Talk:Malaysia Airlines Flight 370/Archive 9

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Black box finder diagram

I have changed the caption for accuracy, but am aware there is now a slight conflict with the embedded title. Would it be better (possible) to remove the thumb image caption altogether? Also it says Max depth 6,100m (which is pretty deep!) - but how deep is the ocean at this location? And should this be added to the text? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:49, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

IIRC, its average is about 4000m, down to 7,500m Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 19:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. Should this be added to the article? I expect some of the sources have mentioned it. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:53, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Disappearance

I am surprised that the sentence "The sharp turn seemed to be intentional as normally it would have taken two minutes for the aircraft to make such a turn, and during that time there was no emergency call.[23]" has not been attacked as this seems to me to be total speculation. Roundtheworld (talk) 17:49, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that's speculation but it's speculation reported in the citation. The CNN article cited says:

The sharp turn seemed to be intentional, the source said, because executing it would have taken the Boeing 777 two minutes -- a time period during which the pilot or co-pilot could have sent an emergency signal if there had been a fire or other emergency onboard.

Authorities say the plane didn't send any emergency signals, though some analysts say it's still unclear whether the pilots tried but weren't able to communicate because of a catastrophic failure.

The "source" is "a source close to the investigation into the missing flight." I believe the "authorities" cited are a rehash/summary of what had been reported earlier in press conferences.

I changed the wording in the Wikipedia article in that I replaced "... during that time there was no emergency call" with "... and that no emergency call was received from the aircraft." --Marc Kupper|talk 18:10, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Doesnt "The sharp turn seemed to be intentional as normally it would have taken two minutes for the aircraft to make such a turn" seems a bit made up they dont really know they are guessing without evidence. The last bit "and that no emergency call was received from the aircraft." not sure why they would make an emergency call in a turn rather then any point after the last message. Suggest we could lose that sentence as we already mention the turn in the sentence before it. MilborneOne (talk) 18:18, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I believe that the "sharp turn" happened comes from radar data. From what I recall, that it took two minutes is speculation based on if the turn was done by the autopilot or manually using parameters similar to what the autopilot would do.

That the mayday report could have been done at any time is why I did this edit. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:17, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the sentence as it is a bit speculative and gueses, the turn is already mentioned in the earlier sentence. MilborneOne (talk) 19:25, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

That's fine. I reread your earlier comment. I believe the use of the words "sharp turn" is more about that it's an acute angle relative to the planned flight path. I have not seen a report that stated if it was observed as to how long the turn took but then have not hunted for that since the first couple of days after the disappearance. I do recall that it took two minutes was speculation based on normal aircraft behavior. It could well be a turn such as the final turns towards the Pentagon by American Airlines Flight 77. Either way, IIRC, it was initially described as as "turn" as the radar data showed that it had turned back and had flown over West Malaysia. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:39, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it is pure speculation (even as it is now worded). I can't see that an unnamed and unconfirmed "source close to the investigation" is a reliable source. What is reliable is the statement given in the 15 March Press Statement by the Prime Minister:

Shortly afterwards, near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft’s transponder was switched off.

From this point onwards, the Royal Malaysian Air Force primary radar showed that an aircraft which was believed – but not confirmed – to be MH370 did indeed turn back. It then flew in a westerly direction back over peninsular Malaysia before turning northwest. Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.

Today, based on raw satellite data that was obtained from the satellite data service provider, we can confirm that the aircraft shown in the primary radar data was flight MH370. After much forensic work and deliberation, the FAA, NTSB, AAIB and the Malaysian authorities, working separately on the same data, concur.

I can't find any half decent source for the plane flying lower. No radar data has been released.

This could be summarised as: "On 15 March, the Malaysian Prime Minister said that Royal Malaysian Air Force primary radar combined with raw satellite data indicate that near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, MH370 turned back and flew in a westerly direction over the Malaysian peninsular, before turning northwest. He stated that "Up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, these movements are consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane" [1]" Kulath (talk) 22:25, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Pilots' signoff to Malaysian ATC: suspicious?

My brother, who claims a deep familiarity with aviation procedure, says that the fact that the pilot/co-pilot did not explicitly identify himself when saying farewell to Malaysian Air Traffic Control is contrary to established procedure, and could be seen as a method of encoding a distress signal, comparable to the deliberate mistake about a family holiday in Capricorn One. Has this possibility been discussed, whether with a positive or negative assessment, so far as anyone knows? I don't recall any online mention of that aspect of the incident by anyone claiming specialist knowledge. Sorry if this is covering old ground! Harfarhs (talk) 16:02, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but with respect your brother is not a reliable source, not everybody follows procedure all the time so it is really just more speculating. MilborneOne (talk) 16:08, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

If you actually bother to read what I asked, MilborneOne,you might actually say something useful. Harfarhs (talk) 16:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Additionally, according to this it seems like he did identify himself as MH370. However, I have no expertise in this area so I wouldn't know if this is normal. You will need to have a reliable third party source if you want to include any analysis on this. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 16:11, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Of course, I never said anything about including anything, I asked a simple question. Thanks for the first half of your answer :) Harfarhs (talk) 16:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

A valid question, I'm sure. But we're only here to discuss what should be in the article. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:20, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Yup, no need to be rude to MilborneOne. Wikipedia talk pages are not a forum of discussion, so we assume you are talking about improvements you want to make to the article. If you were looking for general discussion, you can go to a site like reddit or something. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 16:22, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

• Some sections of the press implied something suspicious with the sign-off "All right, good night" instead of the exact words "This is MH370, over and out". But when I looked at the transcript, I noticed that ATC bade the pilot goodnight, so it didn't surprise me that he said goodnight in return. It may have been irregular, but I suspect it wasn't "red light this is a hi-jack" irregular. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:40, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
• Just as a bye-the-way but they would be unlikely to use "MH370" either as the callsign was or should have been "Malaysian 370". MilborneOne (talk) 16:47, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

An excellent point, OhC. I think in general, because they are the moving party, within the contraints of radio speak, aircrew tend to adopt the style used by whichever ATC they are talking to. It's just regarded as good manners. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:50, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, the media's focus on those words just seems to be a sensationalist attempt to take the copilot's words out of context. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 17:38, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

I saw an article once pointing out they should have acknowledged the handover request to Vietnam but considering the transcript is not validated even, that's like 2 levels of speculation. You got to wait for something trustworthy, not analyze it yourself. Marked (talk) 03:54, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me there are 2 seperate things here. As I think we've discussed before, the transcript release by the Daily Telegraph is fairly useless for anything significant since it was translated from English to Chinese to English. I believe however that the final words were confirmed by several sources long before the transcript was released. However AFAIK the only thing confirmed was "All right, good night" without more context, I think any speculation on these words even coming from a decent RS is not particularly meaningful. Nil Einne (talk) 13:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

For the record, pilots haven't used the "over and out" phrase since the days of WWII movies. Using "good day" or "good night" is a common and acceptable way to say that is your last transmission to that particular ATC controller, if you have already identified your flight, in a previous response. If the controller had instructed them to contact a different controller on a new frequency, the pilot should have repeated back that frequency, and then said "goodnight," OR "Malaysian 370," if that was the only communication with that particular controller, on that frequency. EditorASC (talk) 07:15, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

LOL That being the case, there's even less grounds for believing that "All right, good night" signoff is anything suspicious. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 07:30, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Not least of all because those final words have since been corrected as being: "Goodnight Malaysian three seven zero." Nothing to see (hear) here. —sroc 💬 22:17, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

It's possible a full transcript will get released soon. This article from April 1, 2014 says "The civil aviation department said the investigating team had been instructed to release the full transcript at the next briefing with the next of kin". This other article has a similar statement. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:24, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I refuse to get excited over this. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 05:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

"I believe however that the final words were confirmed by several sources long before the transcript was released", whoops guess I was wrong. In any case comparison of the official transcript and the original English (of unknown quality) to Chinese to English transcript will I think confirm relying on it for anything of significance was flawed. As for the OP, perhaps they were correct on the signoff, except it wasn't the actual signoff. Nil Einne (talk) 11:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

When they finally release an official transcript, I will be interested in finding out if the initial contact of that last AT Controller told the flight to "Squawk Ident." If that was done, the pilot didn't have to say anything. He only had to push the ident button on the transponder panel and that would make the flight's radar tag flash on the ATC's radar display. If the pilot received the impression ATC was busy with other flights too, it would be understandable that he would limit his words as much as possible.

In the approach control area of Chicago ORD during the busiest times, for example, it is SOP not to reply at all to the Approach Controller's directions, after a squawk ident. He just watches the radar tag to see if it changes altitude and/or speed or direction, as instructed. When he finally hands the flight off to the tower frequency, the pilot should say ONLY "cleared for the 14Right approach, 119.6, UAL 140."

The point is that how congested the skies were in that area, and how many flights that particular ATC was commanding at that time, could be significant when trying to come to any conclusions about anything appearing "suspicious" during that final contact with the pilots. If the pilot received the impression that ATC was very busy, it would be protocol to limit his words to those absolutely necessary.

