Why locating MH370 in the Southern Ocean is so difficult

Eric Van Sebille
Surfpolitik

Searching for the debris of flight MH370 in the Southern Ocean is not just a case of looking for a needle in a haystack; it is a case of searching for a needle that moves hundreds of kilometres every day in one of the most hostile and constantly changing areas in the world. To make matters worse, it is also one of the most remote locations on Earth.

I should know, I’ve seen this myself.

In December 2013, I was on an expedition south of New Zealand to look at how dynamic the currents in this part of the world were. We deployed ten pairs of satellite-tracked drifting buoys into the ocean, at exactly the same moment and with only 10m spacing. Within days, the buoys within each pair were already at least kilometres apart. Three months later and some of the pairs are now separated by thousands of kilometres.

The missing flight

If Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 did go down off the coast of Western Australia, given the distance from land and the nature of the ocean in this part of the world, it could hardly have gone down in a worse part of the ocean. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority last week released images showing two objects – one 24m, the other 5m in size – which led to a massive air and sea search of the area.

The region, just over 2,000km southwest of Perth, is extremely hostile. Winds and waves are among the strongest and highest in the world so any expedition to locate and possibly retrieve any wreckage and the plane’s black box will be difficult. Before the recovery of the plane can begin, assuming the debris are conformed to be those of MH370, the search team will have to estimate where the plane actually hit the water. That is not going to be an easy task.

An ocean in motion

The Southern Ocean is extremely volatile, with currents changing speed and direction from day to day, making it particularly hard to back track the drift of debris to the original impact point. One of the unique features of the Southern Ocean is that it is the only place in the world where water can keep on moving eastward without ever hitting land. Because of this, and the strong winds, the water is swept along at very high speeds, sometimes almost 2m a second. This is much faster than any other place in the world.

At those high speeds, the current becomes unstable. It starts breaking up and forms eddies. These eddies are similar to the vortices you may see behind wakes in a river or the spiralling and treacherous winds that can form behind tall buildings in the inner city on a windy day.


Eddies in the Southern Ocean.

The difference in the Southern Ocean is that these eddies are much larger - almost 50 km in diameter - and they are not stationary but constantly move around. The ocean here is chock-full of these eddies, which can also extend down for more than a kilometre. The underlying physics of ocean eddies is similar to that of cyclones and hurricanes in the atmosphere, but the velocities are much lower. The eddies are roughly circular areas of high or low pressure, and because of the rotation of the earth, water starts swirling around them.

The stirring of the ocean eddies in the Southern Ocean make the flow of debris highly unpredictable. This is the oceanic equivalent of the butterfly effect, where a small change in initial position can very rapidly lead to changes in trajectory.

Drifting away

Because of the stirring by the eddies, the sheer size of the search area doesn’t come as a surprise. It was recently announced that a Chinese satellite has spotted possible plane debris 120km southwest from where an Australian satellite spotted it two days earlier, and that a French satellite has spotted debris 800km to the north.

f6kyb8qk-1395617835.jpg
The map shows the movement of all the buoys ever deployed in this region of the ocean. The star marks the location of the objects identified on Australian satellite images. 

The pieces of floating debris from the plane will all have taken a different route through the sea of eddies. In fact, the debris that are still at the surface could occupy an area easily hundreds of square kilometers wide by now. If the search teams don’t find the debris soon, the remains of MH370 could even be in completely different oceans, as this simulation shows.

pd5v6xy2-1395620360.jpg
How far any debris could drift in one year from potential crash site (marked by yellow duck).

This simulation was made up of the data trajectories of the thousands of drifting buoys deployed in the ocean over the last three decades. As you can see, some of the debris will move to the Indian Ocean off Perth while some of it will end up in the South Pacific Ocean.

The ocean clock is ticking and if we don’t find something soon, it becomes increasingly difficult to find the aircraft. //ERIC VAN SEBILLE

This article first appeared in The Conversation.

Comments

the-spleen's picture
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the-spleen Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 11:42am

Not much going on in the surfworld , huh Swellnet?

stunet's picture
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stunet Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 12:00pm

An odd question, TS, and to be honest I'm not sure what motivated you to ask it, but I'll take a best guess...

