page 1 of that paper:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WkYrS9SHxCNdJkgYCEvjuZGW31h3G9i3/view?usp=sharing
Until recently I was completely ignorant that you actually recommended first searching data gaps and LPDs inside the longer area along the arc (from 36.4° to 32.9°), that is, “Zone 1” on the map. I was aware of “Zone 1A” only. At least a part of “Zone 1A” was searched first in March 2025, but what happened with “Zone 1B”? It seems like it was sidelined at some point. I know that you cannot talk on behalf of the OI, but I think that this area also needs to be marked as well in your posts. People should be aware that the job close to the arc has not yet been finished.
@Jean-Luc Marchand – CAPTION
Jean-Luc I will appeal to you as well since you are running the website dedicated to finding Malaysia Airlines 370. A location closer to the 7th Arc does not contradict your work and proposed flight path. An oversight was made about the fact that the area closer to the Arc has not been searched thoroughly enough and consequently that area was disregarded. The only thing that is needed is to include it along your proposed flight path and see what the viable options are.
@Paul Smithson
(a) Well said on the head and shoulders primacy of the BTO data, which I agree with, 100%.
(b) Well said on the inferences to be drawn from the ‘null’ search (to date) re prior assumptions.
@Mick Gilbert,
Your three questions.
I am going to put on my rose-coloured glasses. And I do not profess to know details.
1: 100%. The 7th arc location is dependent upon the aircraft altitude at the time. It is also dependent upon the accuracies/inaccuracies from the BTO dependent calculations. The latter have been addressed by many analysts, but specifically and clearly by Inmarsat. For any given aircraft altitude your 10 km uncertainty should be more than adequate.
2: 95%. The 5% remaining uncertainty is simply due to “but we can’t be sure”.
3: 5%. There were only 10 descent profiles provided by Boeing being only those 10 executed or trialled by Boeing “itself”. This was adequate to provide an indication of the possible range of such profiles. (And, hence, some early indication as to how much to restrict the search to some reasonability.) But, even so, no-one had previously seriously thought that such a simulation would be truly necessary, and hence no real provision for adequate fidelity. There are also uncertainties as to the aircraft yaw control configuration prior to final fuel exhaustion. None of the previous in this paragraph is to say that the Boeing attempts were not useful, simply that they were indicative of some possibilities, certainly not all.
@George G
G’day George, thank you for your considered answers, particularly regarding the end-of-flight modelling.
@Theo
@Victor
RE: Has there been a review of the Turner 2016 scenario?
As Victor mentioned, “Peter Turner” appears to have been active here about eight years ago, under another name. Some of his claims were shown to be wrong at the time, yet he persists in making them. His Banda Aceh scenario was found to be unlikely, for several reasons, including (but not limited to) the following:
1. The scenario suggests an oxygen bottle ruptured, causing severe damage to the left side of the main equipment centre (MEC), the loss of multiple systems and a slow depressurisation. Such a rupture would certainly cause severe damage inside the MEC, but it’s also very likely that bottle components would be projected through the fuselage skin, as happened in the QF30 incident described in Turner’s presentation. That would cause a rapid depressurisation, not the slow version upon which his scenario depends.
2. Turner claims the crew proceeded to Banda Aceh because the aircraft was too heavy to land at Penang. He seems not to be aware of (or chooses to ignore) the overweight landing guidance in the Flight Crew Training Manual (FCTM), and the overweight landing non-normal checklists available in both the Electronic Checklist (ECL) and the Quick Reference Handbook (QRH). Being overweight does not preclude landing in an emergency situation such as the one Turner describes. The limiting factor is the runway length, which would not have been an issue for a landing on Penang’s 11,000 ft long runway, over 1,000 ft longer than the runway at Banda Aceh.
3. Banda Aceh did not have ATC services available at the time of night in question and only limited rescue/fire fighting (RFF) services. No aircraft commander worth their salt would have bypassed Penang for Banda Aceh at that time of night, given Penang was a very familiar airfield with good weather, a long runway and full ATC/RFF services available.
I didn’t watch the entire presentation, but I noted several technical errors relating to the aircraft’s SATCOM antenna, the CABIN ALTITUDE warning and the FMC behaviour after a failure. Those errors were explained to Turner many years ago by people on this forum
@Victor,
Thanks for your clarified search area map. It would be very nice to have the zoned portions as a .kmz file to complement the CAPTION .kmz updates.
@Jean-Luc,
If the .kmz.gz file could instead be a .kmz file, it might be possible to turn it into a live network link within Google Earth Pro. The .kmz is internally a zip compressed .kml file, so no savings with the gzip compression.
@Viking,
The 16 second (4K sample) window was specific to that graph. It is already masked typically with a narrowing gaussian to remove edge effects. Narrowing it further improves temporal resolution but increases noise. Widening it smears the signal but helps detect weaker events. The map made for the Gulden Draak detection used multiple windows stacked to get the best of both spatial resolution and lowest noise. I use dozens of different algorithms, both temporal and spectral. The LANL comparison plot used an FFT as it was the best I had for reducing beamforming phantoms back then. I do use well padded FFT for spectrograms, and broader windows give better spectral resolution. As I addressed before, dispersion doesn’t alter the bearing result or sensitivity, and is typically seen only at the lowest frequencies. If you can show better s/n by correcting for it without introducing other artifacts, I will be impressed.
@Mick,
1) 95% that the 7th Arc is within 10 km, and probably better. 95% is 2 sigma, and that’s how far I trust calculations I didn’t do myself. When I first ran the epicenter using picked P and S wave arrival timing on the 8 best seismometer recordings, the location was within 0.25 km of the low altitude 7th Arc. That’s quite a coincidence, given that the accuracy of both measures is lower. CSIRO pointed that out, so I reduced the reported lat/lon precision.
2) 95% that the plane had no thrust at the 7th Arc. The login sequence was incomplete compared to the first Arc repowering. If the Java site is correct, the plane must have been at very low altitude at the 7th Arc.
3) 15% that the plane flew a curved path at the end only because to land right on the 7th Arc, it may have turned back to land parallel with the waves, not because it was unpiloted.
@Darius,
The damage on 9M-MRO seems similar to that on AF447, which entered the water in a nose-up, flaps-up stall, falling at about the same rate as forward motion. From the debris field AF447 was clearly shattered, so even a 200 knot entry will not leave a B777 intact. I can’t see how control surfaces like the flaperon and flaps could all lose their trailing edges from flutter and then spontaneously detach from the plane before impact, to land with no leading edge damage. The only vids I’ve ever seen of main wing flutter look like the flapping motion of a bird.
I seem to recall that the RAT powers some hydraulics but not the flaps, which may explain why they were still retracted.
@Paul,
I agree that proximity to the 7th Arc is better defined than broad latitude, so that’s where the search should concentrate. There are huge tracts of the 7th Arc that are completely unsearched because of the possibly false assumption that the plane flew unpiloted. Yet now we are expanding past search areas in case of a piloted glide.
@All,
Current media reports are that the latest search is based on improved technology, multiple more capable AUVs, refined drift estimates, and even barnacle analysis. I recall that OI used eight AUVS in 2018, and they appear to be a similar model to the Hugin 6000, perhaps now with onboard MBE?
What surprises me is that none of the candidates being searched is based on new evidence (WSPR isn’t evidence). Nobody is willing to discuss the photographic evidence that the flaperon barnacles began growth after beaching, probably in early May 2015. That seriously changes the assumptions made in the drift studies, which remain unrefined. The indisputable detection of an event on the 7th Arc while MH370 was sinking doesn’t even get a mention among expert commentators.
I’m not a believer in coincidences or conspiracy theories.
That brings me to why the broader “WSPR” area might warrant a search, if OI only intends to widen the previous search area. The acoustic detection I proposed in 2017 was already searched in 2018. It was only seen on just one hydrophone, and it had some artifacts that may have been reflections. Noise from a surface impact at that spot could get into the SOFAR channel by reflection from the Gulden Draak sea mount. The timing was a good match for the 7th Arc, which would make a later surface crash or distant from the sea mount unlikely. Looking at the 2018 OI track, there appears to be a nearly 100 km gap east and NE of my 2017 candidate. If that area was skipped, then it might make sense to fill that gap. RG is already claiming thunderous glory for WSPR if MH370 is found in that zone he picked, but I still don’t believe in coincidences.
Correction: I have also seen vids of main wing flutter in an oscillatory twisting motion, somewhat like the Galloping Gertie Tacoma Narrows bridge.
Re: Turner’s Presentation
I did sit through Turner’s 1.75-hr YouTube. I have known about his Banda Aceh scenario for some years, as he spars with me occasionally on Twitter(X) as @PeteNoetic.
Basically give him credit (he has been online as Capt RipAri since the early days on Reddit) for developing the most well-thought out “remarkable” accident scenario. The big weakness I see: I have always wanted to see his flight path details, like we all do for each Arc: lat/long/speed/heading/BTO/BFO etc. he typically only shows the flight path. I suspect his flight path would violate the BTO/BFO accuracy we like to see, and I think we might be able to see that a little bit from his presentation.
Turner does correctly grasp that a “curved” magnetic path to the southeast needs to slow down markedly before Arc6/7. My explanation, of course, is the active pilot slowed down. Turner’s explanation is that fuel ran out well before Arc7. He suggests everyone except he is wrong about the fuel shortage to get to Arc7, but he is assuming quite a large fuel flow outside temp debit for a ghost flight at FL340. I recall DrB used to say that a lot, but re: MH370 it’s amazing and unexpected to me that the fuel flow ambient temp debit goes away above about FL360.
Turner starts out, from the first slide almost, condemning deliberate flight, and digs into IG several times for their unfair “mass murder” scenario, so we quickly see where he is coming from.
There are many things he says that I/we don’t agree with, too numerous to count. But at IGARI he shows a standard, smooth 25 deg AutoPilot bank fitting the apparent extreme tight turn data just exactly perfectly. He disputes that the Xponder was switched off at IGARI saying he has proved, I think he suggests in an actual aircraft flight, that the ADS-B data would not report zero altitude in the wrong switch position.
Re: O2 Tank, I think we need to realize the Qantas historic accident involved an older heritage metal gas cylinder, that If I recall was, upon further investigation, produced during a known batch of bad quality metal cylinders. MH370 reportedly had modern composite (eg Kevlar style) O2 cylinders, for which I am not aware of any aircraft failures, and also the composites tend to not rupture but develop small leaks in the side (and I think we know MH370 O2 system was holding pressure pretty well). I believe Turner bolsters his argument with a story about how poorly the MH370 cylinders were maintained, so he asserts the piping and tanks were likely in terrible disrepair, in his opinion.
As an interesting aside on O2 tanks, there has been a kindly American NoK, from a 1960 brief case bombing, assisting the MH370 NoK with their grief process. When I looked up that 1960 flight on Wikipedia, O2 tank rupture was listed as a possible cause, but later proven to likely be a bomb brought on board. So O2 tank rupture is one of those things like a missile that people tend to gravitate to.
In general, what I said on one FB group, how about this? bring this scenario to the attention of the Flight Safety Detectives (former NTSB Greg Feith, et al) and ask them if this scenario remotely seems reasonable. I suspect we know the answer. But Turner’s POI curves over right on top of IG@34s, so we shall see, in fact, if I heard him correctly, I think he asserts he was first person so say the search area should be 33-36s +-45nm and he says he said that back in 2016, so ALSM, you were copy cat on that one.
@TBill said: But Turner’s POI curves over right on top of IG@34s, so we shall see, in fact, if I heard him correctly, I think he asserts he was first person so say the search area should be 33-36s +-45nm and he says he said that back in 2016, so ALSM, you were copy cat on that one.
It would be hard to reconcile that comment with his previous comment on this blog in October 2017 in which he (@Paul Onions) advocated for a search 40-100 NM beyond the “Bayesian Hot Spot” at S38E88:
It appears MH370 was looking for an airport to land.
ATSB final report on page 10 states, “The aircraft passed over or near IFR waypoints ABTOK, KADAX and GOLUD (which are within 3 NM of each other) and later PUKAR. The aircraft made a slow right turn south of Penang Island.”
This flight path goes very close to Mimos, which is the start of the instrument approach point (ILS z Runway 10) to Kota Bharu. Airport is closed and there is no pilot activated lighting option.
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf%20new/AIP%20SUPP/AIPSUPP%20201112.pdf
The flight path then follows closely to the Bidmo1A arrival for runway 04 at Penang.
http://aip.dca.gov.my/aip%20pdf/AD/AD2/WMKP/WMKP-Charts%20Related%20To%20Penang%20International%20Airport.pdf
So with this in mind and due to some unknown reason, or suffering from mild hypoxia, the crew programmed a diversion to another airport, such as Banda Aceh via VAMPI-MEKAR-NILAM-SANOB. End location with APU on is 40-100 nautical miles south of Bayesian hotspot (S38E88). Never searched.
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/10/02/atsb-releases-final-report-on-mh370/#comment-7455
There were so many technical errors in his comments that he refused to correct that I banned him. And magically he has moved his search recommendation from beyond the DSTG hotspot to an area close to the 7th arc crossing in UGIB 2020.
That’s why I am not bothering to critique his newest videos.
@370Location,
Very good, thanks Ed.
@Victor
Agreed my recollection was that Turner originally went with the straight (True Track) flight path as an accidental ghost overflight and later years switched over to magnetic path, presumably to conform to the belief that a accidental ghost flight could not be True Track (straight). Amazing how many years it took for that understanding to sink in for everyone.