Not suggesting anyone put this in the article, but thinking it might help us to better decide which allegedly RS sources are prudent and responsible in their writing, and which might be jumping to conclusions without adequate knowledge or evidence. EditorASC (talk) 04:30, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Last conversation in the transcript at 0119 (Malaysian time)

I don't think the article is making best use of reliable sources.

WRT the section on Disappearance: "When it ceased all communication and the transponder signal was lost". Since there is no source for this information, I don't know how to refute it. It would be better to say that the last conversation with ATC was at 0119 (with the Press statement source given below), and then also to state when the transponder was lost.

(I cannot at the moment find a source for when the transponder was switched off, and there doesn't appear to be on in the wiki article. What I have is the Malaysian Airlines Press Conference on 18 March (http://www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/dark-site.html) which stated: "near the border between Malaysian and Vietnamese air traffic control, the aircraft’s transponder was switched off".)

We have the following in the press conference of DATUK SERI HISHAMUDDIN TUN HUSSEIN ACTING MINISTER OF TRANSPORT, but I don't know what to make of it as it is unclear: Q: As for the aircraft communication and reporting system, when and where did it last transmit data? Did it stop at the same time the transponder stop? A: In our secondary radar, we look at our radar and it was posting about 1:21 in the morning. The target dissappeared at 1.30 in the morning. That is because we have the secondary data, our primary radar does not pick it up and adapt particular part of time then the defence primary radar was analyse at the same day and there was indication of possibility an air turn back. There is the reason why a search was conducted in the Straits of Melaka, Andaman Sea.

WRT Timeline of disappearance the entry at 0119 should read: Last conversation with ATC (http://www.mot.gov.my/my/Newsroom/Press%20Release/Tahun%202014/MH370%20Press%20Statement%20by%20Ministry%20of%20Transport%20on%2031%20March%202014.pdf).

See below for why "The Daily Mail" reference is inappropriate.

WRT Note g 7). There is no evidence that the Malaysian chief executive claimed that the last voice was "all right, good night". The only source for this is 'The Daily Telegraph' transcript, which is at best an unsubstantiated leak of a doubly translated (Chinese Whispers) document. It is true that Malaysia Airlines' Ahmad Jauhari Yahya stated verbally at a press conference on Monday 17 March 2014 (http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/mar/17/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-co-pilot-all-right-good-night-video) that the voice was that of the co-pilot. This is clear on the video. It also also true that Malaysian Ministry of Transport Press Statement on 31 March 2014 stated that "The authorities are still doing forensic investigation to determine whether those last words from the cockpit were by the pilot or the co-pilot" http://www.mot.gov.my/my/Newsroom/Press%20Release/Tahun%202014/MH370%20Press%20Statement%20by%20Ministry%20of%20Transport%20on%2031%20March%202014.pdf.

The reference to the Malaysian Times article adds noting, and only confuses matters, because it suggests a timing that is again unsubstantiated. The reference to the BBC article on new account of last words, is unnecessary, because we have the MoT Press Statement.

Therefore this should say:

7) On 17 March, the Malaysian Airlines chief executive verbally stated at a press conference that the last voice communication from the aircraft was spoken by the co-pilot (http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/mar/17/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-co-pilot-all-right-good-night-video). On 31 March, a Malaysian Ministry of Transport Press Statement threw doubt on this by stating that "The authorities are still doing forensic investigation to determine whether those last words from the cockpit were by the pilot or the co-pilot" (http://www.mot.gov.my/my/Newsroom/Press%20Release/Tahun%202014/MH370%20Press%20Statement%20by%20Ministry%20of%20Transport%20on%2031%20March%202014.pdf).

I agree this is a discrepancy, and an example of public communications being beset with confusion. I don't know whether it is important enough to be included. If forced to choose, I would be inclined to include it to throw light on the poor quality of the Malaysian statements.

WRT section Criticism and Response. The part on "The last words…" is entirely inappropriate. As above, the only entity that reported the "All right, good night", is 'The Daily Telegraph', which has since been thrown into doubt. The reference to 'The Daily Mail' article is entirely unhelpful as it provided no source or substantiation for the last words, other than "investigators…revealed", and moreover introduces much that is entirely speculative. The reference to the News.com.au and Al Jazeera articles are entirely unnecessary given that we have the official report.

Kulath (talk) 17:41, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I'll make that change as no-one seems to have objected Kulath (talk) 22:27, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Duncan Steel

Where is the discussion of Duncan Steel http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/507 and others issues with Inmarsat analysis. Dr. Steel is a noted scientist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Steel and he and a group of Sat engineers have discovered multiple issues with the Inmarsat analysis. 172.5.26.19 (talk) 17:54, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

We don't have one at the moment. Has it been reported anywhere? Do you have other sources to refer to? regards, Lynbarn (talk) 18:13, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

What!!! Why do you want to wait till you can cite some media source before you report something. Would you have said "interesting theory this Einstein person has, but let's wait till it gets picked up by CNN or the Daily Mail"? I have lots of objections to many parts of this article, because so many of the sources are to media rehashes of what should be cited. I want to go to the original government statement, not some reporter who may make a poor job of summarising. Kulath (talk) 22:39, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The link says he has not had access to all the raw data so he has made most of it up! MilborneOne (talk) 18:21, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Something Dr. Steel did not comment on is that Inmarsat would have access to the burst frequencies and other data for many thousands of aircraft tracks that were at known positions meaning their work should not be entirely theory. If needed, investigators can have aircraft fly along probable northern and southern courses and to observe exactly how the Inmarsat system received and reported transmissions from the test aircraft. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:11, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

Comment to the OP - this does seem like material that can be added to the Duncan Steel article, particularly if it gets picked up by the media. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:20, 3 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be dangerous to include Duncan Steel's analysis, because he has had to reverse engineer the data from which AAIB and the other experts are working, before he can draw his conclusions. As such, it is too easy for AAIB to claim he is mistaken because he doesn't know all the facts. Also before DS's analysis could be considered reliable, it would need to be peer reviewed. Having said all that, I think the Malaysian authorities have a lot of questions to answer about the AAIB analysis. Kulath (talk) 22:49, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

"Southern Indian Ocean" is speculation

I say we remove it as there is absolutely no evidence it's down there apart from a few unconfirmed images. – Thecodingproject (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I say we leave it, as it is the only place currently being searched, and there is plenty of RS to confirm the search is continuing, still over a very large area. Regards Lynbarn (talk) 20:45, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it should be removed. Still no tangible and conclusive evidence the debris is from the flight. WP:CRYSTAL applies here. -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 21:12, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

It belongs. That's because those conducting the search chose to look there because they believed the plane may have been there. It's part of the story, which at this stage is far more about the search than about what actually happened to the plane. If it was only about the latter it would be a very small article. What doesn't belong is when editors here, or other commentators, propose theories that have never been part of the actual story of this plane's disappearance and the actual search for it. HiLo48 (talk) 22:07, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

While the search itself in the Southern Indian Ocean may be based on speculation we can safely include it in the Wikipedia article as it's widely covered by multiple WP:RS. There are reports of aircraft and ships being deployed. That is a fact, not speculation. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:31, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose to remove it: The international Investigation team made a conclusion on 24 March based on the highly qualified scientific Inmarsat calculation of the planes whereabouts, that the plane ended its flight in the Southern part of the Indian Ocean. On the same day the Malaysian authorities closed down all other previous search activities beneath the "Northen arc and the Northern part of the Southern Arc (which is the waters stretching from Indonesia down south to Australia)". This conclusion has not been put into question by any sources ever since 24 March. Despite three recent shifts of the search area, all these new areas are still located at the Southern part of the Indian Ocean, and they are all still located beneath the initially drawed 8:11 Southern arc-line (on which the Inmarsat calculation showed the plane at 8:11 MST was located somewhere along). Danish Expert (talk) 09:16, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Allow me to point out that your reasoning is also based on speculation. Because the Malaysian government switched their search focus, we are to interpret that to mean something? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not the National Enquirer. Once again reminding to editors to read and/or remember WP:CRYSTAL. Until everything is known, there just speculation to be made on certain things. And that speculation is simply not encyclopedic. -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 12:30, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

It's NOT speculation. Scientific analysis of satellite signals received from equipment that was on the aircraft has been proven to have originated from the Southern Indian Ocean. The last signal was transmitted close to the time that the aircraft would have run out of fuel (so it couldn't have flown thousands to kilometers to another region). Please see the section Analysis of satellite communication. AHeneen (talk) 12:59, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