Swellnet is primarily a science-based site concerned with ocean/surf conditions. It would be incorrect to assume we're an online version of what magazines provide. The editorial makes up a small percentage of the site yet when topical stories ovelap with the science field we'll happily run them. 

grug's picture
grug's picture
grug Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 1:17pm

And so you should…

Great article. Thanks Eric.

silicun's picture
silicun's picture
silicun Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 1:23pm

This story certainly has an odd ring to it. Why would a passenger plane be taken to one of the most remote, inaccessible areas of the world? How does a plane just disappear off RADAR ? There are so many things that dont add up.

derra83's picture
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derra83 Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 1:29pm

Exactly. And if debris were found in the Southern Ocean where exactly were the hijackers planning on taking it??? I question the money spent on the exercise too. I understand the need for families to have closure but if it did go down where they think then there was zero chance of survival, much of the plane would've sunk, and as this article explains the debris could end up anywhere. Why are they using up money and resources on a lost cause?

kjwright's picture
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kjwright Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 1:34pm

While i understand the intrigue surrounding the circumstances of the dissapearances, this is one of the few scientifically based articles which has been written about the issue. It would be great if it could be appreciated for what it is (a well written article based on scientific evidence), and not dragged kicking and screaming into the world of assumption and speculation.

Regarding the costs associated with the recovery, I sure know that I want to know the facts behind this dissapearance. Firstly to get to the bottom of the circumstances (and either implicate or clear all involved) and secondly to ensure we dont start having 777's dropping out of the sky on a regular basis. I'm sure boeing are pretty keen to know what went wrong as well.

zenagain's picture
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zenagain Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 2:02pm

I concur, a very interesting article to say the least and glad for SN to provide them.

Also, I'm pretty sure the families of the missing 200 or so would like to know what happened to their loved ones regardless of the cost.

silicun's picture
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silicun Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 2:07pm

This is a forum where open discussion is played out kjwright, although as you point out there is a scientific basis to this article it none the less contains, by its own admission, assumption and speculation - "If Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 did go down off the coast of Western Australia" , "assuming the debris are conformed to be those of MH370", "the debris that are still at the surface could occupy an area easily hundreds of square kilometers wide by now".

Aint nothin wrong with asking a few questions.

kjwright's picture
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kjwright Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 2:33pm

I see no speculation.

"If Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 did go down off the coast of Western Australia" and "assuming the debris are conformed to be those of MH370" - Scientific Assumtions, Yes. However a fair one given the money being spent on the search. An article discussing the difficulties associated with a search for MH370 and the ocean currents in this part of the world is hardly relevant without making such an assumption.

"the debris that are still at the surface could occupy an area easily hundreds of square kilometers wide by now" - This is a statement or conclusion based on the above assumptions, and a significant body of research into the currents in the south indian ocean. Hardly speculation.

A far cry from the rampant speculation surrounding the dissapearance proliferated through other sources of online media.

Questions are very good, and we should never stop asking questions. However we should also accept that answers are not always readily available.

silicun's picture
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silicun Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 3:03pm

Until you can provide some proof of the two statements made in regards to the debris they will remain assumptions and speculation.

I agree it is a far cry from the rampant speculation in other media, why is the story being reported as such? There has been continuous speculation and from day 1 there has continually been misinformation reported by sources that provide the world with information that informs our opinions.

The story has been used to bash Malaysia, Iran and China. It has maintained priority placing in the face of other more critical news and it has been downright misleading.

Asking question encourages people to think critically for themselves, it allows me to better inform myself. I make a point of always reading the comments following an article and more often than not will uncover things that I hadnt considered and perhaps that the original article hadnt considered. I wouldnt expect these questions be answered per se but I find here at S/N there are people with considerable understanding of a broad range of fields and generally offer a considered opinion which I find valuable.

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wellymon Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 4:21pm

Well said Silicun :)

kjwright's picture
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kjwright Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 7:26pm

It's not just this story being abused by rampant speculation, that's a function of the current social media driven news craze. Where news agencies cannot risk missing a headline, so publish without fact checking.

Thought you might find this interesting.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/how-19thcentury-physics-helped-find-malaysia...