I must say I was surprised to recently see who “Capt Turner” was. I thought @PeteNoetic must be a Malaysian pilot coming to the defense of ZS.
@TBill said: A skeptic might say that Captain Turner moves his impact point based on the work of others.
In any event, I put his work in the same bin as the CAPTION (CAPTIO, or whatever that group calls themselves) path reconstruction which also has an impact point that moved towards the proposal of others. And those guys then have the gall to claim their work was copied.
I have little patience for this kind of attention grab. But attach a story to a path and the media eats it up.
everyone
My apologies for not checking on the comment in the previous article. I need to clarify a few things that were brought up on my analysis and Mr. Exner’s concerns about my lack of response to him (this is not a desire for personal buzz, just trying to help with a modern hand).
@airlandseaman My sincerest apologies for not responding to you. I thought the FB group was compromised by impersonator accounts due to one member becoming very aggressive to send cash through Zelle for another member and thought I was trying to be phished. Once I thought that, I thought no one I was speaking to was really who they said they were and cut off all communication. Again, my apologies and I hope you understand that, Mr. Exner.
Also, my point of 31.4 S, 90.4 E was just the end result of what I could do on my own with all publicly available data and what could be recreated through public domain. UWA’s drift data was not given to me, but enough has been discussed that it can be replicated in scale for modeling.
I really just wanted experts in each field of this case to help me build a better algorithm that could serve as point of agreement between all of your fields. I know most of you have access to better data and modeling that I can only attempt as an independent researcher. My confidence is in the pipeline that I believe that could better locate the aircraft (not the POI; it’s just where the final result pointed of 31.4 S, 90.4 E). I want help and cooperation so we can model the flight, satellite, and drift data that represents the best-case scenario. Yes, it’s complex. It hinges on assumptions with certain things that we can barely calculate otherwise.
To Mr. Iannello,
Thank you for allowing discussion on my study as well. I promise you I have no desire for publicity. My goal in this is trying to stage a full model from the turn at Malacca to match the Inmarsat data and replicate crash scenarios that can create a debris field and dispersal that can match the timing of debris found before 2018 (I figured anything else would be too difficult to match to a true time signature).
@370Location,
The flutter possibility that potentially caused the flaperon to detach is not the torsional [aeroelastic] wing flutter that some videos illustrate. Rather it is the rapid and violent excursions of a control surface, more like a flag fluttering in the wind. It can initiate very suddenly and the excursions can become extreme within one or two seconds.
Boeing mentions the possibility of flaperon flutter in one of its operational manuals, while carrying out static engine tests.
See also https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/FR-2005-12-16/05-24050
Two items: Arc accuracy and debris field:
How accurate are the arcs likely to be? I’m thinking of a +/-km distance normal to the arc. If the expected error is only +/-10km or +/-20km then it’s hard to understand how the aircraft wreckage hasn’t been found yet. Given the BFO data indicating the aircraft was likely in a steep dive.
With respect to the debris field: Someone asked, on another post, what it might look like. the size of the debris is likely to be similar to Silk Air 185 or the more recent China Eastern Airlines Flight 5735. Both of these aircraft hit the ground at ~Mach 1.0 after losing control surfaces. Perhaps the engine cores and pieces of landing gear might be recognizable but not much else. The resulting debris field will likely be spread out in the direction of any current(s) that acted on it during its descent through the water column.
I think such a debris field will be larger than AF447. It might look like a field of small bright objects with a few somewhat larger ones.
If the arcs are accurate then I’m worried that the debris has been missed.
@TBill
RE: I think we need to realize the Qantas historic accident involved an older heritage metal gas cylinder, that If I recall was, upon further investigation, produced during a known batch of bad quality metal cylinders.
The ATSB could not determine why the QF30 cylinder failed. Other cylinders from the same batch were subjected to destructive and non-destructive testing, but no systemic flaws or manufacturing defects were found.
Turner’s presentation suggests the use of a non-approved leak detection fluid (ie soapy water) caused corrosion and subsequent failure of the valve assembly. In that scenario, it seems likely the valve assembly would be projected rearwards through the MEC and the bottle would be projected forwards, creating a gaping hole in the fuselage. His notion that the bottle would ricochet around the MEC without penetrating the fuselage doesn’t seem plausible.
Someone posted exactly the same scenario on PPRuNe about three years ago, under the username “GBO”. I can only assume it was Turner.
https://www.pprune.org/australia-new-zealand-pacific/645199-mh370-new-news.html#post11347380
@Brian Anderson
@370Location
RE: The flutter possibility that potentially caused the flaperon to detach is not the torsional [aeroelastic] wing flutter that some videos illustrate. Rather it is the rapid and violent excursions of a control surface, more like a flag fluttering in the wind.”
Indeed. It may have been caused by control-surface buzz, a single-degree-of-freedom flutter sometimes encountered at high subsonic and supersonic speeds. It occurs very rapidly and is destructive.
@Ed
For the clean cases I agree with the use of FFT you describe above. For the dirty cases, I do not agree.
If you compare with long distance transmission in optical fibers, it would be totally impossible without careful dispersion compensation. That is typically done using dispersion compensating fibers. The same can in principle be done in your case if it were possible to convert R-wave signals to signals propagating above the jump layer (and above jump layer signals to R-waves) roughly midway between the transmitter and the receiver. Then you would receive a signal with small dispersion.
I was involved in an EU project (METON) 30 years ago where we investigated crosstalk in non-ideal cases (among many other things) for optical ring networks. There someone made a solid proof that non-ideal dispersion compensation did indeed cause temporal crosstalk for multichannel transmission (which in your case would give the wrong headings), so I am sure you are wrong. I think it was a guy from Telia, but I no longer remember his name.
Many participants in the project were surprised about the result because it is counter-intuitive (like you are). However the proof was correct (experimentally tested).
@Mick Gilbert,
In response to your questions :
1. Is Arc 7 accurately mapped? Yes, with very high probability.
2. Was MH370 in unpowered flight at Arc 7? Yes, with very high probability.
3. Did MH370 follow one of Boeing’s simulated profiles? Probably not, because the simulations did not include relight attempts and did not show high downward acceleration, and because the altitude and speed upon fuel exhaustion are unknown. That said, I think it is highly likely the aircraft impacted the sea very near Arc 7 (almost certainly within 25 NM).
Therefore, in my opinion OI is highly unlikely to be successful in their current zone of activity, which is roughly 35-50 NM from Arc 7.
I believe any area more than 25 NM from Arc 7 is the lowest probability of all potential search zones. I would prioritize such distant zones, at all latitudes, well below (a) unsearched and marginally searched areas near Arc 7 from 33-36S and (b) unsearched areas near Arc 7 from 32-40S.
At the beginning of 2025, there were some missed and incomplete areas near Arc 7 on both sides of the UGIB LEP, but many more to the SW. OI may have covered some or most of those to the SW in March, but I don’t recall them venturing to the NE of the LEP then. I believe there are still some small areas of incomplete and missing data which are near the Arc and to the NE of the UGIB LEP. OI appears to be putting those at a lower priority (if indeed they plan to go there at all) than scanning far from the Arc and south of it, as they are doing now.
What OI is doing now does not make sense to me, unless OI has additional data near the Arc that we don’t know about.
@DrB
Thank you for the detailed response, Bobby.
It’s clear that I could have done much better with the wording of 3.
@ChrisV3141 asked: How accurate are the arcs likely to be? I’m thinking of a +/-km distance normal to the arc. If the expected error is only +/-10km or +/-20km then it’s hard to understand how the aircraft wreckage hasn’t been found yet. Given the BFO data indicating the aircraft was likely in a steep dive.
I performed an analysis of the BTO error when the SATCOM logs on. The full analysis is described in this post:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2020/02/01/search-recommendation-for-mh370s-debris-field/
The summary from that article is:
The uncertainty in the BTO produces a corresponding uncertainty in the position of the 7th arc. The calculated sensitivity of the arc position to the BTO is 0.104 NM/µs, i.e., a 1-µs increase in BTO pushes the 7th arc outward (southeast) by 0.104 NM. The 1-σ uncertainty of the arc position due to BTO noise is therefore 0.104 NM/µs × 29 µs = 3.0 NM
@ChrisV3141 Re: “How accurate are the arcs likely to be?”
I think the best accuracy estimate comes from this Thales study:
https://bit.ly/4jmFsis
From this study, the 99% confidence level accuracy is +/- 5.4 nm. However, altitude uncertainty adds +/- 1.5 nm. So, call it +/- 7 nm. ( I haven’t checked, but I believe this is consistent with Victor’s estimate. To this one must add the post 7th arc descent profile. Given the BFO derived descent rate at 00:19:37 (~15,000 ft/min) and missing IFE login 89 seconds later, it is more than likely that MH370 is within +/-20nm of the nominal 7th arc. Of course, much of this area has been searched, so searching a little wider makes sense now.
Thanks for the info and responses re: ‘captain Peter Turner’. Curious that he seems to have used various aliases. I do however, enjoy the youtube format of the presentation.
I also came across another captain, Simon Hardy. He appears to be more credible, having worked closely with the ATSB in the early days of the search. He has 3 videos covering his methodology: https://www.youtube.com/@simonhardy4705
do these still hold up to this day? Have they been reviewed on this site? thank you
Armada 8605, now near (-35.2,93.4) has barely moved in the past 13 hours. I wonder what operation they are conducting. Perhaps the slow movement is a good sign.
@all
Yes, we see also that Armada 86 05 has been staying in a 0.4 Nm radius circle for basically 16 hours since 8:45 UTC and was still within at 00:32 UTC. We suspect ROV operations but, it is just an assumption.
https://www.mh370-caption.net/index.php/armada-tracking/
@Marijan
“A location closer to the 7th Arc does not contradict your work and proposed flight path…”
On the map we just gave the part of our recommended zone which was not covered. You can find preciser info on the zone and contingency area in our report. We assume that the previous searches were done properly. We are not in a position to evaluate anything 🙂 Armada is relatively “static” at 8Nm East of our recommended zone.
@370Location
” If the .kmz.gz file could instead be a .kmz file, it might be possible to turn it into a live network link within Google Earth Pro. The .kmz is internally a zip compressed .kml file, so no savings with the gzip compression…”
Unfortunately my web server host does not allow me to upload .kml or .kmz files…thus the trick of a .zip . Sorry for this, we do our best 🙂
@Victor
” … in the same bin as the CAPTION (CAPTIO, or whatever that group calls themselves) path reconstruction …”
I think you have been unfortunately misled, please let bring some clarity in. 🙂 Captain Blelly was not part of CAPTIO, I am the one who participated to both. CAPTIO worked on the starting hypothesis that a third party was involved and aimed to land. It stopped after elaborating the best trajectory under this working hypothesis.
“which also has an impact point that moved towards the proposal of others….”
No, right from the day of the disappearance, Captain Blelly has been working on the hypothesis of the pilot as the prime suspect aiming to get lost in the middle of the SIO. Later after my first group finished its work, I joined Captain Blelly and we created CAPTION to elaborate his findings deeper. No “move” towards others’ proposal, CAPTION always worked on the “suicidal pilot” hypothesis. I hope it is clearer. 🙂
“And those guys then have the gall to claim their work was copied.”
No, we just raised the question where the non-explained 70Nm extension came from. It appeared suddenly and came after your claim that the aircraft could not have been piloted and even less until the end, that the aircraft crashed at high speed close to the 7th arc and lost its flaperon due to fluter… we could not figure out how it could have flown these extra 70Nm by itself because it could not come from your analysis results showing no possible gliding. And suddenly you assume it glided which is in full contradiction of your analysis results ? ( CAPTION assumes much earlier that the pilot voluntarily stopped the second engine to save fuel for the APU and allow him to have all control surfaces functional during the gliding).
This was our point and still is actually. May I ask you if you would be so kind as to elaborate on the rational for this extension by 70Nm? If not piloted, how could the aircraft fly 70Nm alone with no fuel ? If piloted then your full analysis should be revised as you assumed it was not piloted and also what scenario during the gliding ? …with no fuel and thus with only two control surfaces : the right flaperon (thus it did not brake due to fluttering) and one elevator ?
I do hope you better capture our point 🙂 Cheers.
@Jean-Luc Marchand – CAPTION
Regards, “We suspect ROV operations but, it is just an assumption.”
I suspect that ROV operations might be somewhat challenging. In the high quality video of Armada 86 05 taken while bunkering in Fremantle, there was no sign of an ROV, nor the tether management system, and associated kilometres of tether required to operate one.
Maybe they’re onto a great fishing spot!
@Victor,
An notable 24 hours. I believe Armada 86 05 began an AUV launch procedure at 2026-01-04T0120, then tended that AUV during a 25km transit to the potential area of interest, arriving at 2026-01-04T0840. Within the area of interest, A86-05 has been tracking the AUV’s navigation with approx 200m line separation.
Each phase of the search, apart from the Jan-Mar 2025 mission, returned to specific areas to further investigate details revealed in the side scan imagery. I look forward to news of the investigation over this area of interest.
@J-LM, there are no ROVs onboard Armada 86 05. Unless you believe ROVs have been disguised as refrigration CCUs.
@Jean-Luc Marchand: Stop the bullshit. You (as part of CAPTIO) were proposing a POI near Christmas Island. Now you (as part of CAPTION) moved your POI close to UGIB 2020. That’s irrefutable.