The signals only indicate it was there at one time, not that it's in the Southern Indian Ocean now. So yes, still speculation. -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 13:20, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't really understand your reply above. Do you now suggest that the plane landed on a hangar ship, which sailed it away in the dark from the southern part of the Indian Ocean, without anybody noticing? This is the only alternative compared to what Malaysian authorities has presented as a fact: "That flight 370 ended its journey in the southern part of the Indian Ocean". If you still believe all arc-positions at 8:11 are possible, I will suggest you read the chapter linked to above by AHeneen in conjunction with my reply in this earlier talkpage discussion. It is a certain fact due to the signal frequency gaps (Doppler effect), that Flight 370 could only have flown South. The only uncertainty which still remain (and not yet is a fact), is how far the plane travelled south before running out of fuel and dropping down in the water. We only know as a fact that it happened between 8:19 to 9:15 MST. If it was 8:19, then it ended its flight in the current search area 1000-2100 km west of Learmonth Airport. If it was later (a theory no longer believed), then the previous search areas 3000km west and southwest of Perth along the southern part of the southern 8:11 arc line could also be possible. The point here is, that we in each of these cases still deal with an area entitled "Southern part of the Indian Ocean". Today this is a fact, based on scientific data analysis presented independently both by Inmarsat and AAIB. Danish Expert (talk) 14:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Returning to the original premise, and the section header, Yes, perhaps it IS speculation, but it is not Wikipedia doing the speculating, it is the best (and getting better, perhaps) estimate made by world experts, based on detailed analysis of the available empirical data, and is supported/reported by many of what Wikipedia regards as reliable sources. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 14:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

As long as speculation as an item of "fact" stays out of the article, all is well. Come on, we've all seen how artilces such as this can become tabloid news-like with just an edit or two. That's all I'm saying: keep it factual, keep speculation out, and keep it encyclopedic. -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 15:38, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

This is not speculation. This is evidence based. I suggest you go take a look at a tabloid to see the difference.--Brian Dell (talk) 17:15, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "This...", but if you're referring to what's currently in the article, fine. Like I said, we just need to make sure it stays encyclopedic and doesn't venture into wp:crystal territory. Like articles do. Frequently. I know what a tabloid looks and reads like. The truth is, Wikipedia is far from perfect and its articles frequently do read like tabloid garbage and speculation. This article isn't immune to that happening. What article is? -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 03:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

People have written in WP:CRYSTAL, WP:RECENT and WP:FANCRUFT because there are frequently problems of this type. Nice problem to have because most of the reactions here are actions rather then words. I'm sure glad I haven't yet had to fight the usual bunch of sweet nothings and other "reactions" from over-selfimportant politicians. ;-) -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:50, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Links

>> Ships race for time to find MH370 black boxes >> Australian ship probes another 'pulse signal'.> 'Time running out' for plane search >> The mystery of CNN 2014 >> Plane search teams detect new pings Lihaas (talk) 18:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

So, Al Jazeera kindly tell us: "Because the US Navy's pinger locater can pick up black box signals up to a depth of 6,100m, it should be able to hear the devices even if they are lying in the deepest part of the search zone, which is about 5,800m below the surface." I'd suggest adding this info. I guess there will an optimum depth, relative to the sea bed, at which the locator will typically be deployed. But I'm not sure where you find that kind of information. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:58, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The issue is the thermocline which reflects sounds back either back to the surface or back to the ocean floor. You need to get your hydrophone below the thermocline layer. Also, the pinger is not very noisy meaning you need to get the hydrophone within 1 nautical mile (6,076 feet) of the pinger. What they end up doing is towing the hydrophone about 1000 feet above the ocean floor. At 1000 feet you are able to scan a swath that's 11,978 feet wide assuming the ocean floor is flat and level.^[2] --Marc Kupper|talk 05:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

That explanation and source sound ideal. I think Towed pinger locator could usefully be updated accordingly. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Now added. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:22, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh dear god, Sheldon Cooper gave me a headache ;)Lihaas (talk) 18:22, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Transponder

The Timeline of disappearance has 01:21 "Last secondary radar (transponder) contact at .." and then at 01:22 "Transponder and ADS-B now off". I changed the "now off" to no longer operating as it implies that they were switched off, which we dont know. Anyhow are not the two events actually the same event and should be listed at the same time? MilborneOne (talk) 19:47, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Ping reported by Chinese

Looking at some of the newsmedia reports about this, It's interesting that the reported location is north of previous search areas, and south of where they were supposed to be searching today... see map HERE Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 15:51, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Complete rubbish. “China's Liberation Daily reported that three people on board had heard the signals, which were not recorded as they came suddenly.” You are searching for this plane and are not continuously recording?! You report it without confirming it??!!--Nowa (talk) 16:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

• All chaff and no wheat... We are being overwhelmed by irrelevant details that's now making me very sympathetic to how the Malaysians must be feeling. Which is making me think that perhaps all the unconfirmed sightings of debris anrubbish need to be removed from the article too. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 16:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Certainly could be simplified to Floating debris has been spotted during the search but none have been confirmed as debris from 9M-MRO. MilborneOne (talk) 16:46, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree, the news media tends to treat every little thing like a breakthrough in order to get more pageviews. We can afford to wait to see if this (or any of the random debris sightings) actually turns into something. Maybe just a sentence or so in the meantime. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 16:55, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

This should be attributed to Chinese sources or Chinese media. They don't have a great track record so far for accuracy and seem to be straining to appear to be ones to make a breakthrough. Once we've got more non-Chinese sources saying they believe this is solid and are acting accordingly attribution could be dropped.--Brian Dell (talk) 17:19, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Note that they have an English-speaking reporter on the ship reporting to CCTV. See Here She is reporting that signals were picked up both on Friday and Saturday. But CCTV is also urging caution.Roundtheworld (talk) 17:29, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree the Chinese should not have made the announcement themselves, but communicated directly about their findings to Houston. Nevertheless it sounds quiet promising according to several CNN black box experts, that they were able to pick up a pulse of around 90 ticks (one per second during 1.5 minuttes) at the 37.5 KHz frequency. As reasons to why it disappeared, it could either be because the: "ship sailed away from it because it could not immediately stop", "the battery of the beacon ran out of energy", "the current and salt layers in the waters beneath shifted and created an intermediate sound wall the frequency could not travel through". Of course we need confirmation and more details, but this is so far the closest we have come to a promising finding, that it really deserves to get shortly mentioned by our Wikipedia article. Of course not with all the details I mentioned here, but at least to reflect the official statement released a couple of hours ago by Houston, who stated: "The characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box"..."However, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft"..."The deployment of RAAF assets to the area where the Chinese ship detected the sounds is being considered.". Danish Expert (talk) 18:44, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

I've added the JACC ref to the search phase three and timeline sections. The ping isn't yet mentioned in the lead - should it be? Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 19:17, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Not reliable. Having several people say they heard it from someone doesn't make it more reliable. The quote above misrepresents what Houston says [3]. What he says in effect is that he has heard media reports but he doesn't know whether they are true/reliable: "...reports...could not be verified at this point in time." He is not saying (here) that he doesn't know whether the signals are related to the missing aircraft, he says that later. He is saying he doesn't know whether the reports are reliable at all.

I see not objection to saying "On 5 April, unconfirmed reports from Chinese media said that the ship Haixun 01 had picked up a 37.5 kHz signal similar to what is be expected from a "black box", at about 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude("Chinese search vessels discovers pulse signal in Indian Ocean". Xinhua. Retrieved 5 April 2014.). The JACC [4] were unable to confirm the reports. The location is within the southern corridor from where it is believed that the last pings where received by Inmarsat.

I don't see any point in including the BBC citation, because that is just reporting what the Xinhua citation says. It is not an independent source. The Xinhua source is pretty flaky. There is no by-line, and there is no other named person. If it said that "I John Smith saw the screen showing the pulse being detected, and the ship's captain Davy Jones told me that the equipment had definitely detected a signal", then it might be a bit more reliable. Maybe they were running the detector in a training mode, and the reports are mistaken (I don't particularly believe that, but just want to give examples of why this is not reliable). Let's see if the Chinese or Malaysian or Australian authorities issue a Press Release to support this. Kulath (talk) 22:01, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

It would be best if you would get WP:RS adjusted to explicitly endorse your approach to the sources here (i.e. BBC has not independently verified the Xinhua report). I happen to agree with you and have been interested for some time in getting the reliable source policy to encourage editors to take this approach. Absent that, some editors are going to say the BBC is a reliable source so just stop any further analysis right there.--Brian Dell (talk) 01:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Did you have any specific suggestions for amending wp:rs? Shall we take it up on it's talk page?--Nowa (talk) 01:18, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Nowa, please be my guest with using some of the material from my discussion below about primary and secondary sources on the WP:RS talk page if you want. I would like to argue that especially in the case of current events: If a reporter saw it with his own eyes, then it can be used and this is a good source for facts (but to be reliable, it has to come from a reliable media, and probably has to name the reporter). Ideally two independent witnesses are needed. If a reporter is just repeating a press release/statement, then this is pure hearsay, and the press release must be used as the source if at all possible (this will often actually be a secondary source, as the spokesman probably wasn't directly involved in the event). If the reporter is quoting from a live press conference, and there is no video or transcript of what was said, then great care must be exercised, because this is notoriously unreliable. In the case of current (news) events, interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources will be somewhat uncommon (reporters may not have time), so care should be taken about the reliability of any interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the news. In the case of current news events, it is almost inevitable that most of the article will be reports of the facts with little interpretation, analysis, or evaluation. Kulath (talk) 23:27, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Surely everyone has seen enough courtroom dramas to know the difference between hearsay and evidence. Kulath (talk) 18:08, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• Yet another "hot lead"... Humpf! This is typical of what happens when people are clutching at straws. The problem is that they are still looking for the haystack. These ships are only out there hoping a for a miraculous break. Although it's definitely more promising than some unconfirmed spotting of aircraft debris that they have gotten all excited about, this is not only unconfirmed, it's unreliable and hearsay. Best left out for now; certainly does not warrant the lead being scooped. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 01:43, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I support not to include these reports directly in the lead, until the point of time it has been confirmed whether or not these appearing pings originated from the flight recorders. It need to be proofed highly significant before entering the lead. However, I firmly insist these reports are both notable and relevant to include in the Third phase chapter. Once again the article also covers a notable "search event", and the detection of ping sounds from the bottom of the Indian Ocean consistent with what is emitted by flight recorder beacons, is for sure not a daily event, and by itself a significant part of the search story to report! Occasionally it appear to me, that some of you would prefer that we not cover the "search event" at all in the article. I however have to insist, that both the shifting of search areas, the amount of used financial resources, the number of employed vessels in average during the times of searching, the frequency of discovered debris unrelated to flight 370, and the discovering of 37.5 KHz ping emitted signals, are all notable stories to report within the "search event". Danish Expert (talk) 06:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