Ignore the fact that it's a SMH article, and focus on the interview with the INMARSAT spokesman. A bit of science around how they ascertained that the plain was flying south-southwest for the 7 hours after other tracking was turned off. Then the approximate search area is estimated by travelling along that line to the approximate point at which the plane would run out of fuel (plus some gliding distance from it's cruising altitude.)

silicun's picture
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silicun Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 9:17pm

The INMARSAT analysis is interesting but throws up more questions for me, the Indians came out and said that the plane could not have flown Northward as one of the early flight path projections proposed because it would have shown up on their primary radar. Where is the primary radar data for the southern projected flight path? Does Northern Australia (say Pine Gap) or Indonesia or Thailand not have primary radar? Why did it take days of floundering around in the South China Sea while the INMARSAT data had already established that the engines continued for several hours after the flight was tracked?

I see the type of reporting in the regular media serves a purpose more than to simply provide a successful headline, there are also various agendas that a headline story will be used to push.

kjwright's picture
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kjwright Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 9:49pm

I understand that the INMARSAT data is a single satellite ping between the plane and one satellite (and a weak one at that). Traditional GPS location relies on a minimum of 3 satellites to triangulate a position (very roughly) and then additional satellites to refine that position. From what i've seen i think the initial INMARSAT data was just an approximate distance from the satellite... hence inability to identify wether they were going north or south. I think it also took a bit of processing to work this out, and they withheld information until they could provide accurate data.

The northern flight path was then fairly quickly dismissed (due to the significant land masses and abundance of radar data). The issue with the southern path is that there isn't really any land in the way. If the flight is going south, once you go past the Malacca Straight, and over indonesia there isn't really anything on the way to the proposed location.

Pine Gap may have some radar data for the southern path, but i doubt the US is going to let details of exactly what that facility is covering out in the open......Given it's a jointly operated facility and Australia is leading the southern search they don't really have to release it openly to provide assistance.

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bvelic Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 11:15pm

primary radar for air-traffic control purposes is only concerned with a 70nm radius and typically only around airports and major route-corridors (i.e Sydney to Brisbane) and it has little concern for what takes place outside these airspaces, technically the radar has got a longer range up to 120nm or more in military applications but that still leave vastly uncovered areas including almost all of the worlds oceans. in fact most of the Australian continent is not covered by primary radar. secondary radar would have directly alerted the aviation authorities of the planes identity but that has an even shorter range than primary radar. fact is that they knew the plane turned around very early in the piece. a planes autopilot has several different modes of operation - one of which is to just maintain altitude and so the plane can effectively end up anywhere provided it has enough fuel and slightly banks.

just because Inmarsat data confirmed time of flight doesn't mean they knew where the plane was heading - they had to work that out. it could have been going around in a circle for hours. further investigation of the Inmarsat data was required and that's what they did. the last thing Inmarsat wants to do is release speculative results and send everyone on a wild goose chase, so they took their time and did it properly.

what are the hidden agendas?

silicun's picture
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silicun Wednesday, 26 Mar 2014 at 10:47am

Cheers bvelic and kjwright, this is a good explanation of the primary radar and the INMARSAT analysis and helps my understanding. Its doesnt explain the lack of radar data over Indonesia which in combination with Thai radar data and the extended flying time shown in the INMARSAT would have shown that the plane had flown away from the search area quite early in the piece. There have been several articles calling into question the delays in releasing the INMARSAT data and there is no explanation -

"Inmarsat knew the day after MH370’s disappearance that it was likely to have flown along one of two “corridors” that later became the focus of the investigation, but vital resources were expended on looking in the wrong places because of a seeming breakdown in communications."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10720009/MH370-B...

"Hidden" agenda's? Mostly quite overt agenda's of slurring nations that the West doesnt like, China has been targeted in articles suggesting they had withheld data, suggesting their search help has been bumbling, Malaysia (with some fair reasoning) has been painted as bumbling idiots from the start. Some of the first articles suggested a incompetence in the immigration checks and being lax on security - simply not factual. Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea have all been tarred again with the "terrorism" brush.