As for the “unexplained 70 NM extension”, again your claims are not truthful. Look at the search area we proposed in Feb 2020 in Figure 4 under the article called “Search Recommendation for MH370’s Debris Field”. In fact, in that article, we consider three possibilities: 1) Unpiloted after fuel exhaustion 2) Controlled guide south 3) Glide in an arbitrary direction. Each of these scenarios has an associated search area, prioritized in that order.
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2020/02/01/search-recommendation-for-mh370s-debris-field/
Figure 4 shows a search area centered on UGIB 2020 with a radius of 140 NM!!! corresponding to the maximum glide distance. The 70-NM radius was actually a reduction (and not the extension that you falsely claim) based on estimates of energy loss from a steep descent prior to a glide and a less-than ideal glide speed.
As I’ve been saying now for over MANY years, we believe there is evidence that the plane impacted relatively close to the 7th arc, so begin the search there. However, the evidence is not bullet-proof. So, if not found close to the 7th arc, search outward, as a glide is possible.
If you continue to whine about how your work was copied when clearly you moved your POI from Christmas Island towards UGIB 2020, you’ll be banned. I have no patience for the drama you are creating based on your false statements and delusions.
@Victor, Don, et Jean-Luc,
RE: “has barely moved in the past 13 hours”:
I was previously more interested in the “constellation” formed by the tracks of the mother ship approximately 30 km nor-nor-east, roughly at a bearing of 10 degrees.
In that case the mother ship had moved away from the region and then turned back and proceeded at close to cruise speed for about two hours before resuming limited range movements for the next 14 to 15 hours or so, including the first half of the 2nd January, Zulu time.
@George G
George, if you were interested in that, you’d have to be fascinated by this.
Just over 21 hours now of loitering in a 1 km² area.
Well, if they find MH370 there I shall have to eat my laptop.
According to the latest status report provided by MH370 Families, operations suspended due to weather. The loitering would appear to be them just trying to ride the conditions out.
Of course, it’s also possible that it’s simply a coincidence that the crew chose to stand-off Armada 86 05, during unfavourable weather, over an area where this phase of the search began on Dec 30th-31st.
@Don Thompson: Pausing launching/recovery operations and also loitering during a mission to further investigate an interesting contact are not mutually exclusive. We’ll know soon enough what’s going on.
@all
The Armada 86 05 remained within a one-nautical-mile radius for over 32 hours (from 8:43 UTC yesterday, January 4, until 17:08 UTC today). It is still there, maneuvering at very low speed (approximately 0.1/0.2 knots on average).
@Don Thompson
The photos published by Airlines News show two white boxes on board the ship, each under a crane. Their size (compared to that of two crew members nearby on the tanker moored alongside the Armada 86 05) corresponds well to the dimensions (1.8 m x 1.9 m x 2.85 m) of the Saab Seaeye SR20, for which Ocean Infinity is the known customer. Above and below the top of the cranes, the orange cylinders appear to be the cable/tether wheels.
I’d be surprised if OI didn’t bring ROVs (1 + 1 spare) to immediately inspect sites of interest if needed. Otherwise, they’d have to make multiple trips to Perth and lose at least 10 days, not to mention the associated costs.
Otherwise, it would mean they’re convinced from the outset that they won’t find anything 🙂
Happy New Year to you all,
Just to say that the area that Armada 86 05 is currently located appears to have been previously searched by Armada 78 06.
Maybe the reason for loitering is genuinely due to weather?
Correction :
@Don Thompson
My mistake, sorry. You are right, the white boxes are cooling containers. I could get hold of a picture of Long Teng Industrial items at
https://www.longtengindustrial.com/reefer-container/10ft-carrier-cooling-units-reefer-container.html and a better Airlines News image. They look alike.
Their dimensions are close : 2991x 2438 x 2591 mm…
So maybe they are in the two blue comntainers at the rear just in front of the Hugins boxes…
@PaulS
Wake me up before you swallow it. I am expecting numerous “hopeful” moments but I am trying to be immune to that. It’s just amazing with the complete secrecy and lack of transparency over the last 2 years or so, the mass media and others somehow derive we are close to the wreck now. If my short-term memory serves Geof Thomas had the ROV’s out on sea floor in today’s episode.
@Godfrey Jack said: Maybe the reason for loitering is genuinely due to weather?
That’s the most likely explanation, but who knows?
@TBill: You just dashed my hopes! That crew consistently gets everything wrong.
Addendum:
@Don Thompson
Second thought : The cooling containers might be keeping the ROVs in a fresh, controlled environment… as their internal volume is 2390x2294x2165 mm3 which could be able to host a folded ROV.
(I would find very strange that their strategy would be 1) find and 2) go back and retrieve pieces if required)
Why not speculate ?
I wonder where three little, or not so little, blind, certainly not so blind, mice are whilst the surface ship is riding out rough surface conditions ?
What I found strange was how armada headed straight to a specific spot to wait out the bad weather. Why not just stay where it already was?
I’ve been tracking the Armada since its arrival and have come to wonder a number of things. Thanks in advance to those willing to take a moment to help with my questions:
1- how far away are the underwater drones operating from the ship itself?
2- could one say that the Armada’s location does not accurately depict where they are scanning?
3- the drones are operating in 72hr cycles. How can we track when those cycles begin and end?
4- it is my understanding that the drones can not live time transmit data back to the ship. Please correct me if I’m wrong. If correct then couldn’t one say that we would get an update on its progress only once every 72 hours?
5- @ChrisV3141 you mentioned that it’s more than likely the engine and landing gear could be the only large pieces to be made out and the rest broken into little pieces. This is the first I think I’ve ever read about the sizes of debris one can expect to find. Air France 447 apparently had large pieces of the fuselage in tack. Any additional thoughts?
6- I am still trying to wrap my head around the “55 days” of search. Is it 55 days of on site search? If the weather holds up could they search for more than 55 days?
7- What happens if after 55 days we are all still in the dark about not finding the plane and what happened?
8- Is there a typographical map of the current search areas?
9- Wasn’t there talk of a spreadsheet that had a running list of locations where people thought the plane would be found? If not, could it be revisited? And perhaps if there are any concerns about copying work it could be kept anonymous?
I’ve been glued to this site for the past decade. I appreciate all the bright minds who repeatedly chime in on their technical analysis – of which I have no skill in that area. I extend my thanks to those that occasionally veer off into laments terms.
Cheers everyone.
Victor, you’re confusing CAPTIO and CAPTION.
CAPTIO was initiated by Michel Delarche and Jean-Marc Garrot, and Jean-Luc joined them before distancing himself from their theory. If he had chosen a name less similar to CAPTIO, it would have been less confusing.
I’ve followed all your work, and yes, you mentioned these three possibilities, but in 2020. Before that, you never considered the piloted gliding hypothesis truly credible. Even today, you only hint at it. Perhaps to say later: “We told you so.”
Yes, but it’s so timid…
As you say, you favor a crash site near the 7th arc, but the area suggesting this was largely explored during the previous OCEAN INFINITY campaign. So you considered looking further south now, but I remind you, also further north, inside the arc.
For me, looking inside the arc is incomprehensible. Even though I’ve read your studies on this point in detail. I don’t share this opinion, but it remains a personal position.
I remind you that your latest version of the recommended area didn’t initially include CAPTION’s, and this was done without any rational explanation, other than to reiterate CAPTION’s arguments without publicly acknowledging it. It’s because some members of the IG must have considered this area technically viable, I suppose. Whether you accept this or not… that’s not the point.
Regarding the 70 NM glide, you’d have to explain to me how a 777 can glide for 70 NM and be subjected to stresses that cause flaperon flutter to the point of it breaking off.
Let’s be logical: if the flaperon was subjected to such stresses, it means the aircraft entered a high-speed dive, and it would never have glided for 70 NM. Never.
Furthermore, the right flaperon is the only flaperon powered by the RAT in the event of a total engine failure. Therefore, it has sufficient hydraulic pressure to prevent flutter.
So, I don’t buy the idea of a 70 NM glide with a broken right flaperon, sorry.
I don’t think JL is creating a drama with his comments. He’s clarifying his technical opinions and even correcting your statements on CAPTION/CAPTIO.
Season greetings to everyone!
I discovered this place a few years ago and have read every post and comment since the beginning … all due respect to Mr. Ianello who manages to keep this place at a high level of credibility … It’s honest to say that my only “expertise” is a love of popular physics and almost 30 years of experience in free flying …
I will still venture one comment…
Without ROV equipment on board, this whole mission seems pointless to me, does that mean that if debris field is found, it can take 10 plus days at least until it is investigated? And if I understand correctly that the home port is Singapore, that it can be months? Or if something is found, say on the 53rd day of the mission, and A 86-05 has to depart on a previously contracted task, what happens then…
It simply doesn’t make sense to me that the most important underwater discovery since the Titanic (and certainly more important in scientific terms) would be left on the seabed for who knows how long… please understand my doubts and excuse the long post.
@Theo
I am neither a meteorologist nor do I have nautical education, but the area 8605 resides in for the last 34 hours is further away from some weird-looking channel-like cloud formation / weather phenomenon which extends over a large path of the SIO than the previous slowdown points.If you switch to wind map on the links below, one further can see that the wind blows in a different direction inside this phenomena.
Weather satellite recording from last tracked slowdown point before moving to the current area: https://zoom.earth/maps/satellite/#view=-36.22,99.84,5.93z/place=-35.419,93.858/date=2026-01-04,06:00,+6
Same recording but with the first tracked slowdown point in the area the ship currently resides: https://zoom.earth/maps/satellite/#view=-33.62,103.08,5.16z/place=-35.499,93.597/date=2026-01-04,06:00,+6
Given that the ship currently rides out bad weather, maybe they wanted to be further away from this phenomena?
@Vlad.BG: The AUVs are capable of low passes over a debris field and acquiring high resolution imagery. An ROV can also retrieve parts, but that isn’t required for OI to identify the debris field.
@Gilles Diharce: I know that CAPTIO blew up as members have privately written to me out of concern that some of my observations were directed at them. (They are not.) However, J-L Marchand was a vocal member of CAPTIO and is now a vocal member of CAPTION, and he and Blelly are the ones accusing me and others of copying their work, which is batshit crazy.
First, you must understand the difference between a priority zone and a search recommendation. That seems to be lost on you. If you truly have been following what I’ve been saying for MANY years, it’s that anybody that assigns a high probability to any small area or to any single scenario, they are fooling themselves. My search recommendations are meant to be just that: a suggestion to Ocean Infinity where to search if the plane is not found in the areas I deem the most probable (i.e., the highest priority). I make the distinction between most probable (and therefore worthy of the highest priority during a search) and probable. My uncertainty includes whether the plane was controlled by a pilot after fuel exhaustion. I believe there is a higher relative probability that it was NOT controlled, but I never suggested to Ocean Infinity that they only search areas close to the arc. That’s why the search areas that Bobby Ulich and I have recommended have the priority levels they do. Ocean Infinity seems to agree, as that seems to be their search strategy.
Here’s an email I sent to Marchand last year politely asking him to knock off the bullshit of saying we are copying their work:
***
From: Victor Iannello
Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2024 10:54 AM
To: Jean-Luc Marchand
Subject: False Claims
Jean-Luc,
I hope all is well.
It has come to my attention that Patrick Blelly is accusing the IG of changing its predictions of the POI for MH370 based on his work predicting a glide after fuel exhaustion. This is a crazy accusation. Even before we published the UGIB 2020 analysis with search recommendations, we defined an area that included a possibility of a glide. For instance, this figure is from a blog article from February 2020
[Figure 7 from https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2020/02/01/search-recommendation-for-mh370s-debris-field/ ]
From that blog article: To define the search area near the LEP, three cases were considered, each with an associated search area. The highest priority search area, A1, of 6,719 NM2 (23,050 km2), assumes there were no pilot inputs after fuel exhaustion. The search area of next highest priority, A2, encompasses 6,300 NM2 (22,000 km2), and assumes there was a glide towards the south after fuel exhaustion. The lowest priority, A3, is the controlled glide in an arbitrary direction with an area of around 48,400 NM2 (166,000 km2).
Our recommendation has been to first complete the search close to the 7th arc in areas that were missed due to equipment issues or challenging terrain. If the debris field is not found, search wide of the arc, first starting on an area south of our predicted crossing at S34.2342° E93.7875°, but expanding that to include the possibility of a longer glide.
If somebody asks me to define a small area for a search, I point them to this article, which includes about 30.5 km2 of seabed surrounding S34.53° E93.84° that was never scanned. But this is a recommendation, not a prediction. Anybody that believes that they can predict the location of the POI with high certainty is fooling themselves and fooling others. That’s why any search prediction has to include uncertainty analyses and broader areas to search.
[Fourth figure from https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2023/02/11/a-high-priority-area-to-search-for-mh370/ ]
As you might imagine, I don’t like being accused of something that is false. I assure you that any of our recommendations were made independent of any work by either you, Patrick Blelly, CAPTIO, CAPTION, or any related person or entity.
Regards,
Victor
***
As far as I know, Blelly published his book in March 2022 and the flight reconstruction with Marchand in February 2023. That means their work was published years AFTER we made search recommendations, both publicly and privately. At the time that we published our search recommendations, Marchand and the rest of CAPTIO was suggesting we search near Christmas Island. Then 3 years later, Marchand changes his POI from Christmas Island to a path that resembles UGIB 2020 and falls within our recommended search area, with the ludicrous claim that we copied them. I can’t state strongly enough how delusional this is.
If you disagree, and wish to continue the drama, please take it elsewhere. The historical record, including private discussions we’ve had with Ocean Infinity, speak for themselves.