On a sidenote, according to Houston's press conference today 12:00, Ocean Shield this morning around 10:30 am MST (equal to local time in Perth) at a position about 300 nautical miles away from the Chinese vessel Haixun 01 also discovered "an acoustic event". Because of this, it will stay on its location and investigate this event more closely. HMS Echo will however immediately travel to the Chinese ship and help it investigate their acoustic finding more closely, it has an expected time of arrival 14 hours after Houston's press conference (equal to around Monday 7 April 02:00 MST). Danish Expert (talk) 06:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

On another side note the two boxes dont have to be in the same location. MilborneOne (talk) 11:48, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

True, but 300 nm is quite a separation, seeing as they started off only a few feet apart. To have found anything so soon after starting underwater searches is pretty incredible. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:04, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

One month on...

One month on, and there have been four million page views. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:19, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Edits by 36.72.127.227

36.72.127.227 has been really messing up the timeline, inserting refs to Houston, Australia and the JACC everywhere. I undid the most recent but there is a lot of tidying up to be done. Thanks Roundtheworld (talk) 08:24, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

They seem to be good faith edits by an experienced editor. Maybe he/she forgot to log in? --Marc Kupper|talk 08:37, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• All recentist humdrum day-by-day account of goings on. Now removed altogether. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:20, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Archived references - now Sources discussion

Just letting everyone know that the press releases, main page, archive pages, maps, photos, & passenger manifest from Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation concerning MH370 have been archived on the Wayback Machine (6 April) up to "PM NAJIB RAZAK’S PRESS CONFERENCE REMARKS IN PERTH ON MH370, 3 April 2014". I'm too tired/lazy right now to add the archive links to all the references on this article, but the citation template for these references will need:

|archiveurl= |archivedate=2014-04-06 |deadurl=no

The archive date is 2014-04-06 for all the archived content of the site and the deadurl=no parameter needs to be added for the links to appear in the correct order (link, archived link). See this guide.

The Malaysia Airlines website for MH370 statements is extremely frustrating. Unlike the DCA site, where each release has its own page/url, the MA site is not only a continuous feed of text (so as more is added, the statement will move to the next page), but there's just one url (so no dark-site.html, dark-site_2.html or something to that effect). The Wayback Machine has an archive of the first page for April 5, but click to go to page 2 and the press release shown is from 9 March, not 28 March as the website). WebCite has a similar problem, only archiving press releases for 1-5 April on page one and nothing on page 2. However, because there is only one url, I can't request archives to be generated for older pages on either site. When the mouse hovers over the lick to page 2, "javascript:{}" appears in a box in my browser. I don't have the IT knowledge to understand the implications, but maybe Javascript is responsible for this mess. Any way to solve these issues? AHeneen (talk) 02:26, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Basically, what the javascript thing means is that rather than traversing to a different page when you click on the page links at the bottom, the browser executes some javascript code to display text, which is grabbed from elsewhere (that's what it seems to me, but I haven't used javascript much). – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 02:39, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

What we might have to do is to Google up the text of one of the www.malaysiaairlines.com's "dark-site" notices. The last time I did that I saw a number of news sites that seem to be archiving every single notice as though they were press releases. For example, Yahoo News Malaysia has some of them.

• Apr 3, 2014 Press Briefing by Najib Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia
• 5 April 2014 MH370 PRESS BRIEFING BY HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN, MINISTER OF DEFENCE AND ACTING MINISTER OF TRANSPORT 5 APRIL 2014.
• Apr 1, 2014 Press Briefing by Hishammuddin Hussein, Minister of Defence and Acting Minister of Transport (not on on Yahoo and so I used a copy on Wall Street Journal)

One annoying aspect to doing it that way is that the Malaysia Airlines's title is not always used when a media organization saves a copy.

When this incident started I took a look under the hood of the "dark-site" code and saw there's no way to create a permanent URL. They are numbering the pages 1 to N with page 1 always being the most recent announcement. The underlying URL that the JavaScript picks up is this. Click the link and change the curpage=1 at the end to 2, 3, 4, etc. to see older articles. Had the internal code gone the other way and made curpage=1 the oldest article we would have nice permalinks. --Marc Kupper|talk 08:31, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

• That's one of the issues I had with the MAS darksite initially that led me to remove them. I don't see it as a particular problem with needing backups and archiving (which don't work properly anyway) because all that information has been picked up by one secondary source or another. I'd prefer that those be used instead of relying in a primary source. BTW, another problem is that since the article started, the Telegraph sources have started appearing behind a paywall. Boo hiss... -- Ohc ^¡digame! 14:38, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

well, for a start, there is no need to refer to the Malaysia Airlines website for the Malaysian Government statements. These statements are given authoritatively: [5].

Please don't remove primary references.

Second, please don't rely on secondary sources for information. It is very clear that throughout the course of this article that secondary sources have been unreliable, or have been used in misleading ways.

For example:

• did the Malaysian governments say that "beyond any reasonable doubt...the aircraft had gone down...with no survivors". No they did not.
• What is the source for the time of the aircraft's last known position being at 01:21, not 01:20 or 01:30?
• What is the source for saying that Subang notified MAS of the loss at 02:40
• what is the source for the last primary radar contact by Malaysian military, 200 miles (320 km) NW of Penang
• Did Houston (on 5 Apr pm) say that he couldn't verify that the signals were from MH370? Well, not exactly, he said he didn't even know whether any signals had been detected.
• Were the signals measured to be at 37.5kHz? I don't know, as they seem to say they were "heard", and they had been compared with a reference provided by Boeing, perhaps they just heard them with their ears and judged that they were right. I just don't know, and without finding a reliable primary source for the information, we won't know.
• What is the source for the idea that the motion of the satellite across the equator had anything to do with showing that the plane flew south?

Third, any time I read a media report about something, I want to go to the original document or press statement to read the whole context, not just what the media has selected to report.

Fourth, when I read a source for "remained aloft for four hours" and the title of the source is "Malaysia says no evidence missing plane flew hours after losing contact", what am I to make of this. Am I supposed to think it proves or disproves the statement in the wiki article. This is by no means the worst example, I have almost read statements that claim to be supported by a media story with a title like "aliens abducted MH370" (not really, just an exaggeration), where I am presumably supposed to ignore the headline and go down to the bit that substantiates the wiki article.

By the way, the DCA site is also a secondary source (the clue is in the heading, which often says "Source:").

Kulath (talk) 18:05, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

@Kulath: Have you read WP:PRIMARY yet? Primary sources should only be used with caution, because trying to draw conclusions or make analyses with them would be original research. We rely on reliable secondary sources, because these sources will make analytic or evaluative claims about the primary sources that is perfect for the encyclopedia. While the news media is biased towards sensationalism, as long as the source is verifiable and reliable, we can use it. So while you may enjoy reading the primary sources so you can make your own conclusions, that should be confined to your personal analyses of the event. Wikipedia is focused on creating an encyclopedia, and therefore must necessarily rely on secondary sources. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 19:56, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Primary sources can be used. This article is reporting current events. So if a reporter says to camera "I counted them all back" [6] he is like a witness at a traffic accident WP:PRIMARY. "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia". He is not making any interpretation of primary source material. "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source".

Media mostly not a Secondary Source. The media are not making "analytic or evaluative claims about the primary sources" they are just copying out press releases, sometimes inaccurately and almost always partially. Sufficient time has not yet passed for the media to draw thoughtful analysis or conclusions. And in most cases, they do not have sufficient expertise to do so.

Media sources are often being used unreliably. I came to Wikipedia to find out what was known to be true about MH370, and instead I keep finding inaccurate or misleading information, or information that is just unsubstantiated leaks. Republishing or passing along stories by multiple news organisations is specifically mentioned in WP:NEWSORG as only counting as a single source. Hence, for example, the BBC repeating a news story from a Chinese journalist on the search ship, together with the report by the journalist only counts as one source, and as such is really not a reliable source. I gave several examples above of things that are wrong or misleading. Now some examples of leaks, that really come from just one source, and are then repeated (some duplication with the above list. All these are simply not reliable, no matter how often repeated:

* The whole Daily Telegraph transcript fiasco,

* The suggestion that the plane flew the zig-zag course IGARI, VAMPI, GIVAL, IGREX - repeated in almost all the graphics, but with just one leaked source (Reuters exclusive)

* The photo, shown to Chinese media in Beijing on March 21, purportedly of the primary radar plot. This is presumably the origin of the last primary radar contact by Malaysian military, 200 miles (320 km) NW of Penang. It contradicts the route shown in the leak above.

