Chris Ashton, Inmarsat
Chris Moore, Phoenix International
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The BBC Two's Horizon programme "Where is Flight MH370?" revealed the fact that prior to the Ocean Shield detecting any underwater pings, the Investigators leading the search for MH370 already knew Inmarsat's "hotspot" location for MH370, and Inmarsat themselves expected Ocean Shield to go to that hotspot location to listen for pings from MH370's black boxes.
But that isn't what happened.
Instead, Ocean Shield spent 2 months searching an area where they had detected four underwater signals that were outside of the specifications of a black box Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB).
The programme also documented the fact that the experts on the Ocean Shield were aware that false detections were possible, because it had happened with HMS Echo.
Yet the Investigators expect everyone to believe that they didn't realize the four underwater signals detected by Ocean Shield weren't valid until 8 weeks later.
That is implausible.
The Investigators had absolute confidence in Inmarsat's analysis, so when the team detected signals that weren't in Inmarsat's "hotspot" location, why wouldn't they verify them?
The experts onboard Ocean Shield knew HMS Echo had detected an invalid signal, so for that reason alone, why wouldn't they verify the signals they detected?
And despite Chris Moore, of Phoenix International, stating during the programme that they did verify the signals, the Investigators didn't announce that the signals weren't valid until 8 weeks later.
The following is my transcript of statements made by Chris Ashton of Inmarsat, and Chris Moore of Phoenix International, during the BBC Two's Horizon programme "Where is Flight MH370?" which aired on June 17, 2014. The youtube video for the programme is here.
Starting at 43:43 Chris Ashton of Inmarsat said, "We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is."
Starting at 45:01 Chris Moore, of Phoenix International, who had been on Ocean Shield, said, "HMS Echo believed they had detected a 37 and a half kilohertz pulse in the water so we headed to that area and came up with a search plan."
Starting at 47:28 Chris Moore said, "During that survey leg HMS Echo was able to deduce that the 37 and a half kilohertz pings they were hearing were, uh, not valid."
Starting at 47:46 Chris Moore said, "At that point we regrouped and went back to our best known last position, being the, uh, eight minute arc, and our intention was to work our way south. South was determined to have a higher probability, a more probable, uh, flight path."
Note: The "eight minute arc" refers to time 00:19 UTC, when MH370 sent a Log-on message to the satellite/ground station, the satellite/ground station sent several messages back to MH370, and then MH370 sent an Acknowledge back to the satellite/ground station.
Starting at 48:33 Chris Moore said, "It's theorized to have been that the plane was going down. Low on fuel. It did a roll. When the plane rolled the fuel then uh the engine was able to restart and part of the startup sequence was initializing this, this handshake with the Inmarsat. And it was a incomplete handshake. So we're working on the premise that perhaps this last handshake is where the plane was in its final stages."
Starting at 55:25 Chris Moore said, "And we had a detection. Big moment. Uh, are you sure that's what we heard? Are you sure that's what we're, is it not us? Uh, you know. It was elation and panic, and self doubt. Um, wonderment to let's get busy and find this thing. Let's track it down."
Starting at 56:15 Chris Ashton said, "My thoughts were they were probably going to traverse down the final arc to go over our hotspot area. But of course they, they found their, their ping detection fairly early on."
Starting at 56:35 Chris Moore said, "The decision was made, uh, we had enough detections, and it was time to shift over to the AUV ops."
Starting at 57:39 Chris Aston said, "It was by no means, um, an unrealistic location but it was further to the north east than our area of highest probability."
Some problems I have with the Horizon program.
ReplyDeleteCBS reported that on 3rd April "the HMS Echo reported one alert as it searched for sonic transmissions from the missing plane's flight data recorder, but it was quickly discounted as a false alarm..."
No mention of: Chinese media reported on 5th April that Haixun 01 picked up a 37.5 kHz ping using what was later reported as a handheld detector in a location stated as 25 degrees south and 101 degrees east and that HMS Echo spent 2 days in that region searching.
No mention or 33.33KHz pings detected by Ocean Shield and HMS Echo joining her in the new reduced search area to the NE.
and:
"According to analysis by the Australian Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre on HMAS Albatross, a navy air base in the town of Nowra around two hours’ drive from Sydney, the signals are likely to have come from a black-box locator beacon. Recorded with a frequency of 33.331 kHz, and a time between pings of 1.106 seconds, it is slightly off tune with the 37.5 kHz signal that locator beacons are designed to emit. Officials have blamed this anomaly on weakening batteries and the vagaries of deep-sea conditions–where salinity and temperature differences in the water can make sound refract and flatten"
So the Horizon program, based on edited comments from Chris Moore gave the impression that the 37.5 kHz pings detected by HMS Echo are the reason why Ocean Shield was searching further from the Inmarsat hotspot and they were subsequently proved to be invalid but that's not how it looked and was reported back then. It also doesn't match the marinetraffic.com activity.