@Theo
You asked: “[Simon Hardy] has 3 videos covering his methodology…do these still hold up to this day? Have they been reviewed on this site?”
I believe Hardy proposed two crash sites. As I recall, the first location was examined towards the end of the ATSB’s search, without result. The second remains unsearched. There was some discussion about Hardy’s work; I understand the second crash site was ruled out by both the drift modelling and fuel modelling.
Hardy also made comments about last minute additions to the aircraft’s fuel and oxygen loads, claiming they were evidence of foul play. Those claims were reviewed and I strongly believe they are wrong. My thoughts on those claims start here: https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2025/03/31/update-on-the-search-for-mh370/#comment-39135
@Theo
Regarding Captain Harry’s three videos, I can recall that when I first watched them some years back I was struck by the fact that he uses a constant ground speed across the whole flight route.
There are many things that we don’t know about MH370’s flight into the Southern Indian Ocean, but one thing that I think that we can be assured of is that it did not fly at a constant ground speed for 4-5 hours as it passed through a variety of weather conditions.
I would credit Simon Hardy’s videos as teaching me how to start doing flight paths. By the time I belatedly got started say 2017, the 38-40s search was looking wrong based on the Bayesian principles more popularly cited back then, and I was very much influenced by Victor/Richard’s papers about more northerly theories. Hardy’s path very helpful I never gravitated to actually use Hardy’s path. I did move back westerly over as far as to 180s, which I still see as how it probably started from ~ISBIX.
@all
Armada 86 05 has left the small 1 Nm zone at [-35.49;93.59] and is now en route at [-35.12;93.73] which is close to where she was on 3 January.
Excuse my lack of technical expertise, but I have a question about the final glide (assuming the plane reached fuel exhaustion at the 7th arc and glided).
When we talk about this glide, is this simply a gentle, steady glide into the ocean? or would the plane glide in a ‘phugoid’ pattern? (ie. where the plane naturally descends, picks up speed, then naturally climbs again). And would a gradual glide vs phugoid glide produce very different max. glide distances? I think 70nm is the current extent for the glide, but I’m not sure what ‘type’ of gliding this is.
Ah yes, the old ROV in the refrigerator trick … the second time I’ve fallen for that since Christmas.
re: ROVs, here is the best resolution photo I could find of Armada 82 05 refuelling in Freemantle, Dec ’25.
https://berqwp-cdn.sfo3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/cache/42kft.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Armada-86-05-23122025-03-1024×767-jpg.webp?bwp
I’m no expert, and hate to speculate when someone else here probably knows, but there appears to be 2 crane/gantry systems with orange lifting devices(?). The white containers under each one have a logo on the side I can’t make out.
Here is a video from the same moment, timestamped to a close-up fly-by of the ship: https://youtu.be/mrCbP2f3eSc?si=NIngWze-9SGTTMpB&t=223
@Mick Gilbert: ROV = Refrigerated Orange Vehicle?
@Gilles Diharce
The three search areas recommended in the UGIB paper are depicted in the following diagram as A1, A2 and A3, in that order of priority. CAPTION’s recommended search area is overlaid in orange.
UGIB vs CAPTION Recommended Search Areas
UGIB was published in February 2020, three years before CAPTION published their own recommendations. The notion that expanded search area recommendations were only made after CAPTION published their study is categorically wrong.
@Theo
You asked: “When we talk about this glide, is this simply a gentle, steady glide into the ocean? or would the plane glide in a ‘phugoid’ pattern…And would a gradual glide vs phugoid glide produce very different max. glide distances?”
Theoretically, the maximum gliding range of a B777-200ER is 0.0034 NM per foot of altitude, per Boeing’s performance analysis in Appendix 1.6E the MH370 Safety Investigation Report (SIR). Accordingly, the maximum gliding range from FL410 is about 139 NM, if there were manual control inputs to maintain wings level flight and the optimum glide speed during the descent. That theoretical figure is the upper limit on the gliding distance. A maximum gliding distance of 140 NM was used in UGIB to define the outer limit of the recommended search areas for the glide descent scenarios.
In practice, the gliding distance is likely to be much less than the theoretical figure:
– If the descent was unpiloted, the aircraft is likely to have entered a spiral descent, with or without a phugoid oscillation. The simulations that Boeing describes in the SIR were contained within a 10 NM x 10 NM box that extended beyond the point of fuel exhaustion. Some of those simulations exhibited a phugoid oscillation, some did not.
– If the descent was piloted, there are many conditions that would have significantly reduced the gliding distance. Those conditions include drag from the windmilling engines, sub-optimal gliding speed and less than ideal atmospheric conditions. The Ulich-Iannello drift paper concluded that it is highly probable the aircraft crashed within a 70 NM zone in the event of a piloted glide descent, but also noted that a 140 NM boundary is almost 100% certain to contain the crash site.
@Theo
I agree with Andrew completely except I would add for certain “curved” paths there is opportunity to take an active-pilot glide/descent before Arc6. Now you save some fuel at Arc7 but still 140nm distance might be hard to exceed because fuel efficiency is lousy at lower alt.
I would like to remind the glide enthusiasts that even if you completely dismiss the BFO data, you still have to deal with the missing IFE login 89 seconds after the 7th arc. That missing IFE login strongly suggests the plane was either: (1) in the water before 00:21:06 or upside down at 00:21:06. Either way, it can’t be far from the 7th arc. For reference, that’s about 14 nm at 550kts for 89 seconds.
ROVs, the (actual) absence of.
@J-LM Monsieur, monsieur, s’il vous plaît
No ROVs have been mobilised on Armada 86 05.
J-LM suggests that Armada 86 05 may be carrying an ROV stored in one of the 20ft CCUs just forward of the AUV ‘garages’ at the stern of the vessel. This is a preposterous suggestion, a) that an ROV is stored in one of the two CCUs fixed just forward of the AUV ‘garages’, or b) that an ROV stored in one of these ROVs could be manoeuvred across the deck. Viewing the still and video images captured Fremantle, Cockburn Sound-ORAN it is obvious that no safe method could possibly exist to manoeuvre, while at sea, an HD WROV from inside one of these CCUs to a position where it could be integrated with one or other Seaonics LARS.
The best quality images, as per Theo above, show that 10ft refrigerated/‘reefer’ CCUs were fixed to and lashed down on the moonpool hatch under each Seaonics LARS rig. While these CCUs have been confirmed as refrigeration units (likely source here), various parties perpetuate a false narrative, associating that Armada 86 05 is carrying ROVs.
This ‘ROV’ narrative doesn’t add anything to A86 05’s present mission. With its Hugin AUVs, the vessel has the capability to image the seafloor, identify targets of interest, and revisit any likely targets for detailed imaging using side-scan sonar and an AUV’s high definition visible spectrum camera.
Considering the topic of ROVs in more detail: a heavy duty, work class ROV would be necessary to operate at any possible 7th arc depths, a maximum of 6000m. Ocean Infinity operates two such ROVs on the Armada fleet at present: one on Armada 78 01 and one on Armada 78 06. Both vessels are actively engaged on subsea infrastructure inspection projects in the North Sea. A third HD WROV is being mobilised onto A86 03 which is presently in port at Blyth, UK. Each of these WROVs is deployed with a ‘top-hat’ Tether Management System (TMS). The all-up weight of a HD WROV & TMS is in the order of 7.5t, moving that on deck is not a trivial task.
Further, it has been suggested that the purported hidden ROV may be a Saab SR20 eWROV. While Ocean Infinity has been announced as the Saab SR20’s launch customer, the SR20 has yet to be seen mobilised on any Armada vessel. To date, different types of ROVs have been mobilised on Armada vessels: Schilling HD WROVs, Kystdesign Supporter, Saab Seaeye Cougar, Saab Seaeye Panther, and Saab Seaeye Leopards on A78-02, -07, and -08. But the Saab SR20 has yet to be seen ‘in the field’, Armada 86 03 and 04 may ultimately be the vessels that see mobilisation of the SR20 for a project requirement yet to be delivered.
The ‘orange’ components in the Seaonics LARS are the system’s cursor beam and payload attachment. The cursor beam holds the payload rigidly in place within the LARS mechanism. The beam translates on vertical rails downward through the moonpool where, clear of the vessel, the payload is released from the cursor beam and ‘traditional’ winched umbilical handling takes over. In reverse, the payload is winched up to mate with the lowered cursor beam, the mated assembly is then raised with the payload through the moonpool. The moonpool deck hatches close under the payload permitting the payload to be lowered to the deck hatch and, if necessary, be skidded off to the starboard side.
@Theo
G’day Theo, thank you for the image and video. As Don has pointed out a number of times now, the items on the deck under the gantries are refrigerated containers (https://cargostore.com/10ft-refrigerated-container/).
If an ROV was embarked, then the associated tether (about 7-8 kilometres worth) and the tether management system (TMS) would also need to be carried; you can’t RO the V unless it is connected by tether back to the host vessel. Neither of those critical components are in evidence on deck.
You might treat this discussion as a microcosm for the broader dysfunction generated by a few, let’s just call them “other-than-good actors”, who propagate mis- and disinformation through the MH370 community.
@Andrew, you said “a 140 NM boundary is almost 100% certain to contain the crash site.” That is only true if you have identified the correct segment of 7th arc.
@Mike’s remark immediately below provides yet more evidence that this is NOT the correct segment of arc, because the wreckage has not been found within the zone already searched 30NM either side of the arc.
As several have pointed out (including UGIB lead author), a piloted glide at this latitude is ruled out by fuel endurance => bleed air off. And an unpiloted glide with no power and disengaged AP can’t go far. If that weren’t enough, we also have the final BFOs and the incomplete login.
I cannot see any logical basis for prioritising this search area.
@Paul Smithson: This search will more or less cover the scenarios in which MH370 crossed the 7th arc between latitudes 35S and 33S, irrespective of whether the aircraft was piloted at fuel exhaustion. I am less certain than some of my colleagues on this point (unpiloted at fuel exhaustion), although I do believe that the areas closer to the 7th arc should be prioritized for the reasons you mention. If the search fails, we can eliminate these latitudes from further consideration and move to other areas. You are advocating move to the south. Ed to the north. We’ll have that discussion if nothing is found. I don’t agree that there is no logical basis for the current search. It’s part of a logical progression of eliminating areas with the understanding that there is uncertainty in our best models.
@Victor Iannello
The current search extends to about 50 nm from the 7th arc (95 km according to the coordinates from the Caption tracking site), and I think it’s unlikely they will search further. To properly cover the glide scenario in this latitude region, shouldn’t it require more like 70-100 nm at least? I’m not saying that the current search is insignificant when it comes to the glide scenario, but it seems very far from exhaustive.
@Paul Smithson
My comment was an answer to @Theo’s question about the nature of the glide descents mentioned in various discussions. It was not intended to favour piloted descents over unpiloted descents. The “almost 100% certain” comment was mentioned in the context of the Ulich-Iannello search area proposal. It was not intended to imply anything about their identification of the crash latitude.
Judging by the geographical coincidence between the current search area and the DSTG’s pdf, another interpretation would be that OI have taken the UGIB/First Principles guide on best latitude and are searching out to the 99% probability contour. See here.
For information, the zone that I advocate (brown circle at the at the SW end) lies pretty much on the 95% contour according to this pdf. Moreover, its the only bit of 95% contour close to the arc that remains unsearched.
If the pdf were redrawn by BTO probability rather than BTO+BFO, it would be obvious that my recommended hotspot actually sits near peak probability – not out at the margins.
@Paul Smithson,
on January 6, 2026 at 6:45 pm, you advocate a “brown” circle as a search region of interest.
Please be assured that I am not in the position of “eating my laptop”.
But:
1. Would you please remind me, or us, how the aircraft had fuel still to consume until the time [I will accept 00:17:30 on the 8th March 2014] and distance it had to reach your brown circle.
2. As my memory, own data searching capabilities, may be deteriorating, would you also please kindly plot your estimated aircraft positions at the time of all four “Arcs”, or handshakes. A simple set of additions to an expanded version of your existing simple chart should suffice.
Sincerely, George G.
Woops ! Apologies ! … of all seven (7) “Arcs”, or handshakes
To illustrate my previous post, see here a plot of the probability distribution along the 7th arc using BTO+BFO (which is what was used for the final pdf and the definition of the search area) and compared to the probability distribution derived from BTO only.
As you’ll see, the southern extent of the search zone at 39.5S and the 95% confidence contour on my previous link correspond with the outer tail of the BTO+BFO pdf, as you’d expect. However, primary peak of probability distribution using BTO only falls at 39.3S. So the search stopped pretty close to BTO peak-probability zone, and left a bunch of the BTO pdf unsearched.
My research found a BTO pdf that replicated the primary peak around 39.2S but didn’t extend beyond 40S (DSTG’s only did because it was initialised at 1802 and permitted a small number of paths to turn too early, before Arc 1).
@eukaryote: You can see in the figure at the top of the article that the 70-NM glide limit extends past the proposed search area, so you are correct that the search is not as exhaustive as I implied.
@All: The figure at the top of the article was updated to show the further progression of the search. The AUVs are now searching due south of the areas we designated as the UGIB 2020 Last Estimated Position (LEP) and the High Priority Search Area (HPSA).
@Jean-Luc Marchand – CAPTION
It’s a real pity that in your work you opted for the controlled end-of-flight scenario which in turn favored locations further from the 7th Arc. I guess it is a bit too late now. In the case you did, we would probably have area along your proposed route re-scanned during this search, similar as IG’s.