* Sharp turn left at IGARI

* Descended as low as 12,000 feet

Fortunately some of these have now been removed. It is only by going to the original source that it is possible to determine whether the report is reliable or not.

Repeating a statement doesn't make a source secondary. I really don't see how citing a media website that says "In a statement last night, the PM said all our planes returned safely" meets the criteria: "A secondary source provides an author's own thinking based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains an author's interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources."WP:SECONDARY. It is just repeating the statement which I can read on the PM's website. So citing this media report violates the stricture in WP:NEWSORG against repeating citations.

The Official Statement is the secondary source. I would say that the PM's statement (on the PM's website) is the secondary source. After all, he has generally not personally observed the planes returning. He has been told about it by his Air Marshal, who was told by...a captain who had a clip-board. The PM has provided his "interpretation, analysis, or evaluation of the facts, evidence, concepts". He is one removed from the event. The PM's website is a far more reliable secondary source than a media report.

Good example Houston's statement [7] is a good example of a really reliable secondary source. He very carefully interprets, analyses and evaluates the facts, and says "reports that the Chinese ship...detected pulse signals...could not be verified at this point in time". The following day he says: "Reports overnight that the Chinese ship, Haixun 01, has detected electronic pulse signals in the Indian Ocean related to MH370 cannot be verified at this point in time." [8]. Again, an evaluation that he doesn't know whether this is true of not.

Kulath (talk) 23:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Er, Houston is merely giving an S&R expert's comment on a speculative report. It's not confirmation one way or another, and there are certainly no "facts" – no recordings, no nothing. Just castles in the sand. The only thing "reliable" about it is that Houston actually uttered those words. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 01:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I think we are violently agreeing. There is no confirmation as to whether the Chinese ship has detected anything related to MH370. However there is a subtle difference between what he said in the two reports mentioned above, and what he said on at the press conference on 6th April. [9]. What he said on 5th April pm and 6th April am was that he had heard media reports, but he couldn't verify them. In other words, he was saying that the media reports were not reliable.

At the press conference on 6th April, he said he had been contacted by the Chinese authorities, and advised that signals had been detected. He no longer qualifies this by saying that the reports cannot be verified. In other words, we can now regard it as reliable that the Chinese ship heard something. Of course we still don't know exactly what they heard, and we still don't know whether it is related to MH370.

I agree that there are no real facts, and you may regard it as not worthwhile including in the article. Maybe the distinction I was trying to draw is too subtle, but there is a distinction between unconfirmed media reports, and official contact from Chinese authorities.

Kulath (talk) 16:48, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Final contact point and possible location

"A final unexplained signal emitted by the missing Malaysia Airlines plane was tracked to the same point in the Indian Ocean at which authorities believe they may have found the jet"[10] 203.9.185.136 (talk) 05:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing. The confirmation that OS+Echo acoustic events fit into the calculated impact area on time of the partial ping at 08:19 MST, however has already been noted by a short line in the article based on the JACC press conference source. Your new source above does not include any new interesting facts compared to the JACC press conference source, so I see no reason to add this extra reference to the article. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 08:52, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Timeline of disappearance

I ran across this article from Mar 28, 2014 that has time line events that are not listed in the Timeline of disappearance section.

While this news site credits CNN I was unable to find this article on www.cnn.com. Here is a copy of the time line from the article with extra rows added with a yellow background to show what I inserted based on the news article. In the yellow sections, I copied the wording from the article to avoid loosing context. We will need to rewrite those to deal with copyright issues.

This article has the times of the hourly Inmarsat pings at 40 minutes after the hour. The article is unclear if this aspect is from an authoritative source or speculation by someone at CNN. I have seen other articles that presumably speculate that the pings were 11 minutes past the hour.

Elapsed (HH:MM)	Time		Event
	MYT	UTC
00:00	8 March	7 March	Take-off from KUL (Kuala Lumpur)
	00:41	16:41
00:19	01:00	17:00	Between 12:30 and 1 a.m. local time, as the plane took off from Kuala Lumpur and ascended, there were three pings recorded, initiated by the aircraft itself. These pings are messages which are carrying the data about the performance of the engines on the plane
00:20	01:01	17:01	Crew confirms altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 m)
00:26	01:07	17:07	Last ACARS data transmission received; crew confirms altitude of 35,000 feet, a second time
00:38	01:19	17:19	Last Malaysian ATC voice contact
00:40	01:21	17:21	Last secondary radar (transponder) contact at 6°55′15″N 103°34′43″E
00:41	01:22	17:22	Transponder and ADS-B now off
00:47	1:28	17:28	Between 1:21 and 1:28 a.m., radar shows the plane makes a sharp left turn and then dips as low as 12,000 feet.
00:49	01:30	17:30	Voice contact attempt by another aircraft, at request of Vietnam ATC; mumbling and radio static heard in reply
00:56	01:37	17:37	Missed expected half-hourly ACARS data transmission
01:30	02:11	18:11	First of seven automated hourly Classic Aero pings (handshakes) (since last ACARS transmission) via the Inmarsat-3 F1 satellite
01:34	02:15	18:15	Last primary radar contact by Malaysian military, 200 miles (320 km) NW of Penang
01:41	2:22	18:22	the plane appears to be making another turn, the satellite then picks three more electronic pings, one right after the other, in the span of just a few minutes. It looks like they were initiated by the plane because the plane had lost contact with the satellite network," Farrar said. "After that quick turn, maybe the plane banked sharply. Whatever happened was seemingly resolved as Flight 370 sends hourly pings, or handshakes.
02:59	3:40	19:40	Flight 370 sends hourly pings, or handshakes, at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40 and 8:11 a.m.
03:59	4:40	20:40	Flight 370 sends hourly pings, or handshakes, at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40 and 8:11 a.m.
04:59	5:40	21:40	Flight 370 sends hourly pings, or handshakes, at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40 and 8:11 a.m.
05:49	06:30	22:30	Missed scheduled arrival at PEK (Beijing)
05:59	6:40	22:40	Flight 370 sends hourly pings, or handshakes, at 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40 and 8:11 a.m.
06:43	07:24	23:24	Malaysia Airlines pronounces flight missing in statement released to media
07:30	08:11	8 March	Last successful automated hourly handshake with Inmarsat-3 F1
		00:11
07:38	08:19	00:19	Unscheduled, unexplained partial handshake transmitted by aircraft
07:49	08:30	00:30	Media reports on missing flight
08:34	09:15	01:15	Scheduled hourly ping attempt by Inmarsat goes unanswered by aircraft

Should the items in yellow be added to the timeline? --Marc Kupper|talk 04:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

The link you provided is indeed a transcript of a story broadcasted by CNN. But unfortunately CNN for unknown reasons, subsequently has decided silently to retract the story again (as it no longer can be found as a transcript at their webpage). Perhaps because of legal issues presented by Malaysian authorities, that no such detailed data are allowed being visible to the public at this early stage of the investigation? Or perhaps the satellite expert subsequently could not back up his story by direct evidence to CNN, and then they retracted the story just in case? The point where I tend to believe the provided information is indeed pure facts, is because it is a well-known fact that Inmarsat shared Flight 370's ping data with a peer-group of researchers during the days from 15-23 March as they wanted to check if the peer-group of researchers agreed with their analytical findings (incl. that the Doppler-effect showed the plane "beyond any reasonable doubt" ended its days in the Southern part of the Indian Ocean). So these data indeed were shared with highly qualified independent experts not employed by Inmarsat. Tim Farrar could perhaps be one of those experts, or at least be a close friend to one of them, providing him with direct access to the ping data. According to this Los Angeles Times article, Tim Farrar is familiar with the technical aspects of Inmarsat satellites, and president of the consulting and research firm Telecom, Media & Finance Associates Inc. in California. Despite of having a positive guts feeling that we are dealing with correct facts, my opinion however is that we can not report it in our Wikipedia article as facts, before they are confirmed as such by either the official investigation team or at least some primary sources (i.e. a person being able to proof he had direct access to the ping data and testify this is what he saw). Danish Expert (talk) 09:51, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

• I disagree. At least regarding the Inmarsat pings, it has been corroborated by multiple wp:reliable sources. The hourly pings are the basis for the "corridors". ^walk victor falk ^talk 17:59, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Danish Expert, thank you for figuring out that it's a transcript and Tim Farrar's involvement. I found did Google 'site:cnn.com "Tim Farrar"' and found a transcript here and also this one. The article on www.hawaiinewsnow.com is closer to the second transcript starting at "From the moment Malaysia Flight 370 took off". I have an app that does word-by-word comparisons of text files. The version on CNN's web site has been copy-edited but did not change the substance of what was posted to www.hawaiinewsnow.com.