bvelic's picture
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bvelic Wednesday, 26 Mar 2014 at 5:30pm

ive done some more reading and agree with you that something in the whole air traffic control radar picture is not complete. my feeling is that someone has just plain screwed up. My understanding after talking with some people who used to work in the RAAF is that when a plane leaves the radar picture of a traffic controller it that there is supposed to be some handover via voice comms to the next airspace traffic controller - this is supposed to work even between countries - this seems to have not occurred correctly either through fault of the pilot or the guys on the ground. either way, a lack of handover should have alerted people. secondly when the plane turned around and flew southwards that it would have appeared on other radar pictures (e..g indo). Im no expert here but I'd be 99.9% sure that Indo's air traffic operators would have a procedure for dealing with unidentified aircraft appearing on their display - this also appears to have not occurred properly. unidentified aircraft is just too much of a safety hazard threat to let pass. if hours passed before the right people between countries could talk with eachother then thats obviously not satisfactory. it unfortunate because all the lost time means that the black-box will soon run out of power & any evidence never be recovered. the U.S have the best means via the subs but its a vast ocean. Im doubting that we will ever know the truth.

sidthefish's picture
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sidthefish Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 2:13pm

Very odd. They can track you by your mobile phone, but can't find a plane. would love to know who was really on the passenger list.

Not convinced the plane is in the southern ocean in the first place, perhaps thats why they can't anything.

fitzroy-21's picture
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fitzroy-21 Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 2:22pm

The fact of the matter is that there will always be way more questions than answers in this mystery.

Great info passed on about the Southern Ocean and its currents. Enjoyed the read and graphics.

barley's picture
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barley Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 4:30pm

If all the currents move in different directions, how much of certain swell size/power is lost within these currents if any at all?

indo-dreaming's picture
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indo-dreaming Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 8:33pm

Good article much better than anything I've read in main stream media, i was actually wondering why it was that hard and why they couldn't have just got GPS marks from there sat pics and worked out from winds and currents where the debris would be, but i had no idea there could be currents as strong as two metres a second thats crazy.

donweather's picture
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donweather Tuesday, 25 Mar 2014 at 8:52pm

Eric was just interviewed on the 7:30 report and he quoted VERY different ocean current velocities.......2cm/sec. So which is it?

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southey Wednesday, 26 Mar 2014 at 2:13am

i think old mate erik was a little bit " rabbit in the spotlight in that interview " .
On the channel nine ( BS ) program the interviewer was totally lost and started off on another tangent about his info on the speed and strength of the eddies' , because he used hurricane/ cyclone to explain their formation , behaviour and vorticity .
The interviewer then asked if these " WINDS " could move the debri . ( it was so laughable and clearly MSM ) , but old mate erik thought he meant if the eddies were strong enough to shift the debri that had sunken to the bottom / ocean floor .

Anyway , so many countries were made to look inept in this search . And most of the entire aviation industry , given they don't bother with GPS . Its laughable ... if it weren't so tragic .... I know the ping and BBR work for serious crashes , but purely knowing what happens in the case of human failure / and the machine keeps going , you couldn't go past GPS ...

bish's picture
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bish Friday, 28 Mar 2014 at 2:29pm

Really interesting article Eric, thanks!

I came across an article by a retired pilot, on Wired back on the 18th, that put things in a more realistic perspective, well worth a read and I think it still holds up at this point in time. http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/mh370-electrical-fire/

udo's picture
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udo Friday, 28 Mar 2014 at 6:19pm

Pine Gap has had very little if any mention in the planes disappearance , the most sophisticated radar /spywhere avail is on that base and any aircraft behaving strangely as in a major u turn or a 20,000 ft change in altitude would not go unnoticed ?
same goes for Diego Garcia ?

kerry1's picture
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kerry1 Sunday, 30 Mar 2014 at 3:20pm

Someone correct me I am a bit lost here. I thought the jet was leaving Malaysia and heading to China. How did it get this far south???

thermalben's picture
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thermalben Monday, 31 Mar 2014 at 6:29am

Well, that's the question they're hoping to answer if and when they find the black box recorder. 

mick-free's picture
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mick-free Monday, 31 Mar 2014 at 8:29am

Anyone know the range of these ping locators to find the black box??

fitzroy-21's picture
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fitzroy-21 Monday, 31 Mar 2014 at 8:41am

1 Nm

mick-free's picture
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mick-free Monday, 31 Mar 2014 at 10:02am

cheers fitz. Wow. Its pretty much a waste of time sending out the locators then.