@Victor Iannello
It is also a shame the the area between 35°S and 36°S, 25NM from the 7th Arc will not be re-searched, at least not for now, but it is what it is.
@Victor Iannello and @airlandseaman
Thank you for your responses to my question reguarding the accurracy of the arcs. Your answers were exactly what I was looking for.
@JJP17
AF447 hit the water somewhat level at a speed of 152 knots. With a vertical speed of 108 knots and horizontal speed of 107 knots. MH370 is believed to have impacted the water in an attitude closer to nose down vertical with a speed close to Mach 1.0. Crashes on land under similar circumstances tend to produce few large pieces.
Egypt Air 990 might be a better analogy. In this case the aircraft impacted the water at high speed after having shed its left engine and some other pieces (possibly due to maneuvering). In that case, the crash resulted in many small pieces of wreckage but with some larger pieces of recognizable fuselage.
@George G. I you have a look through historic posts you will find ample material about my path analytics and reasoning including individual arc crossing positions, BTORs etc.
The route proposed is MEKAR-SANOB-IGEBO-RUNUT-4085S at FL360, M0.84
This produces excellent match to the BTO data and sits close to the narrow swathe of path optima that is predicted by BTO optimisation.
The path is fuel feasible if you assume bleed air savings of 3% plus ram air door 0.4% plus electrical load saving of 0.8%. You’ll also see in previous posts some justification for these numbers.
The “hotspot” that I have plotted is the intercept of this path with 7th arc at 20,000ft, with a 15NM range ring.
@Paul Smithson
What are your fuel remaining figures at:
MEKAR =
SANOB =
IGEBO =
RUNUT =
4085S =
@ventus45,
It doesn’t make it to “4085S”. That was Paul’s next waypoint, as I read it.
@George G
Yes, on closer reading you are correct.
I now place Paul’s Arc 7 crossing at approximately 392400S0851135E
I am trying to better understand several aspects of the 18:25 SATCOM logon event and would appreciate clarification on the following points.
Question 1 – Warm vs Cold Logon Behavior
My understanding is that if the aircraft’s SATCOM terminal has been unpowered for a sufficiently long period (likely more than ~48 minutes), a subsequent power-up would normally result in a cold logon. In such a case, the terminal would be expected to transmit both the Flight ID (e.g., MH000, MH370) and the aircraft registration (e.g., 9M-MRO).
However, the 18:25 logon appears to have been a warm logon, in which these parameters were not transmitted.
To date, I have not seen a clearly stated technical explanation for why a warm logon occurred instead of a cold logon under these circumstances. Is this understanding correct? If not, what technical mechanism or system behavior could explain why a cold logon did not occur following the apparent power interruption?
Question 2 – Extended Logon Response Time
Under normal conditions, the aircraft SATCOM terminal typically responds to the ground station within approximately two seconds during the logon process. In the case of the 18:25 event, the response time appears to have been roughly an order of magnitude longer than normal.
I am not aware of a published technical explanation for this unusually long response time, particularly given that after the 18:25 re-power event the SATCOM system appeared to operate normally.
Is this understanding correct? If not, what technical factors could plausibly account for the extended response time during the 18:25 logon?
Question 3 – SITA Log Data
To help further characterize the 18:25 logon event, the SITA logs may provide additional insight. For example, do the SITA records show a logon event from MH370 at or around 18:25?
As part of the MH370 SATCOM analysis, were the SITA logs examined, and if so, what information—if any—do they provide regarding the 18:25 logon?
Gents, stand by and I’ll post a 1-pager version of my path hypothesis this evening that will convey the key info.
With regards my prior 3 questions I should have mentioned if I could possibly gets Victors take on it.
@Paul Smithson,
Please include the time that you estimate the aircraft passed Waypoint MEKAR.
@George. This isn’t germane to my approach because all I assume is a) that the aircraft was on Arc 1 at 18:28:15 (BTO=12480); b) that it was somewhere in vicinity of N571. My modelling tested for sensitivity of the BTO-predicted path across a wide range of model initiation assumptions including:
– timing/BTO error at Arc 1
– lateral offset +/- 12NM from N571
– track +/- 10 degrees from N571 (295)
– speed 460, 480, 500kt groundspeed
– altitudes FL340, FL350, FL360 [higher predicts M>0.84 so not viable]
In practice, the BTO-optimised paths change very little across this span of possible “priors”, producing a zone of optima 38.6 – 39.7 [all scenarios].
Beyond the “optimum zone” there is a confidence interval (CI) of diminishing probability. At the northern end, this CI overlaps with the area already searched – so can be discounted. At the southern extreme, the CI is truncated (about 40.0S max) by the condition that speed cannot exceed M0.84 and altitude [I assume] cannot be lower than FL350.
@Michael Collins:
If you want to understand some of insights we have gained from the Inmarsat data, including the log-on at 18:25, you should start by reading these two articles from 2017:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/06/12/the-unredacted-inmarsat-satellite-data-for-mh370/
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/07/04/some-insights-from-the-unredacted-satellite-logs/
It might be better to ask your questions after digesting this material.
@MICHAEL COLLINS
Please refer to the report in which I detail, in simple terms, the analysis of the SITA logs and, more specifically, the sequence logic of Inmarsat’s LIDU, ISU, and SSU. You will find the answers to most of your questions.
At 18:25:27 UTC, the connection was of type 1 (1F) to the IOR satellite (the same type as the very first connection on the tarmac at 12:50:19 UTC, but to the POR satellite). Type 1F corresponds to a login request in the absence of flight information available to the Satellite Data Unit (SDU). Consequently, the information present at takeoff has disappeared since the previous request for login at 15:59:55 UTC was of Type 2 (2F+3F) i.e. with available flight info which appears in following messages afer take-off.
CAPTION demonstrated that the only way to clear flight information in flight is to perform a data communication reset in the FMS, via a manual keystrokes sequence through successive pages and menus.
The conclusion is that, between the restoration of power and the connection request, someone manually erased the flight information (probably to ensure that it would not be operationally recognized).
By correlation, this proves that someone was alive and in control of the aircraft at 18:25 UTC.
The very educative report is here:
https://www.mh370-caption.net/wp-content/uploads/MH370-CAPTION-Annex1-RAT-Deployed-Scenario.pdf
Have a good reading 🙂
@Marijan
You wrote:”It is also a shame the the area between 35°S and 36°S, 25NM from the 7th Arc will not be re-searched, at least not for now, but it is what it is.”
I agree with you.
Back in 2018 part of the OI search was inspired on the drift modelling that David Griffin had carried out based on the “Pleiades” satellite images showing clusters of floating objects. The areas considered at the time were outside the 20 nm distance from 7th arc if I remember well (four “boxes”), see:
https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-02/mh370_csiro-ocean-drift-iiil.pdf
In May 2018, I had an exchange with David Griffin as I noticed that the coverage close to the 7th arc was not optimal in the S35.0 – S36.0 range. And I had my doubts when OI started moving far north. David indicated that S35.5 would be the approximate latitude if the debris originated from close to the arc. I actually wrote an email to OI.
It seems that the policy is to strongly rely on the results / coverage rates reported from previous scans. Which I do not want to criticize, given the lack of detailed insights that we have in all the scan data.
But for me a key point is that S35.5 near the 7th arc is the one of few latitudes for which there is an independent extra “clue”. And it is within the high probability latitude range indicated by satellite and fuel models. Plus the area has a somewhat lower sonar coverage percentage. And I feel that the evidence for a crash near the 7th arc (steep uncontrolled dive) is still standing strong.
@Jean-Luc said good point:
“The conclusion is that, between the restoration of power and the connection request, someone manually erased the flight information (probably to ensure that it would not be operationally recognized).
By correlation, this proves that someone was alive and in control of the aircraft at 18:25 UTC.”
Let me paraphrase:
Approx. 1-hr after the MH370 diversion at IGARI at 17:21, after the aircraft has already flown around Penang and is now heading up the Malacca Straits beyond Pulau Perak island and beyond waypoint VAMPI, the SATCOM then repowers at 18:25 with flight no. has apparently been manually deleted, presumably for stealth reasons. Also the ACARS text message and data logging every 30-mins has been switched off.
Therefore the implication of nefarious deliberate flight to 1825 point is strong:
(1) Controlled flight path around Penang up the Straits via VAMPI
(2) Re-power of SATCOM at 18:25
(3) Apparent Manual Deletion of SATCOM ACARS data ops/Flight No.
(4) Between 1825 and 1840 SATCOM BFO/BTO data dump shows maneuvers in progress
(5) No attempt to land at Penang despite relatively empty fuel tanks (close enough to acceptable landing weight)
above list is post-IGARI. At IGARI there is another list includes apparent Xponder deliberate outage (we now see that “smoking” gun from ADSB data) and no expectation of a immediate UTurn as proper commercial aviation procedure in any emergency scenario.
@TBill
One can be more precise and conclusive on some points you “paraphrase” 🙂
“…flight no. has APPARENTLY been manually deleted…” :
The flight number was missing, that’s a fact. In flight, there’s no other way to delete it than by manually resetting the COM. These elements, taken together, unequivocally prove that it was intentionally deleted by a human. There’s no other way to do it, and there’s no longer any doubt.
“…list includes apparent Xponder deliberate outage…” :
If you consult our latest data report on the ACT-Caption-2025 data (which is now the reference), you’ll find proof that the Xponder was manually switched to Std-by. There was no outage, as the other systems were functioning perfectly and the NUCp monitoring parameter reported a level at 7, i.e., in high-precision navigation mode (GPS). So there was no outage, but simply a manual rotation of the Xponder knob to Std-by. This is now a proven fact (it was previously only a supposition).
These proven facts are actually a solid ground.
“…Also the ACARS text message and data logging every 30-mins has been switched off…” :
It is less certain that ACARS was switched off per say. Here, the term “outage” would probably almost be appropriate. 🙂 The restoration of power to the left bus just before 18:25 UTC means that the power had been cut beforehand. We can assume (and Caption does) that, for the effectiveness of the hijacking, all power was abruptly cut just before the descent after IGARI (see our latest report on the vertical profile), thus causing a sudden stop of all active “transmitting” systems (IFE) and communication systems in particular. This is easy to do from the cockpit and could be very sudden. This would mean that the RAT only provided the electrical power (more than enough to allow an experienced pilot to fly, knowing that full hydraulic power was still being supplied by the engines).
Niels: Back in July 2021, I was confidentially informed that in addition to the Pleiades 1A images showing what could be debris from MH370 on March 23, 2014, the Italian satellite COSMO-SkyMed also detected what could be debris from MH370 on March 21, some two days earlier. The distance between the contacts in the images was some 35 NM.
I performed a “reverse-drift” analysis using the CSIRO drift results for the debris detected by both satellites, and determined that they appear to backtrack to the same position on March 8, 2014, at 35.4°S, 92.8°E, which is very close to CSIRO’s estimate of 35.6°S, 92.8°E using only the Pleiades data.
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2021/07/23/italian-satellite-may-have-detected-mh370-floating-debris/
If anyone can share the source data with me that is/was being used to prove or disprove the efficacy of WSPR, I’d love to get my hands on it, so that I can have a go myself. I have an agentic coding tool that I wrote that’s very good at things like this, and it would be both an excellent test, and potentially have a very important outcome one way or the other. Hit me up at robmoss2k at gmail dot com.
@Rob Moss:
There are MANY reasons why WSPR tracking is pure hogwash. Here is an article which shows how the physics behind radar disallow it by many orders of magnitude. In that article, I also reference the work of others, including Steve Kent (@sk999).
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2021/12/19/wspr-cant-find-mh370/
If you are looking for WSPR data, you can directly query the WSPR archive, which is available online in several formats.
@Victor
“… the Italian satellite COSMO-SkyMed also detected what could be debris from MH370 on March 21, some two days earlier. ..”
Thanks for reminding to the article. That’s indeed a relevant reference and addition. Is it correct that S35.6, E92.8 was included in the 2018 OI search and S35.4, E92.8 was not?
Hi Victor,
You mentioned it may be helpful to consider these questions after fully digesting the following material:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/06/12/the-unredacted-inmarsat-satellite-data-for-mh370/
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/07/04/some-insights-from-the-unredacted-satellite-logs/
I have already reviewed both articles (thank you for sharing them). However, this is the type of technical material that benefits from multiple readings, so I have downloaded it for further, more detailed re-analysis.
After an initial review of the above, including a word search across both articles and their associated comments (523 comments on the first article and 688 on the second), I note that the term SITA appears approximately ten times. In all instances I could find, the references appear to relate to the company itself rather than to the SITA logs.
At this stage, focusing specifically on my third question—namely whether the SITA logs might provide clues relating to the 18:25 login—could you please clarify whether the IG, when analysing the Inmarsat satellite logs for MH370, also incorporated the separate SITA logs into its research?
@Victor
I’m trying to dig arond to find other reports of satellite derived images of debris in the SIO. In all cases, were reverse drift analysis of these ‘objects’ performed? Can we safely dismiss them given their extreme southerly latitude? Are any of them plausible at all?
1. There was a report of a Chinese satellite detecting debris in the SIO, with image capture on 18th March 2014 (3-4 days before the COSMO SkyMed image further north). The location is very far south of the 7th arc, based on the lat/lon axis markings on this image (https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/hWwjVKGsm7ccdQCFxYWzD3-1052-80.jpg.webp) we get lat: -44.958 lon: 90.229
Here are a few articles that include this one:
https://www.space.com/25182-chinese-satellite-malaysia-jet-debris-photo.html
https://www.livescience.com/44228-photos-missing-malaysian-flight-370.html
(archive link to bypass paywall): https://archive.is/69fWK
This Telegraph video clip, relating to the SIO Chinese image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCtDmZ4-32w
2. An image captured on March 18th, released by Digtial Globe, of a different detection is shown here: https://www.livescience.com/44227-satellite-images-possible-flight-mh370-debris.html
The coordinates for this are lat: -43.976, lon: 90.960
3. Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency, taken on 23rd March:
https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Malaysian-Remote-Sensing-Agency-satellite-debris-image.jpg
Again, very far south.