While the hourly pings have been widely reported, and there's a section in the WP article about them, what got my attention was the mention of three messages early on and another set of three as the aircraft changed course from westerly to southerly while over the Indian ocean. These messages may also explain why the Wall Street Journal who broke the story talked about engine data. Those sets of three messages are likely the engine data messages. From what I recall, the WSJ then backed away but immediately afterwards Inmarsat stepped in and mentioned the pings. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:14, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

@Marc Kupper: Just to clarify, the plane transmitted according to some of my earlier sources, indeed a set of engine messages to Boeing for as long as the ACARS was on (during the first 40 minutes of the flight). These messages were indeed transmitted through the Inmarsat satellite, and subsequently used by Inmarsat experts as a baseline when setting up their ping-whereabout-prediction model, as they could combine how the ping frequencies and response times behaved during the first 40 minutes of the planes transponder recorded known route. After the ACARS was turned off, no more messages were transmitted through the Inmarsat satellite, but the communication terminal continued to maintain its satellite communication link by performing pings. So all pinging going on with the Inmarsat satellite after 40 minutes of flight, was as far as I know only about ensuring the plane maintained its satellite communication link throughout its entire flight. The moment it made turns or altitude changes, the plane apparently lost its communication link and then made a new ping to relink. On top of that, an Inmarsat expert confirmed the plane (at least when being in the states of ACARS turned off) automatically would perform scheduled pings with the satellite at 1 hour intervals. This is why its now a generally accepted theory, that the plane stayed on a steady course throughout its last 6 hours of flight.

The only point that disturbs me in relation to the new Tim Farrar presented facts, is that we have another earlier secondary source stating seven automatic hourly pings happened on 2:11 + 3:11 + 4:11 + 5:11 + 6:11 + 7:11 + 8:11, and now we have Tim Farrar telling us we instead "on 2:22 had three more electronic pings one right after the other, in the span of just a few minutes" (of which I personally suspect the last one took place on 2:40) followed by "automatic hourly pings on 3:40, 4:40, 5:40, 6:40 and 8:11". My point is, that I believe per guts feeling that Tim Farrar is correct, because why should he make up these new time stamps for the pings? I think its highly relevant that we display the revised time stamps for the hourly pings in the WP article. Our only problem is, that we strictly speaking need a primary source (someone being direct part of the investigation team or Inmarsat) confirming these new time stamps, or at least we would need Tim Farrar to tell us on what source he based his new information about the revised time stamps for the ping activity between 1:00-8:00 MST. For as long as we have no confirmation by a reliable source (or no info about Tim Farrar's source), then we can not report it as facts on Wikipedia. Danish Expert (talk) 08:50, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Danish Expert, I agree, we can't use Tim Farrar until it's documented as to where he got his data from.

What he says also contradicts what Inmarsat has said. For example, Inmarsat seems clear the hourly handshakes were 11 minutes past the hour and not 40 minutes.^[11] I have some questions about what you wrote. Do you have a source for:

• That Inmarsat used messages from the first 40 minutes of the MH370 flight to define the baseline? Inmarsat reports they used data from "six other B777 aircraft flying on the same day in various directions" for verifying their Doppler shift theory but is silent on if they used the early MH370 messages.^[12]
• The moment it made turns or altitude changes, the plane apparently lost its communication link and then made a new ping to relink. A satellite communications link does not have a continuous carrier. There is nothing to loose in terms of the communications channel as an aircraft turns or changes altitude.

"on 2:22 had three more electronic pings one right after the other, in the span of just a few minutes" That part bothers me too. It has not been reported on if anything other than ACARS was connected to the Inmarsat terminal. I've worked on ships and usually we have several things connected to the on board Inmarsat terminal. I'm assuming aircraft systems are similar. Where did the three more electronic pings or messages come from? My thought are 1) ACARS was not turned off but instead was partially damaged, or was switched on briefly. 2) The aircraft had other services attached to the terminal that transmitted the messages. 3) They were initiated by the Inmarsat terminal itself, or 4) Tim Farrar, or the reporting of his comments, were incorrect.

I'm pretty certain the hourly handshakes were initiated from Australia, bounce off the satellite, and the answer comes back from the Inmarsat terminal on the aircraft again bounced off the satellite.^[13][14][15]. To help hunt for sources, Inmarsat ground stations are also known as Satellite Access Stations (SASs) and Land Earth Stations (LESs)^[16] Inmarsat has deleted this article but the Google cache shows that the Land Earth Station used to talk with MH370 was in Australia. (update: [17] this image shows the LESs in Australia)

I now need to find and download some of the Inmarsat material. Inmarsat has deleted some of the images and PDF files about MH370 from their web site. I don't know if their web server got overloaded or they got a memo to remove the stuff. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:00, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

@Marc Kupper: Thanks for your Inmarsat links, that I also read through when published back on 24 March. This is the most primary source we have about the Inmarsat calculated route. In regards of your two bullet points above, I want to thank you for clarifying point two. I am not an aviation expert, just a math-loving logic-minded engineer who loves to dig into all kind of details. :-) Speaking about the first point, I have no primary source, but something approximating it to a satisfying degree: "it was a rare 15 minutes long CNN interview by Richard Quest with an Inmarsat expert on 24 March". They presented the same graphs you linked to above, and then it was explained each plane had individual time-lag (electronic delay) characteristics when pinging with the Inmarsat satellite, but that Inmarsat had been able to determine those delay characteristics, when having recorded these time lags between ask and reply of the first pings during Flight 370's first forty minutes of transponder-tracked route (comparing it with the known distance to the satellite at each ping position on the transponder mapped route). Later Quest (or the Inmarsat expert) also explained that Inmarsat upon checking their Doppler (south or north direction) theory, had used it upon a dozen of other planes with their transponders turned on flying their normal routes on March 8 in the same airspace, and through that check they were able to scientifically validate their extended model and method (about the Doppler effect), as they found their model consistently was capable to determine if those planes had been flying towards a northern/southern direction. Danish Expert (talk) 12:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Ya, the chart above has more accurate times of the satellite communications, except that 2:11 would have to be moved to 2:22. I've studied the ping times pretty thoroughly, so I'm comfortable with how to fix it. The primary source for this are the documents Inmarsat prepared with the UK AAIB and released by Malasia: Document 1 Fix:Document 2.Marked (talk) 08:34, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

@Marked: You just posted a link to the same document twice, so I just removed the duplication. If you have a link for a socalled Document 2, then please post it. Your first document 1 only states that six complete handshakes took place after ACARS stopped operating, but not at which exact times. It is encouraging the number of complete handshakes matches the numbers presented by Tim Farrar, but we still also need a source to verify they indeed happened at the time clocks noted by Tim Farrar. Danish Expert (talk) 09:43, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, thanks. Now fixed, 2 docs. It's a bit unusual because the data is in the graph. So it's correct but not-exact. Considering it's been subsequently reported, and corroborate each other, I'm comfortable with it. But if this violates some rule I'm forgetting, please point that out. Marked (talk) 23:22, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I guess the times are moot now, as user Ohconfucius deleted pings #2-#5 with comment: ‎Timeline of disappearance: we have a beginning and end point, it's stated as regular, so what goes on in between can be assumed) Marked (talk) 06:02, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I can accept using the "Tim Farrar article" and "Inmarsat graph", as a combined double reference for the noted ping times. Answering the question whether or not we need to display all these ping times by a line in the time table, is a tough one for me to settle my mind about. I started out by supporting it, as the series of recorded pings imply the plane was not interrupted or doing weird things at least during its middle of flight (19:40, 20:40, 21:40, 22:40). Giving it a second thought we should however perhaps also be careful not to add too much significance into the timing of the pings. I am not an expert into these things, but assume that if the plane travelled through adverse weather it could perhaps also delay some of the responses for the automatically scheduled pings (causing a reschedule for the subsequent pings)? If the exact time for ping 2+3+4+5 is not important, then I will support the proposed simplification by Ohconfucius - only to mention ping 1 (with note that next four pings happened roughly by 1hr intervals) and ping 6+7 in the time table. In regards of the above yellow lines 01:00 + 01:28 + 02:22 MST I support the inclusion of all those three based on our "double reference", although we should only add the first sentence of 2:22 as the rest is not a fact but qualify as speculation. Danish Expert (talk) 09:30, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

The pings are entirely mechanical and automated, thus regular. I don't think there's any significance that can or should be attached to these. It's a bit like "every morning the alarm wakes me up at 7 am, I have breakfast and catch the 7:45 to Blackfriars from Wimbledon Common", only this is more regular and timed by world clock. I'm open to be persuaded otherwise. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:08, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