Read the transcript from flight 447 thats some sad reading. They found the blackbox using side sonar, though in an area with significantly less wave action.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

fitzroy-21's picture
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fitzroy-21 Monday, 31 Mar 2014 at 11:04am

Yeah, I watched a docco on that a while ago. A culmination of stuff ups and they were bloody lucky to find the wreakage, let alone the black box and then to be able to retrieve the data from the black box.

This one will prove to be pretty difficult if not worse. IMO, chances are slim at best.

mick-free's picture
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mick-free Wednesday, 2 Apr 2014 at 10:53pm

Brits have sent in a nuclear sub called tireless (bit of irony) there. Its got a bigger range for finding the black box. Wonder what the range is? That's 10 ships out there searching for debris.

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Monday, 6 Oct 2014 at 2:01pm

Still searching..........no debri .......no anything ?

simba's picture
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simba Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 6:53am

The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared three weeks ago, remains missing despite the efforts of an international search team. In the absence of new information on the location and fate of the plane, there is no shortage of conspiracy theories.

According to one of the latest, unlike what Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak backed by his Australian counterpart Tony Abbott is claiming, the plane did not crash into the southern Indian Ocean but was captured.
MH370 could have been kidnapped to get to the technical brain-trust on board - 20 Freescale Semiconductor employees travelling to China. Freescale attracted attention because it is a Texas-based technology firm that develops components for hi-tech weapons systems and aircraft navigation among other things.
Interestingly, that leading innovative company has been oddly unwilling to provide information on the missing people. Only the nationalities of the employees were made public: 12 of them were from Malaysia and eight from China. However, Freescale has persistently declined to release their identities. "Out of respect for the families' privacy during this difficult time, we will not be releasing the names of the employees who were on board the flight at this time," Freescale spokeswoman Jacey Zuniga said.
Nevertheless, Mitch Haws, Freescale's vice president, described them as "people with a lot of experience and technical background," adding that "they were very important." According to Reuters, the vanished employees were engineers or specialists involved in projects to streamline and cut costs at key manufacturing facilities in China and Malaysia.
Beforeitsnews.com alleged that "it is conceivable that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plane is "cloaked," hiding with hi-tech electronic warfare weaponry that exists and is used. The website points out that that is the type of technology that Freescale Semiconductor develops.
Where were the people taken? Conspiracy theorists believe the passengers of flight MH370 are being held at Diego Garcia, a strategically important and secret US base near the Maldives. It is a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean and it has a runway long enough to land a Boeing 777. Could it have been a coincidence that this destination was programmed into the home flight simulator of captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane?

According to the Daily Mail, residents of the Kuda Huvadhoo island, the Maldives, reported seeing a plane on the morning of the disappearance of MH370. Eyewitness told the British tabloid: "I've never seen a jet flying so low over our island before. We've seen seaplanes, but I'm sure that this was not one of those. I could even make out the doors on the plane clearly. It's not just me either, several other residents have reported seeing the exact same thing. Some people got out of their houses to see what was causing the tremendous noise too."
The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went missing on March 8.

Craig's picture
Craig's picture
Craig Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 10:45am

Interesting Simba.

Coops70's picture
Coops70's picture
Coops70 Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 11:03am

I work in aviation, if that plane went down there would be debri all over the place. Life jackets pieces of composits and some left over sections of fusealage. Since the currents are moving so quickly and different directions to me increases the chance of some debri being discovered. I wonder why so many witnesses have been disregarded having said they saw this aircraft? I also heard adding to the rumour mill there was a large load of currency on that aircraft. If the plane was on fire it would not have made it so far.

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 11:24am

No debri, the 777 type of plane is capable of carrying 450 passengers.....a life jacket for each passenger plus crew , so 465 plus floating yellow jackets in the ocean and 7 months on not one life jacket recovered.

happyasS's picture
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happyasS Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 8:24pm

but how many lifejackets are actually floating? rather than trapped inside the cabin. and even if some beachgoer in eastern Africa found a jacket - would he even think twice about it being from mh370? unless its marked "mh370" then maybe not. are airline lifejackets even distinguishable from marine ones?