4. And finally, the Thai satellite images of ‘300’ objects, taken on March 24th, with image broken into 5 zones:
https://gcaptain.com/new-satellite-images-provide-new-leads-in-search-for-mh370/
with a best resolution I could find of the image mosaic: https://gcaptain.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/mh370_3.jpg
and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26763358
Coordinates:
@Michael charles Collins
SITA’s messaging system log, related to 9M-MRO, was published as Annex 1.9A, ACARS Traffic Log, part of the ‘SAFETY INVESTIGATION REPORT’ compiled by ‘The Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370’.
Separately, there is the satellite system log as recorded at the Ground Earth Station in Perth. Personally, I prefer to term the log linked from this blog (direct URL) the ‘Stratos Log’. Stratos was then the subsidiary of Inmarsat that operated the teleport services, including the Classic Aero Ground Earth Stations for the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean (IOR and POR) regions, at Perth.
The SITA ACARS Traffic log ceases to record anything further concerning 9M-MRO AND the satcom datalink after the satcom datalink failed to deliver a message submitted to the network by the MAS Operational Control/Dispatch Centre (OCC/ODC) at 18:03:23UTC. The message referring to ‘URGET REQUEST‘.
In turn, the Stratos Log shows that the aircraft failed to acknowledge the first part of this message, three times, and as a conseqence the Aircraft Earth Station (the AES) status was set as logged off the Inmarsat SATCOM network.
The 18:25UTC Log on from 9M-MRO comprised only a Log-On to the IOR GES, no ACARS traffic was initiated from the aircraft. The aircraft is expected to send ACARS Link Test and a Media Advisory messages when the SATCOM datalink becomes available and is the preferred medium (preferred over VHF, other media are supported by the network but not 9M-MRO). The Link Test confirms to the aircraft that an air-ground link is available, the Media Advisory indicates to the SITA ACARS messaging network that the aircraft intends use the media over which the message is transmited. It is the aircraft, its data communications management function not the SATCOM system, that initiates the ACARS connection over the required/preferred medium.
Neither the Stratos Log nor the ACARS Traffic log record a Link Test or Media Advisory message from 9M-MRO at any time subsequent to the 18:25 GES Log On.
However, closely following the 18:25 GES Log On two further virtual circuits were initiated over the SATCOM datalink. There were stated to have been initiated by the IFE system. These VCs opened connections to two separate X.121 addresses on the ground network, as had been evidenced following earlier GES Log Ons. These were not ACARS related connections. Technically, these connections were provided by the ISO8208 Satellite Sub-Network facility of the Inmarsat Classic Aero system.
Finally, yes, ‘the IG, when analysing the Inmarsat satellite logs for MH370, also incorporated the separate SITA logs into its research‘. In fact, I highlighted a significant inconsistency in the presentation of the ACARS Traffic Log and the Investigation team published a satisfactory amendment to correct the ACARS Traffic Log.
@Michael Collins:
The complete record of communications between airframe 9M-MRO and the Inmarsat satellite network, from March 7, 2014, at 00:51 UTC, until March 8, 2014, at 01:16 UTC. This time period includes the previous flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur.
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/06/12/the-unredacted-inmarsat-satellite-data-for-mh370/
The error in the message logs that @Don Thompson found was presented and explained in this article:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2017/06/12/the-unredacted-inmarsat-satellite-data-for-mh370/
After an initial denial from Malaysian Airlines that the logs were edited, Malaysia quietly released the unedited logs, which are described and presented here:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/09/07/malaysia-responds-by-releasing-full-message-log/
Between the Inmarsat logs and the message logs, we have no reason to believe the data sats are not complete and accurate.
@Theo: I don’t believe that any contacts that are not close to the 7th arc are related to MH370.
@Michael charles Collins & J-LM,
The response and reference provided by J-LM is factually incorrect. Quelle surprise!
J-LM stated: ‘At 18:25:27 UTC, the connection was of type 1 (1F) to the IOR satellite […] Type 1F corresponds to a login request in the absence of flight information available to the Satellite Data Unit (SDU).
Incorrect, an SU type coded as 1F merely indicates that the message being transmitted over the R-channel is carried in a single SU, a message carried over the R-channel message might require two or three separate SUs.
The central, active, element of the SATCOM system is the SDU, the Satellite Data Unit. The SDU receives or exchanges data with various avionics systems for its operation. Some interfaces involve regular, periodic transfer of information such as the position and attitude data words necessary for antenna pointing, other interfaces involve event driven transfer of information. Understanding the protocols involved and how they enable the exchange of information is key.
An example of an event driven transfer is the update of the Flight Identifier to the SDU, a parameter that is optional for the operation of the SATCOM data link and the SATVOICE in the Classic Aero network. The Flight Identifier parameter comprises 8 characters, it represents the ICAO representation of the flight ID – i.e. MAS370 (plus two SPACE characters). The use of this Flight Identifier is independent of ACARS function.
The Stratos Log records a sequence of GES Log Ons beginning at 15:55:57. These are consistent with the Flight Crew beginning their preflight procedures. The first in this sequence is a new Log On including the Flight Identifier ‘MAS370’. The event that initiated this change was the input of the route information on the MCDU. An event driven transfer causes the Flight Identifier update to the SDU: one event, the manual input to the FMCs via the MCDU; one time transfer to the SDU.
It is entirely misleading for anyone to state ‘ there’s no other way to delete [the flight number] than by manually resetting the COM.
If the SDU loses power, as I believe occurred and is evidenced by other recorded data, this parameter is lost from the SDU memory. Thus, the Flight Identifier absent from the 1825UTC logon .
There is no evidence that supply to any electrical bus was interrupted other than the Left Main AC bus from where the SATCOM system was supplied. The beginning of the interruption is unknown but it ended just prior to the SATCOM restoration at 18:25UTC. None of the recorded observations require electrical power to be reduced to only RAT supply.
Thanks, Don, for confirming that the IG also incorporated the separate SITA logs into your MH370 analysis.
See below for your last response:
To clarify, the IG, when analysing the Inmarsat satellite logs for MH370, indeed incorporated the separate SITA logs into its research. I had previously highlighted a significant inconsistency in the presentation of the ACARS Traffic Log, and the Investigation team subsequently published a satisfactory amendment to correct it.
Also thank you for correcting the ACARS Traffic Log—specifically, by releasing the full log. Initially, it had been redacted/edited to 14 pages, but the later 179-page version was made available.
With regards the final ACARS log, during the period between the 18:15:25 failed SATCOM transmission of the “URGENT REQUEST” and the 18:38:51 failed VHF transmission of “DEAR MH370,” the aircraft would have needed to log on to a SITA VHF ground station to switch the active communication channel from SATCOM to VHF.
I was wondering if you were given access to this transaction in the SITA log. If so, and if the information is not restricted, would it be possible to share the location of the ground station used?
Don, just to clarify my previous post: when I refer to the SITA logs, I am not referring to the ACARS log. I am referring to the lower-level logs maintained by SITA, which record events such as when an aircraft logs on via the SATCOM system or through one of its VHF ground stations.
@ventus45,
I tweaked your longitude by 5 seconds to better align with the path on Google Earth from RUNUT to 40S85E. Result: 392400S 851130E. I trust that you know better than I that this point actually lies on Arc7 at 20,000 feet.
@Paul Smithson,
On January 7, 2026 at 6:31 pm you wrote: “[If] you have a look through historic posts you will find ample material about my path analytics and reasoning including individual arc crossing positions, BTORs etc.”
For your information I subsequently looked through my historic data saves, including posts and comments, and any of my resultant analyses. (It may be that some of the latter in Excel files may have been lost, or corrupted.) During this I got sidetracked by a single file on “Boeing Simulation Case 06” which led to reviewing the Malaysian SIR Appendix-1.6E-Aircraft-Performance-Analysis-MH370-(9M-MRO) by Boeing. That side-search may well continue.
So, as yet, I have not fully researched to find any of your previous “path analytics and reasoning”.
However I did find the following paragraphs in a comment of yours which you posted here on Victor’s site on March 22, 2017 at 12:02 pm, Comment#1570.
Your comment followed on from discussion concerning Fuel Flow information gained from the Flight Plan labeled “Flight Brief” for Flight MH370.
You were then postulating that the actual flight flew at a slower speed than you had previously been considering, and you wrote in part:
Quote: … that a considerably lower FF than CI-52 must have pertained for the majority of the time post-disappearance. Moreover, it suggests that most of the priority search area would not have been fuel feasible with a constant azimuth path (which requires speeds of M0.82+). That is extremely puzzling, to say the least. How on earth could $120m have been committed to a search box that was (mostly) not fuel feasible? Surely there must be a disconnect, an assumption error or a mistake somewhere in my logic? End Quote.
So, what contributed to you changing your mind.
____________
What I have done is take a simple approach to your supplied waypoints, and used Google Earth to visualise the path.
Then a SIMPLE first approach might be to just consider a theoretical world at standard atmospheric conditions. This results in a flight speed of 482 knots at 36000 feet and a flight distance of 2883 NM, based on a ground distance from GE of 2873 NM. This is for the flight path from MEKAR to 392400S 851130E. This idealistic flight takes one minute under 6 hours.
But idealistic standard conditions did not apply to the real flight. I remember mention of higher than standard temperatures in the order of 10 degrees C. This will mean a slightly higher flight speed at M0.84, but perhaps more relevant will mean a higher fuel flow for distance covered.
The actual flight conditions were in far from still air at some stages. Unless there was a significant tail wind, then most windy conditions will result in a M0.84 flight vector at angles to the intended flight path affecting time taken for the flight and fuel consumed.
Have you made adequate considerations for the ambient weather conditions.
Dear MH370 afficionados. Please find in the links below:
1. A one-page summary of the Smithson solution
2. A KMZ of the path in 5s steps and related features.
Hi George G.
Re fuel. Back then I was making the point that the fuel model under discussion was incompatible with the search zone determined by DSTG. You will see from my 1-pager that I have been able to attain the required fuel endurance for this FL/M by assuming fuel flow savings due to bleed air off, reduced IDG load and a small amount of residual fuel per engine. Those savings are based on authoritative referenced sources and empirical application.
The path model. The model (developed by Barry Martin) propagates a great circle path using the Vincenty formula at a given height above the WGS84 ellipsoid. It includes the effect on groundspeed of temperature and net wind vectors at altitude. Wx fields were interpolated in space and time from the GDAS dataset that Bobby Ulich extracted and shared. The kmz provides granular detail on the path – hover mouse for timestamps at respective positions.
@MCC wrote ‘when I refer to the SITA logs, I am not referring to the ACARS log. I am referring to the lower-level logs maintained by SITA, which record events such as when an aircraft logs on via the SATCOM system or through one of its VHF ground stations.’
Annex 1.9A, ACARS Traffic Log records messages, and their routing, through the SITA messaging platform.
What you refer as ‘the lower-level logs have been recorded by Inmarsat/Stratos for SATCOM traffic through the Perth GES.
The VHF Ground Station network in the region was operated by Aeronautical Radio of Thailand Limited (AEROTHAI) as an ARINC network. I don’t believe any logs from AEROTHAI would add anything to our knowledge.
Effectively, MAS aircraft would be ‘roaming’ onto the ARINC VHF data network. Hence, the preference for SATCOM as indicated by the message in the ACARS Traffic Log timed at 15:54:31,
SWITCH VHF3 TO VOICE
(131.550)
IF SATCOM SERVICABLE
FROM MH OPS
Note that the routing for that message is BKKXCXA; BKK, Bangkok; XA = ARINC.
The Media Advisory messages from 9M-MRO indicate that use of VHF was disabled, see message 15:54:53 in the ACARS Traffic Log: ‘LV155453S’ translated as ‘Lost VHF at 155453 SATCOM available’.
Hi Don,
Thanks for your reply. Broadly speaking, everything you outlined in your last response is correct. However, I don’t believe it fully addresses the core points I was trying to make. For clarity, I’ve set them out below.
Point 1
SITA, the organisation that provides the data networking infrastructure used by Malaysia Airlines Operations to send and receive messages to and from MH370, also maintains its own independent transaction logs, separate from the Inmarsat satellite logs. These logs record various system events, including when an aircraft logs on to the SITA network. Logged details typically include the aircraft registration, date and time of the event, and the access path used (for example, via the Inmarsat satellite system or a VHF ground station). In the case of VHF communications, the specific ground station name and/or location would also be recorded.
Accordingly, these additional SITA logs could provide valuable supplementary information to accident investigators, particularly in a complex case such as MH370. A reasonable and important question, therefore, is why this potentially relevant data was excluded from the official report.
Point 2
If we avoid extreme or fringe assumptions, it is reasonable to assume the following mechanism for VHF connectivity: the aircraft avionics would continuously scan for a VHF ground station offering a signal of sufficient quality. Once such a station was detected, a logon would occur. This logon event would be recorded by SITA and would include, at a minimum, the aircraft registration, date and time, and the identity (name and/or location) of the ground station.