The reason why the automatic ping times perhaps could be interesting, is because the automatic programmed handshakes kicking in when ACARS is switched off, were ought to take place by exactly 60 minutes intervals, at perfect conditions. So each time this did not happen, we have a deviation for unknown reasons. This mean, that when the 5th automatic ping happened on 22:40, then the subsequent 6th automatic handshake should normally occur on 23:40 and not 31 minutes later at 00:11. This is a mystery by itself. Personally I suspect a lot of incomplete automatic handshake attempts also were recorded between 23:40 and 0:11. However, the significance of this is hard for me to judge, as I am not an expert on this issue. In regards of the last no response time at 1:15 - I also speculate the ground station asked for a handshake on 1:11 + 1:12 + 1:13 + 1:14 + 1:15 - but then gave up at 1:15 as it did not even receive any incomplete answers. To say it short, any deviation from the expected ping pattern could be interesting, as it might tell a story about the condition of the plane during the flight. Danish Expert (talk) 12:01, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it is not necessary to put the ping timings into the timeline. Partly because they are regular (except when they are not, like the missing one at 7:41) and partly because we don't know what they are telling us. We don't know whether the communications are engine messages or anything else, so we shouldn't speculate. However, they clearly are significant: for example the three close together at about 2:26. Fortunately, we do have, from the Annex to the AAIB report, a graph which is a reliable source for all the ping timings. At some point in the future, I expect we will understand what all the timings mean. I would like to put all the timings into a note, along the lines of:

Note: The communications between the aircraft and the satellite are shown on the graph in Annex I Images. The timings of these communications can be read off from the graph, and are approximately: 0:30, 0:41, 0:56, 1:07, 2:26 (marked on graph as 'possible turn'), 2:27, 2:28, 3:41, 4:41, 5:41, 6:41, 8:11, 8:19 and 9:15 [18]; all timings are MST. Timings are only approximate because of the resolution of the graph and the difficulty of interpolating.

I don't think this is speculation, because the AAIB report can be regarded as reliable. I think the read-off is reliable, because other people in the comments concur, because inspection shows that they are approximately right, and because we are only claiming they are approximate.

All previous discussion about pings regularly at 11 mins past the hour prior to 8:11 was pure speculation, and should have been recognised as such.

Kulath (talk) 16:21, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

A reason to include them, is it's a confusing data set. It took me a long time to understand what was, and was not there when. So we would help anyone who wants to know it for real, but for casual readers it's not that important detail. And the media gets confused on this too. For example the assumption that they were :11 after. Also the first one is a burst of 3 signals. A reason to leave them off is the table gets 4 lines longer, for unknown significance. So how significant are they? Well, very at some level because it told us the plane was still flying instead of crashed several hours ago. But the most signficant is the last one, and the partial, which gave us the 2-4 curves of last known and predicted location. Darn, I just undermined my own argument. The intermediary pings were significant to the investigation because they disambiguated the Northern vs Southern trajectory. If we didn't have them, we would have to be searching in central asia still. Maybe then, include them only once we include additional language that they were essential to the doppler analysis technique. Marked (talk) 18:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Australian Defence Vessel ADV Ocean Shield,

Danish Expert and I have some differences of opinion regarding this section of the article. Perhaps others here could comment: Thanks, Lynbarn (talk) 18:35, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

To shortly explain our difference, we disagree in regards of how many details we should write about the Ocean Shield. I have insisted its important to include details which illustrate the problem of its searching capacity when compared with the searching area by applying some simple math which is supported by WP:MATH. Below you first find my long version of the line, and then you find Lynbarn's shorter version:

1) Ocean Shield can search up to 50 square miles (130 km²) per day with the TPL-25, which means it would take 2460 days for it to sweep the entire search area of 123,000 square miles (320,000 km²). The mission during the next week, therefore is, for the searching ships to recover as much surface debris as possible from the crashed airplane, with the purpose of back-casting and pinpointing a more narrowed down impact area to be searched by TPL-25. From the moment it is assumed no more ping signals are emitted from the wreckage, the Ocean Shield also carry an unmanned underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 to be used for slowly scanning the seabed by sonar signals, and eventually a closer inspection by camera followed by fysical recovering of wreckage material.

2) Ocean Shield can search up to 50 square miles (130 km²) per day with the TPL-25. and is also carrying a US Navy Bluefin-21 unmanned underwater vehicle for use on the search.

Please let us know which of the above two versions you prefer. Danish Expert (talk) 18:42, 1 April 2014 (UTC)and Lynbarn (talk) 18:45, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Shorter version seems ok to me, but would have two separate sentences to avoid any confusion. But assuming you both have good sources for that info. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

but still unsure if units shouldn't be nautical miles and nm2. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:03, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Keep it simple per (2) as it looks like it is a targeted search (1) is a bit speculative and it reads like they are going to search the whole area. If it finds something then it can have a whole section on Ocean Shield in the Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 when we split it out. MilborneOne (talk) 18:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The article line ahead of the disputed line, clearly states that the ping signal to be searched will disappear around 7 April. The point about displaying how many days TPL-25 would need to scan through the current search area, is not to say that it will, but in fact to highlight how big the chance is for it to find the wreckage during its upcoming 4 days of search. Based on the presented figures, people can easily by themselves figure out (or calculate) that the chance for TPL-25 to find the wreckage at the current search area is only 4/2460 equal to 0.16%. This is why experts currently state that TPL-25 can not find the wreckage, unless the impact area gets further narrowed down through some surface debris findings. The more exact truth is, that in principle TPL-25 can find the wreckage even without any surface debris being discovered, but just that the likelihood is slim. For people to realize what the likelihood is, they need to read the figures I presented. To be honest, my feeling was (and still is) that conducting a percentage calculation of the likelihood would be WP:OR, but for as long as I only apply a simple division of the search area with the search capacity, then this IMHO could be supported as OK by WP:MATH.

Your premise (that they have very little chance of finding the pingers) is probably fair, but can't be presented without a WP:RS, and even so, only takes some of the variables into account. There could be days lost to weather (although the ship looks pretty capable) or breakdown (towing all day, every day is bound to have technical issues). The ULBs are mandated to operate for 30 days, but how long they actually last could vary quite considerably. They may already have stopped - if they survived at all. My guess is that the search for them will continue for at least another month beyond 7th April, while at the same time, they will also be searching with sonar etc. (the UK sub and survey ship, along with others, will be well equipped for that aspect of the search) but again, this is only supposition. Regards Lynbarn (talk) 20:22, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

With all due respect we already have minimum one WP:RS (namely the one we already mentioned in the article), which qualitatively mention the likelihood for TPL-25 to find the wreckage as being too slim, unless the search area gets narrowed down, and this is why its important for the searching ships to find surface debris in order to narrow down the impact area to be searched by TPL-25. Strictly speaking, the only element of the line I added which was not supported directly by the source, was the calculation that TPL-25's daily search capacity corresponded to a number of 2460 days needed for the current search area to be scanned. If your only objection is, that you do not feel such information can be substantiated by WP:MATH - or alternatively that it is too detailed - then I can accept to remove this part of the sentence, but still suggest for the remaining explanatory part of the long sentence to remain. Those readers who do not follow the search operation as closely as we do, will IMHO appreciate the explanatory part of the sentence, so that they better understand what is really going on with the current search operation (along with getting a deeper perspective of the associated challenges). Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

While I think it's interesting and perfectly consistent with early posts about the search capacity, I am at present unconvinced that a large paragraph focussed on a single asset category is justified. In fact, it may be a little misleading as the text (and specifically the math) seems to imply that Ocean Shield is single-handedly searching, whereas it's only one facet. After all, there are other surface ships, and the Poseidons, that are also searching, and these give the best chance of rapidly narrowing the search area, and these could instantly render the math moot. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 01:28, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I think many readers not familiar with the search topic wonder, what is the purpose of all types of employed search assets and what is the overall master plan for the search operation. This can briefly be explained, by noting that:

• As of 31 March several satellites and ten aircrafts perform daily flights over the calculated search area, for the purpose of locating and taking photographs of all spotted surface debris. Once surface debris gets located by an aircraft, it dumps a GPS flare bouy next to it, so that ten ships also employed in the search area can relocate the debris and pick it up for further investigation. The current search mission is to find as much airplane debris as possible, so that its possible, after adjusting for the drifting of debris by the local sea current since the crash, to narrow down the impact area for the crashed airplane. This is key, because the search capacity for the towed pinger locater TPL-25 is only 50 square miles per day, and the remaining battery life of the beacon is only around 4 days. The ship Ocean Shield is equipped with both the towed pinger locater TPL-25 and the sonar scanner vehicle Bluefin 21. If (or when) the beacon signal dies, Ocean Shield will start instead searching the seabed by its sonar scanner vehicle Bluefin 21, but unfortunately this vehicle is much slower to search with compared to TPL-25. In example, the last time Bluefin 21 was employed to scan the seabed for a crashed airplane (Air France Flight 447), it took the vehicle approximately 2 years to find it.