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 9:08pm

Very few would be trapped inside the cabin, the fuselage would not survive hitting the water and remaining intact....they inflate automatically when immersed in water [hydrostatic release ]
as do the life boats I think, if it crashed in the new search area 1800 ks off the W.A. coast....whats the main current direction debri would go ? Craig ?

happyasS's picture
happyasS's picture
happyasS Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 9:22pm

im not in the airline industry but I highly doubt that airlines use life jackets that auto inflate upon immersion in water...I can think of several reasons why it'd be a no-no.

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 9:48pm

Auto Inflate when immersed in water = gas cartridge powered
pull the toggle on your lifejacket to inflate = gas cartridge powered

happyasS's picture
happyasS's picture
happyasS Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 10:50pm

it'd be nothing to do with the gas...it'd be a safety hazard to have all those jackets go off inside the cabin...you want to inflate a jacket when you leave the aircraft , not while your still stuck inside it.

point is that I reckon that most of those jackets are sitting at the bottom of the sea along with the rest of the wreckage. metal sinks nearly immediately, and luggage sinks once its water logged. for the few remaining floating items - well its a fricken big ocean and there's lots of man made crap floating about and washing up on shore.

at currents running an average of 2nm per hour, it'd take more than 500 hours (20 days) for stuff to reach Australia from that distance - nearly anything of identifiable value would sink well before that. clothes from luggage might linger in the top ocean layer for a long while but who'd give to shits if you saw a piece of clothing wash up on your beach.

Coops70's picture
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Coops70 Tuesday, 7 Oct 2014 at 11:20pm

Life vest have to pulled to inflate but there should still be junk around that a satellite could see? Are they not supposed to be able to read a paper from space

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Thursday, 29 Jan 2015 at 11:17pm

MH370 declared an accident by Malaysian Authorities.

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Thursday, 6 Aug 2015 at 7:39pm

So we got a bit of wing flap with a 100% i.d. its from Malaysian Airlines and just found some more , a piece of window and some aircraft cushions.

simba's picture
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simba Thursday, 6 Aug 2015 at 8:21pm

Gotta say im unconvinced that flap was in the water 18 months cause im sure the growth on it would be a lot more than there is.At the moment the conspiracy theory is still looking good.

fitzroy-21's picture
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fitzroy-21 Thursday, 6 Aug 2015 at 8:51pm

I disagree simba. They were good sized barnacles on there, sure it wasn't completely covered, but washed up on the cobblestones and we don't know how long it was beached for. IMHO there is every possibility. Some interesting hindcast models showing debris routes.
http://content6.video.news.com.au/tyMndwdjqqKaY8DC5ED-as_As6_YMCDv/DOcJ-...

happyasS's picture
happyasS's picture
happyasS Friday, 7 Aug 2015 at 7:46pm

Finally, some proof to show all the conspiracy theorists that the plane was not shot down, is not "hiding" on some chinese island where the passengers are all decoding crypto in secret, and did not fly north to russia and off the end of the earth..

uncle_leroy's picture
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uncle_leroy Saturday, 8 Aug 2015 at 12:14am

Did read an article stating that a whole heap of batteries were on board as part of cargo, caught fire, comms gone, cabin and crew out due to smoke, flew till ran out of fuel on its own
No idea how true that theory is

udo's picture
udo's picture
udo Friday, 20 Oct 2017 at 7:42am

US company Ocean Infinity offering sea bed search
No find No fee .

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tubeshooter Friday, 20 Oct 2017 at 9:47pm

The recent Air Asia incident reminded me of two trips with Malaysian Airlines. First , the plane was stuck on on the tarmac for 90 minutes at Brisbane , one engine would not fire and it was the one that controlled the air con. No one allowed off the plane and we sat there for an eternity sweating our arses off. finally took off and landed safely at KL. Same plane on the way home , half way,lost the same engine , no air con again , and a sudden drop in altitude. spent an hour at 12000ft watching everyone on the plane freak out. Most of the passengers were just looking over their shoulders to see how everyone else was reacting .Staff did their best but were obviously trying to deal with their own mortality. I was actually at the back of the plane and was assisting staff in handing drinks out and calming passengers down. A big south African bloke with a thick accent was also doing his best telling people that the plane could make it to Darwin, no probs.
A little bit later you could hear the other engine kick in, the pressure stabilise and the air con back on../.. just wondering if it's the same dodgy piece of shit plane