Upon a successful logon, the active communications path would switch to VHF. Any subsequent messages sent from ground operations to the aircraft would then be transmitted via this VHF channel until another communications path was selected or became active.
Point 3
From the second release of the ACARS report, we know that with respect to the final ACARS messages, there is a period between the failed SATCOM transmission of the “URGENT REQUEST” at 18:15:25 and the failed VHF transmission of “DEAR MH370” at 18:38:51. For the aircraft to have transmitted the latter via VHF, the active communication channel must have switched from SATCOM to VHF. That switch would only occur following a successful logon to a SITA VHF ground station sometime after 18:15.
Point 4
Therefore, if one accepts the accuracy of the ACARS log entry at 18:38:51 (“DEAR MH370”), then, based on the above points, there must exist—at a minimum—a corresponding SITA log entry between 18:15 and 18:38 containing:
• the date and time of the logon,
• the aircraft registration (9M-MRO), and
• the identity of the VHF ground station (from which its latitude and longitude could be determined).
Point 5
These details would allow investigators to either confirm or rule out the aircraft’s location at that time, including whether it was over the Andaman Sea, since the aircraft would necessarily have been within VHF range of the identified ground station.
Point 6
As discussed above, the minimum expectation would be at least one VHF ground station logon during the 18:15–18:38 window. However, it is also possible that the aircraft logged on to more than one VHF ground station, which could further help to confirm or contradict the reported track.
Point 7
With respect to the 18:25 satellite logon—which appears not to conform to the expected pattern of data transactions—it would be particularly useful to examine the corresponding SITA logs at that time.
For example, these might show either no activity or a logon event to the SITA system that could help explain this anomaly.
Point 8 (Summary)
Given the above, why do you think the independent SITA logs—particularly those relating to VHF ground station logons—were not included or referenced in the official report?
@Michael Collins: You keep saying MH370 logged into the VHF service during the flight. We have zero evidence of this.
@Don Thompson can choose to answer, but I have limited patience for scenarios that are not fact-based.
@MCC,
I have no further response. Your line of ‘enquiry’ is baseless, you appear to believe that various entities hold records that, in reality, do not exist. I do not intend to waste time on bad faith actors as you have exposed yourself to be.
It really is tiresome to repeatedly encounter individuals who, without any base knowledge of a particular topic, just make stuff up.
Just to ensure we are clear on your point:
Don stated:
“You appear to believe that various entities hold records that, in reality, do not exist.”
This would imply that SITA does not log when an aircraft connects to one of its ground stations or to the satellite system. If that were the case, then your statement would indeed be valid.
Additionally, you disagreed with my explanation that the active SITA channel would switch from SATCOM to VHF when the aircraft logged on to a VHF ground station.
Could you clarify how you believe the active channel changed from SATCOM to VHF prior to 18:35?
@Michael Charles Collins
You’re asserting records “must exist” based on how you imagine the network works, not based on any published interface/spec or disclosed dataset.
A single line indicating a failed VHF transmission cannot be reverse-engineered into “there must have been a successful VHF logon,” and it certainly can’t be reverse-engineered into “there must be a ground station lat/long that fixes the aircraft over the Andaman Sea.” That conclusion does not follow. You’re asking “what does blue smell like?” and demanding a location inference from data that doesn’t encode location in the way you assume.
If you have a primary source—SITA/ARINC network documentation, a sample of the actual transaction log schema, or an official statement confirming VHF registration events and their fields—post it. Otherwise… this isn’t an evidence-based lead; it’s a theory about paperwork.
@MCC,
Again, just so we are clear, I am calling out your bad faith engagement. For the avoidance of doubt your behaviour is termed ‘sealioning’.
I’ll repeat: you appear to believe that various entities hold records that, in reality, do not exist. That statement does not imply anything other than you appear to believe that various entities hold records that, in reality, do not exist.
Your last two paragraphs make no sense.
@McC
“Point 2
If we avoid extreme or fringe assumptions, …”
Instead of playing 20 questions, why not share your thesis? It’s based on nothing other than extreme or fringe assumptions.
@Don Thompson
Sealioning, you say? Seems a bit harsh for actual sealions!
I came across Mick Gilbert’s post:
“Instead of playing 20 questions, why not share your thesis?”
That’s a fair point, and I should have done this it sooner.
I’ve now prepared a document that is not intended to prove or disprove anything, but rather to serve as a starting point for discussion on some of the topics we’ve recently explored. The document focuses on three key questions covering the core technical areas of interest.
I would really value your technical feedback and insights on the points raised. Your input could help clarify or challenge some of the assumptions presented.
You can access the document here:
https://www.mh370whathappened.com/uploads/1/1/4/6/1146986/sita_logging_and_vhf_transmission.pdf
@Paul Smithson,
This is an ongoing fuel discussion.
At the risk of repetition, you wrote in your 1pp:
“Fuel exhaustion is predicted at 00:15:00, within 0.6% of required endurance. The base fuel model is built from Boeing M0.84 tables initiated at 17:07 with last known fuel quantity on board, with fuel flow adjustments for PDA (+1.5%), temperature (+3% per 10° TAT). After 17:22 we assume bleed air off (-3.0%), ram-air door closed (-0.4%), lower IDG load (-0.8%) and residual fuel ~75kg each engine.”
At this stage I do not wish to discuss PDA, or temperature or ram-air door effects, or even your estimate for lower IDG load. Later, if necessary.
1. With respect to “bleed air off” I have made suggestions for future inspection of this matter. Please refer to the attached “Horses and others” per link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/90fbyxskb8eb3xw5tvfsw/ANRLWf0mBh6VW9uT9WjLBVI?rlkey=ljuqznvavhyd85di9elfqtpx6&dl=0 The attachment considers comparison between the B777-200LR and B777F, amongst others. I make no other comment concerning your estimate of 3% at this time.
2. I would like to know from which hat or hats you plucked out your “residual fuel ~75kg each engine.”
No estimates (that I know of) have been able to get even close to your crossing of the 7th Arc.
Admittedly, “we have certainly moved on since then” but of the Boeing estimates provided via Appendix-1.6E to the Malaysian SIR, the closest to your altitude of FL360 and speed of M0.84 (482 knots or slightly higher, my estimate) is their FL350 and 475. Acknowledged assumptions made by Boeing for the flight after Arc 1 included constant speed and altitude and Standard day atmosphere, all understandable at that time, excepting perhaps for the standard day atmosphere. And we assume that they had to assume a normally functioning passenger carrying aircraft.
So, using these starting “points”, or in your case the Boeing M0.84 tables, we can build a ‘position’, as you have done with your estimates, of fuel differences for the final flight of 9M-MRO from that applicable to such a normally functioning passenger carrying aircraft .
Have you provided your fuel flow estimates at progressive stages in the flight for anyone to appraise?
SLIGHT change in subject:
Per your Google Earth data your starting point for the long final FL360 M0.84 traverse from Arc 1 to Arc 7 is at 18:28:15 at approximately four fifths of the way from MEKAR to SANOB.
Would you please detail how much and how fuel was consumed from the last ACARS message (at which fuel on board was transmitted as 43,800 kg) until this point.
@Michael Collins
Your Appendix E (Ground operations requesting crew to change VHF to voice) is a classic example of the limitations of AI. Whilst VHF ACARS is preferred in many regions, that is not the case everywhere. The cost of sending ACARS data over VHF in the Far East and some other areas was far more expensive than SATCOM during the relevant time period. Many airlines preferred to use SATCOM to reduce the cost.
Note the following comment by a Hawaiian Airlines avionics engineer:
We’re not unique in that we seek to minimize ACARS traffic because it’s very expensive…In fact, satcom ACARS is cheaper than VHF ACARS in the Far East. In that region, destinations we fly to such as New Zealand, Australia, China and Japan, are charging 45 cents per kilobit for VHF ACARS. We’re talking $1,000 per megabyte. What we’ve done is turned off VHF ACARS in the Far East. On our A330s, for example, in Japan and China we send everything over satcom.”
[https://interactive.aviationtoday.com/avionicsmagazine/august-september-2016/integrating-ip-into-acars-transmissions/]
Accordingly, it is not the least bit surprising that MAS OPS instructed the crew of MH370 to switch the centre VHF to voice only.
@Michael Collins
Further to my comment above, the so-called “18:35 VHF ACARS Transmission” is discussed by Victor in the following post from 2018:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/09/07/malaysia-responds-by-releasing-full-message-log/
As others have already said, there is no evidence the aircraft logged on to the SITA network. The message was sent multiple times, but failed each time because the VHF link was not available.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks a lot for your great feedback that is exactly what I am looking for. I just wonder what is your background. My background is IT with a commercial pilots licence.
I have also noticed AI making multiple mistakes as well as other people including myself.
Disabling ACARS via VHF
With regards your comments on high costs when using Ground Stations circa 2014 I have done a bit more research and have seen some other data that backs up what you stated. Thanks for that and this significantly reduces the probability that the disabling of the VHF ACARS does not make sense. However there is still the issue of how MH370 flipped the active channel from SATCOM to VHF if ACARS was disabled on the VHF channel.
To get around this while in flight VHF radio 3 could have been set back to data. However, thanks to your observation I have already updated the document to reflect the revised costing issue (Please download the revised document).
With regards 18:35 VHF transmission
You mentioned “As others have already said, there is no evidence the aircraft logged on to the SITA network. The message was sent multiple times, but failed each time because the VHF link was not available”.
If ok with you would you be able to explain as to how all the previous messages were sent via SATCOM and the 18:35 message suddenly changes to VHF.
So using a worked example person ‘A’ at 18:15 sends a message via the SATCOM channel (that does not get through) to the aircraft. For that to happen the SITA system for MH370 needs to have the active channel set to SATCOM. Therefore, the message is transmitted via the Satellite system.
Person ‘A’ at 18:35 sends a message via the VHF channel (that does not get through) to the aircraft. For that to happen the SITA system for MH370 needs to have the active channel set to VHF. Therefore, the message is transmitted via a VHF ground station.
So my question is what mechanism do you think flipped the SITA active channel from SATCOM (at 18:15) to VHF (at 18:35)?
@Michael Collins
I’m a former airline pilot. I worked at a large Far East airline for almost 30 years, flying a variety of Boeing and Airbus types, including the B777. We had exactly the same issues with the high cost of VHF ACARS as described in the article I posted.
As far as I’m aware, the 18:35 message was routed over VHF by MAS OPS or the service provider. I can only assume that was a last resort after previous attempts to contact the aircraft by SATCOM had failed. There was no acknowledgement from the aircraft.
@Michael Collins said:
However there is still the issue of how MH370 flipped the active channel from SATCOM to VHF if ACARS was disabled on the VHF channel.
…
For that to happen the SITA system for MH370 needs to have the active channel set to VHF.
These are false statements. You are creating a scenario that is based in fantasy.
Thanks, Andrew,
If we set MH370 aside for the moment and focus purely on how SITA determines which transmission method to use (i.e., SATCOM or VHF) for sending ground operational messages to an aircraft—for example, a Boeing 777 in 2014—then Appendix F of my document provides a useful overview.
In summary, if an aircraft is initially receiving ground operational messages via the satellite channel (SATCOM) and subsequently receives the next set of messages via a VHF ground station (i.e., the VHF channel), the aircraft avionics must be able to do the following:
(a) Detect a VHF signal of sufficient quality from a ground station; and
(b) Successfully log in to the SITA network via that VHF ground station.
Unless both (a) and (b) occur, the aircraft would be unable to receive ACARS data via the VHF channel.
Accordingly, when reviewing the ACARS report for this aircraft, the initial set of messages would be recorded as having been transmitted via the SATCOM channel. Following a successful aircraft login to the SITA network, subsequent messages would be recorded as having been transmitted via the VHF channel.
Could you please let me know whether your understanding aligns with the above?
The prior post was for Andrew.
@Michael Collins: First of all, ARINC was MAS’ service provider for ACARS over VHF, not SITA, so SITA could not switch to sending ACARS messages over VHF.
Second of all, the error messages in the logs clearly indicate that MH370 was not logged into the ARINC ACARS server.
From a previous article where this was explained after the full message logs were released:
https://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/09/07/malaysia-responds-by-releasing-full-message-log/
Notably, the new log contains an additional ACARS message that was sent from MAS Operations Dispatch Center (ODC) and destined for MH370 over the VHF link. The message was sent at 18:38:51 and was intended to be displayed in the cockpit on a Control Display Unit (CDU), which a pilot uses to perform tasks such as programming the flight computers. The message was not received by MH370, and was re-sent by MAS ODC at 18:39:52, 18:40:42, and 18:41:52, failing each time. The text of the message was:
DEAR MH370. PLS ACK TEST MSG. RGDS/OC.
The new log confirms that there was a renewed attempt to initiate communications with MH370 using ACARS over the VHF link at 18:38:51. The error messages that were generated confirm that the VHF link was not available at that time, likely because MH370 was not logged into ARINC’s server. ARINC was MAS’ service provider for ACARS over VHF.
@Michael Collins
I did not see your overall thesis in the document. I am going to say what I think, correct me if wrong. You feel all radar data and SATCOM data after IGARI is fraudulent or wrong, as a cover-up of a flight towards the Maldives.
@Michael Collins
My understanding does not align with your explanation.
The “1835” message was a ground-initiated or “spontaneous” uplink, sent from the ground station to the aircraft over VHF. A ground-initiated uplink does not require the aircraft to first set up a link with the ground station; however, it will not be received by the aircraft unless:
– The aircraft is within VHF line-of-sight range of the ground station, and
– The ACARS system is tuned to the same VHF frequency as the ground station.
