[SystemSafety] MH370

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2014-03-11 10:12 , Chris Hills wrote:
> Actually you don’t need a detachable FDR or CVR.  All you need is a detachable simple distress
> beacon with a life of 48 hours. If you can find that it would narrow the search field to say, a 10
> mile radius,   rather than thousands of square miles.  Then you can find the wreckage and the black
> boxes far faster.

Moot point. The aircraft was equipped with ADS-B. That should suffice to say where it is, much more
closely than within a ten mile radius. More like, within a few meters. Every minute.

According to an experienced ex-ATC colleague who found it on the Internet, there are ADS-B returns
from FL 350, then two from FL 0 (!!), then nothing.

If those transmissions are veridical, then there is a puzzle how it got from FL350 to FL 0, that's
five vertical miles, in a minute or less. That is a vertical velocity of 300 mph, 480 kph, or over.
While continuing to transmit, so still attached to electricity supply and thus parts of airplane.
When airplanes break up, the busses usually quit too. If they are not veridical, then the puzzle is
what on earth can have been going on, while continuing to transmit.

The aircraft was also equipped with ACARS, which would be transmitting notifications from the
avionics fault/failure detection systems. But I understand there's nothing. In particular, no
mention of an ADS-B fault.

It was also at the time generating military primary radar returns, whence comes the suggestion of a
turn-back.

The big puzzle is not only where it is but is how it could have disappeared. That is why people are
thinking either
1. If there was a system failure, then something catastrophic happened, suddenly, so all systems
failed simultaneously; or
2. Somebody turned off the kit.

Option 1 would lead to wreckage being strewn across the ocean, but none has been seen. It also
doesn't explain the partial ADS-B returns. Option 2 suggests hijack.

There is also the option
3. Somebody was spoofing the entire ADS-B returns. But then, surely we would seen a disconnection in
the radar/ADS-B traces?

The point here is that ADS-B was supposed to take care of all these concerns about where an aircraft
is at what time. All of them. It didn't - while apparently continuing to transmit. How not?

PBL

Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de