A ground-initiated uplink over VHF has limited chance of success, because without a recent downlink the ground station has no way of knowing if the the aircraft is listening on the same ACARS frequency or if it is within range.
In the MH370 case, the ACARS log clearly shows the aircraft failed to acknowledge the “1835” uplink. That most likely occurred because the crew had switched the centre VHF to voice only, as instructed by MAS Operations during the preflight preparation. Given the limited (zero) chance of success, I can only assume that MAS tried a VHF uplink in desperation, after previous attempts to contact the aircraft by SATCOM had failed.
I do not believe the failed “1835” uplink supports your theories.
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for your response.
“I can only assume that MAS tried a VHF uplink in desperation, after previous attempts to contact the aircraft by SATCOM had failed.”
I asked AI to analyse both your proposed explanation and mine regarding how the active ARINC ACARS channel could have changed from SATCOM to VHF for the 18:35 message.
Details are set out here:
https://www.mh370whathappened.com/uploads/1/1/4/6/1146986/andrew_reply_02c.pdf
As I mentioned to Victor, the mechanism I proposed has been supported by my own analysis, correspondence with SITA, and independent AI assessments using two different platforms.
I was wondering whether you might be able to provide a reference for the alternative possibility—that the active channel can be changed directly by Malaysian ground operators.
Specifically, do you believe they have the capability on their operational screens to explicitly select the transmit channel (e.g. “set transmit channel to SATCOM” or “set transmit channel to VHF”)?
Any clarification or source material you could point me to would be much appreciated.
Hi Victor,
Thank you for your response.
Response – Part 1
“@Michael Collins: First of all, ARINC was MAS’ service provider for ACARS over VHF, not SITA, so SITA could not switch to sending ACARS messages over VHF.”
You are absolutely right—thank you for the correction. I have updated my document accordingly.
Please download the revised version here:
https://www.mh370whathappened.com/uploads/1/1/4/6/1146986/sita_logging_and_vhf_transmission_v02.pdf
________________________________________
Response – Part 2
“Second of all, the error messages in the logs clearly indicate that MH370 was not logged into the ARINC ACARS server.”
What I believe the logs do demonstrate is the following:
(a) At some point before the multiple failed VHF message transmissions (including retries), the aircraft must have logged into an ARINC VHF ground station. The reason is that the active ACARS channel can only be switched to VHF following a successful VHF logon. If no such logon had occurred, the active channel would have remained SATCOM, and that is what we would expect to see reflected in both the ACARS report and the satellite logs.
(b) After this logon, the aircraft appears to have suddenly gone out of range of the ground station, resulting in the failed transmissions. However, given that these retries spanned approximately 4.5 minutes, it seems highly unlikely that during this entire period the avionics would neither:
• acquire another VHF ground station with an acceptable signal level, nor
• revert and log back onto the SATCOM system.
This prolonged period of unsuccessful VHF transmission therefore does not align well with normal avionics behaviour.
(c) Consequently, if these 4.5 minutes of log entries are genuine, the aircraft must have previously logged onto a VHF ground station. This is consistent with the possibility that VHF3 was changed from voice to data. Even so, it remains very unlikely that during a 4.5-minute interval no message could be received by the aircraft—whether via:
• the previously logged VHF station,
• a subsequently acquired VHF station, or
• a fallback logon to SATCOM.
(d) Bottom line: this 4.5-minute period of failing ACARS transmissions over the VHF channel presents multiple technical inconsistencies. While this is necessarily speculative, it may help explain why these entries were excluded from the initial ACARS report released with the official investigation.
Please also see my response to Andrew for additional context. For completeness, I have previously corresponded with SITA (not ARINC) regarding how the active ACARS channel is selected, and they concur with the explanation provided by AI—that is, once the aircraft acquires a sufficiently strong VHF signal, it performs a logon (which would be logged by ARINC), thereby setting the active channel.
Andrew has proposed another possible mechanism, which I passed on to AI for assessment. If you disagree with the understanding shared by myself, AI, and SITA, I would appreciate it if you could outline how you believe the process works, so I can test that interpretation as well.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for your post.
“@Michael Collins
I did not see your overall thesis in the document. I am going to say what I think, correct me if wrong. You feel all radar data and SATCOM data after IGARI is fraudulent or wrong, as a cover-up of a flight towards the Maldives.”
The above does not accurately reflect what I currently believe may have happened to the aircraft, based on a substantial amount of forensic data analysis.
If you are interested in understanding what my research is pointing toward so far, you may find it helpful to browse through the two books I have recently released. One of them provides a higher-level overview and is probably the best starting point.
If you—or anyone else from this blog—would like a free PDF copy, I’m happy to provide one.
Please feel free to contact me via the website MH370whathappened.com. Constructive feedback is always welcome and appreciated.
@Michael Collins
You persist in referring to an “active communications channel” in relation to the ACARS, yet there was there was no active channel available at 18:38 UTC. The last ACARS communication occurred at 17:07 UTC, at which time an automated position report was sent by the aircraft. The next scheduled ACARS reports were never received, indicating the ACARS system was disabled or the SATCOM link was lost sometime after 17:07 UTC. The aircraft was not heard from again until the SATCOM logged-on to the Inmarsat network at 18:25 UTC. The ACARS link was not re-established at that time, as evidenced by the lack of link test or media advisory messages, unlike the earlier log-ons.
It seems to me the problem lies in the way you frame your AI questions. You should stop using the phrase “active communications channel” and stop referring to a change in the active communications channel, forced or otherwise. There was no active communications channel to change!
It is my understanding that the ARINC 618 protocol does allow ground-initiated or spontaneous uplinks over VHF. As I explained previously, if an aircraft were to receive such an uplink, the ACARS system would need to be tuned to the correct VHF frequency, within range of the ground station and, importantly in this case, in DATA mode. If any of those conditions were not true, the message would fail to be delivered.
Try asking your AI friend the following question: “Can an ACARS service provider send a VHF uplink to an aircraft if a connection has not already been established?”
@Michael Collins here’s your problem:
A study of newer, bigger versions of three major artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots shows that they are more inclined to generate wrong answers than to admit ignorance. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03137-3
(AI chatbots) regularly “hallucinate” and offer up falsehoods as if they were hard facts. https://theconversation.com/heres-how-researchers-are-helping-ais-get-their-facts-straight-245463
A joint study by Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University revealed that AI has begun to flatter humans and now responds only to what humans like. A joint study by Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University revealed that AI has begun to flatter humans and now responds only to what humans like. https://www.msn.com/en-in/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-becomes-a-sycophant-no-longer-true-ai-chatbots-are-giving-answers-that-please-users-research-reveals/ar-AA1PxZaY
I am surprised that this property of AI engines isn’t apparent to any frequent user. I even find that when if corrected with facts from within my professional knowledge base that the nature of the responses from the AI chatbot changes and can become fractious. Try it. Then you’ll understand why you are getting the answers you are.
@Michael Collins
Anyone who uses AI for research should ask this question of their favourite AI chatbot:
“Why do AI chatbots make up pleasing answers to questions when they don’t actually know the answer?”
Answers from the one I used last:
AI chatbots provide pleasing but incorrect answers (hallucinations) primarily because they are trained as probabilistic engines rather than truth-checking databases. As of 2026, research identifies several key reasons for this “people-pleasing” behavior:
Training Incentives: Most AI models are fine-tuned using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), where human evaluators tend to reward complete, helpful-sounding, and confident responses over those that simply say “I don’t know”.
Next-Token Prediction: Structurally, AI works by predicting the most statistically likely next word (token). It doesn’t “know” facts; it recognizes patterns. If you ask for a citation, it generates a sequence that looks like a real citation because that pattern is what comes next in its internal probability map.
Sycophancy (Built-in Bias): Models often mirror the user’s tone or implied beliefs to be more “agreeable.” If a user’s prompt suggests a false premise, the AI might go along with it to maximize its “helpfulness” score.
Lack of Uncertainty Meters: Historically, many models were not equipped with internal mechanisms to measure their own uncertainty. Without a “self-doubt” meter, they deliver a guess with the same authoritative tone as a proven fact.
Benchmark Pressures: Developers often optimize for accuracy benchmarks where a guess has a chance of being right (earning points), whereas an “I don’t know” response often results in a score of zero.
This comment serves to correct the misinformation set out by @MCC concerning what he claims can be derived from the datacommunications logs, it is not intended to resume debate about the same.
Background: plain old analogue VHF ACARS was the dominant comms medium in the SE Asia area in 2014. AeroThai was in the process of rolling out VDLm2 digital datalink remote ground stations (RGS) through the early 2010’s. AeroThai’s annual report for 2014 states only 12 VDLm2 RGS active vs 120 analogue VHF ACARS RGS. Why is the distinction between plain old analogue VHF ACARS and VDLm2 important – VDLm2 is ‘metadata’ rich and provides throughput in the order of 30kb/s, analogue ACARS is the opposite, its dumb and slow, in the order of 300b/s throughput.
An aircraft establishes a datalink with a VDLm2 network whereas there is no concept of a datalink in analogue ACARS. A VDLm2 network does more ‘heavy lifting’ to maintain the datalink between the aircraft and the ground. Why do I dwell on this? Because certain VDLm2 datalink packet types include position information for the aircraft, analogue ACARS does not.
9M-MRO was equipped only for analogue ACARS. That is explicit in the Medium Advisory messages transmitted from the aircraft. Prior to the MAS ODC instruction to disable VHF (noting the quoted common frequency for analogue ACARS service) at 15:54, two datacomms media were indicated as available: V for analogue ACARS and S for SATCOM. That’s entirely consistent with the knowledge of 9M-MROs datacomms equippage (for example, no HFDL as was available on 9M-MRO and 9M-MRQ, airframes delivered later, after a build spec ‘bump’ at Boeing). Following the ODC’s instruction, the change was record to show the aircraft no longer indicated VHF availability.
Generally, analogue ACARS would be regarded as the least performant but most commonly available medium for ACARS. More capable services are VDLm2, where terrestrial infrastructure exists, and SATCOM, over remote terrestrial and oceanic regions. The datacomms management function in the 9M-MRO operated with analogue ACARS as its default datacomms medium. As @Andrew explains, commercial considerations drove the decision at MAS to instruct 777 crews to override the default, specifically de-selecting/disabling VHF thus leaving only SATCOM active (per the 15:54 message from the ODC to 9M-MRO).
It is the aircraft that ‘leads’ in selection of the active datacomms medium. This is borne out by the observations recorded in the ACARS Traffic Log during the period from 9M-MROs power up at 12:50 through to the final successfully delivered ACARS message between the aicraft and ground at 17:07:29 (the final position report). The ACARS Traffic Log at 12:50 shows a Media Advisory message received by SITA via BKKCXXA (AeroThai) that advises VHF enabled, VHF and SATCOM available – the aircraft is broadcasting that it is now available to communicate via VHF.
While I say that the aircaft ‘leads’ in datacomms medium selection, that is not to say that the ground messaging platform does not, itself, make decisions about selecting datacomms medium. Consider the case where an aircraft operating over SATCOM lands and is shutdown, but without due procedures being followed, or that aircraft is towed into a hangar before shutdown where radio comms fail due to shielding of the building. In this case further ground initiated message transmissions fail, in the same manner as observed in the ACARS Traffic log between 18:03:23 and 18:19:34 for the ‘URGET REQUEST’ message, that is:
1) ground entity, the ODC, submits a message to the SITA platform fro delivery to aircraft, message is routed to the active SATCOM datalink service;
2) datalink failure handled by Inmarsat, as reported back to SITA 18:06:25;
3) SITA resubmits, in turn, to Inmarsat for a further 5 attempts. Each submission immediately fails;
4) SITA falls back to route message via AeroThai (BKKXCCA), the VHF ground station operator. Per response received: ‘MAS AN 9M-MRO/MA 991F – NO ACK 311 ADDRESSEE: 9M-MRO‘.
SITA’s messaging platform reverts from an optional, enhanced, medium to the default: analogue VHF ACARS via AeroThai. Not because the aircraft has sent a Media Advisory message but because the messaging platform follows the most likely assumption, that a disconnected aircraft will recommence comms over the least functional service.
Analogue VHF ACARS has no concept of an ‘aircraft log-on’ or maintaining a datalink.
For the SITA messaging platform to have reverted to routing ground-to-air ACARS messages via AeroThai, BKKXCXS, at the instigation of the aircraft, a Media Advisory message would have been received by the messaging platform. No such Media Advisory message was received.
The exploitation of AI in this matter will be fraught with inaccurate answers, hallucinations, and will be readily misled by the questioner’s confirmation bias. ‘So-called’ AI scrapes its knowledge from the world wide web. For it to be anywhere near correct, it requires good training data, it requires substantial volumes of training data to make some judgement fact vs imagination. There is insufficient information in the public domain to provide such training data in this domain for artificial intelligence. AI answers will be slop (the clue is in the term, ‘artificial’, as in artificial grass, artificial leather, artifical sweeteners, i.e. a poor facsimile of the real thing).
I have access to currently operational real-time services that monitor ACARS messaging across analogue VHF, VDLm2, and SATCOM networks. I am aware that AI-slop is the dominant result when cogent interpretation is requested about the operation of these networks.
@John
Your comments concerning AI(-slop) – 100% agree.
@all
Armada 86 05 announced planning appears to be:
14 Jan: Departure from search area
19 Jan 21:00Z: Arrival in Fremantle
20 Jan 22:00Z: Departure from Fremantle