I will leave it for you to decide if the above paragraph is useful or not to include as a short summary of the search operation in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 or something only to be written in a future Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article. As it is kind of a summary of what is going on search wise, my own opinion is that the paragraph above could be relevant to include in the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article, as a subchapter of the current Locations chapter. Danish Expert (talk) 12:04, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it's an appropriate time to create a separate article Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (currently a redirect). It should be obvious by now that the search for the aircraft is a significant event. The "Search" section of this article has reached the point where content needs to be trimmed (as in this disagreement) and there is likely to be much more content added to that section in the coming weeks & months until the aircraft is found. Creating a separate article would allow some of the relevant, but minute, details related to the search to be preserved (on the new article) while keeping the "search" content on this article to be nice and compact. On a related note, I think some of the content in the "Information sharing" subsection needs to be moved to the "Criticism & response" section. The "Analysis of satellite communication" subsection belongs in the "Investigation" section as it focuses on analysis of available info/evidence by investigators; it influences where people are searching, but is not directly a part of the "search". AHeneen (talk) 19:19, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Would not disagree. No strong view. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:01, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

The search-qua-search shall deserve its own article eventually, but not quite yet. kencf0618 (talk) 03:15, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

In terms of detail, I'm fine with the current article wording which seems to be midway between the short and long proposals above.

However, I believe the current article wording is wrong. At present the article says "It is expected to begin searching on 3 April..." in a way that strongly implies the TPL-25 will be used. It's my understanding that the Ocean Shield is expected to arrive in the search area around 2 or 3 April but will not deploy the TPL-25 unless some debris from MH370 is found that will help define a box to be scanned with the TPL.

The BBC article currently used as a cite has "The Australian naval support vessel, ADV Ocean Shield, fitted with the TPL, is expected to arrive in the area on 3 April" and is silent on what the vessel will do once on site.^[19]

Does the Royal Australian Navy use SAROPS? That article has an image of a typical search pattern and its tracks. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:29, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Indeed - not much point searching for that needle, until you're sure you have the right haystack? Martinevans123 (talk) 07:46, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

The best cite about the planned TPL-25 use, is this: "It wont be put into any good use unless the search area gets narrowed down". This cite however has been misinterpreted by many media believing that it wont be used unless surface debris will be found. AFAIK they actually plan to make "bad use" of TPL-25 starting from 3 April. As the Ocean Shield captain stated, they would of course prefer if the search area soon gets narrowed down with a factor 123 (as he prefer his search area to be maximum 1000 square miles). But as my calculated numbers above showed, it can still even without any narrowing down of the search area, scan the seabed for ping-signals through the following 4 days and still have a probability of finding the wreckage around 0.2%. This is not much, but I think they owe it to the families to give it a shot. Its not that expensive, an soon after 7 April the batteries will anyway die, so what is the point of waiting? About the suggestion to create a spin off article Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, this is something I fully support, but I wont have time to contribute with content, so I will leave it for the rest of you to decide when it is appropriate to launch such a spin off. Danish Expert (talk) 11:23, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

this article could provide a good basis for relating the details of the search procedure: https://theconversation.com/under-the-deep-blue-ocean-the-search-for-mh370s-black-box-25010 ^walk victor falk ^talk 21:04, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Danish - did you include any lost days for poor weather? Or is it all lovely and calm up there? Martinevans123 (talk) 21:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

HMS Tireless is already on station, involved in the search and can continue searching regardless of the weather Lynbarn (talk) 21:58, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Appropriately named, then Although I don't think I'd have wanted to be part of the crew for those particular sea trials. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:05, 2 April 2014 (UTC) ... I imagine that type of vessel can hear all sorts of things, a very long way away, without having to drop a hydrophone-on-the-end-of-a string over the back?

Additional search content

While I agree we should not clot the article's search chapter with too many details, I suggest we add the following key details in the Search area 3 subchapter:

1. While the aerial search operation was cancelled during two days in search area 2 (on 25+27 March), the new more Northern search area indeed proofed to be less hostile weather wise, as the search operation has been continuously conducted each day since 28 March.
2. The CNN program Quest Means Business" on 2 April presented estimates of the financial costs associated to the current search operation in search area 3 (for all 8 nations directly involved as of April 2: USA, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea, Japan and Malaysia). Quest also mentioned the donated search money for all nations to run the search operation, mostly was covered by the involved nations military exercise budgets. In regards of the US involvement, the initial donated money to finance this nations participation at the current level, however would only last for around 30 days of searching.
3. On 2 April, the search area due to unknown reasons shifted some hundreds of kilometers to the East.
4. On 4 April, the debris search area for unknown reasons again shifted to 3 more Northern areas, situated between 1060-2100km West of Learmonth and spanning over a total of 217,000 square kilometres (84,000 sq mi), which was searched by 14 aircrafts and 9 ships. In addition the 2 ships Echo and Ocean Shield started scanning 240 kilometres (150 mi) seabed for the flight recorders emitted ping signals, at the currently believed impact area of Flight 370. A British submarine also arrived at the believed impact area, and started to search the seabed by sonar signals, which to a small degree can supplement the employed TPL's, by identifying areas of particular interest to be further scanned by the TPL's.

If nobody object, I will add the above content later today. Danish Expert (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Have you got sources for these four points?

1. I'm not sure that is really notable enough - weather could still yet be a factor even in the new search area.
2. Finance will be very difficult to get right consisely - might be worth a section of its own?
3. I thought it was due to improved data analysis and estimates of range?
4. The sub can do ping location at least as well as Ocean Shield, (is there more than one TPL in use?) It is well equipped with active and passive sonar, as well as other sensor equipment, and at 32 knots, probably much faster.

Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Yep, all 4 points is how CNN today reports the search story, and can be sourced by their online published transcripts. In regards of your third remark we would need a source to proof what was the reason for the latest revision of the search area, so that it does not reflect our own speculation. CNN speculates the reason they shifted the area to the East was only due to a lack of findings in the first square, roughly 680 miles Northwest of Perth. Later today I will check if the AMSA briefings provided a specific reason for the latest revision on 2 April. In regards of your 4th remark I am pretty certain the submarine only carry sonar equipment and no ping locater. CNN claim both of the two ships carry a TPL, and mentioned that the ships can sail several times faster across the water, but the attached TPL equipment dictate they only can sail through the waters with a very low speed. To the degree its possible, I will attempt supplementing my CNN sources with AMSA sources. I have no time to search for additional sources for the content points, but invite all of you to help me in that regard. Danish Expert (talk) 12:23, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

the ULB ping is just a simple active sonar signal. Passive sonar listens for underwater sounds. Active sonar sends a "ping" and listens to its reflection coming back, using timing and doppler effect to determine the range, speed and direction of mobile and static targets. Any ship with even passive sonar capability should be able to detect a ULB if they get close enough. Naval submarines have to rely on very sophisticated sonar - that's how they "see". The TPL is basically just a remote sonar microphone on a long string. The main phrase that does need to be reviewed from your section above is ... which to a small degree can supplement the employed TPL's I don't know if Echo uses a TPL, or just its on-board sonar arrays, but as a marine survey ship, it will also have very sensitive sonar installations. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:55, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Huge nuclear submarines are designed to hunt for other huge nuclear submarines, aren't they? Not tiny little recorders, lying on the sea-bed, the size of a tin of baked beans? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Well yes, but those huge, stealthy submarines are trying NOT to be found by making their signals as small as - a tin of beans. Besides, the ULBs are (hopefully) shouting "I'm here!" :) Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 13:32, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Now don't be silly - that's alphabeti-spaghetti. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:40, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Although submarines have very sensitive passive sonar, they do not listen on 37.5 kHz. They are designed to "hear" sounds made by surface ships and other submarines. Unless the submarine somehow gets retrofitted with new equipment, it will be limited to using active sonar to search the bottom for crash debris.Becalmed (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

According to this reliable source the submarine has indeed been installed with some extra ping-locator equipment. This mean that we in total have one submarine and two ships in the area being capable of ping-searching. The point that frustrates me a lot however is, that JACC has never reported if/when/where the submarine is searching, and apparently all the journalists forgot to ask. So nobody really knows what happened to this funny and highly beloved yellow submarine. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 22:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

No, that is not what the references source says. It says "Specialist underwater search equipment has been brought in". It doesn't say this equipment has been installed on the submarine. The mention of specialist equipment is un-sourced and un-attributed. It is true that Bowden says the submarine can listen out for the black box recorder, but how reliable is Bowden; he is just a defence correspondent, not known to be an expert on submarines; perhaps he was not aware that submarines do not listen on 37.5 kHz; perhaps he just assumed (like I did, on the basis of no knowledge at all) that one frequency was as good as another. If he knew the submarine had been specially fitted, wouldn't he have been likely to mention it specifically? Kulath (talk) 15:26, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

It's not yellow - it's black! (or at least dark grey) :-) and I doubt it has been fitted with anything special for this task - there wasn't time. It's actually unusual to know where any naval submarine is - even to the nearest ocean. It doesn't really matter where it is - and we probably won't be told - unless and until it finds something. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 22:15, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Well, personally I think its quiet interesting to learn if it either: 1) Spy on the Chinese ships, 2) Only is a PR stunt to mark the 50 anniversary of the Beatles, 3) Used on surface speedily to pick up spotted debris, or 4) Helping Echo and Ocean Shield with the subwater ping-search. If the defense correspondent Bowden is correct that the submarine feature ping-search capabilities, then I would suspect it currently would be ping-searching together with the two ships. If we have 3 ping-searchers instead of 2, the chance to detect additional ping signals would increase with 50%, so its a pretty important question. As JACC has never mentioned the submarine is ping-searching, I have never claimed in our search chapter that it did so, on the contrary I have reformulated the sentence so that it was clear only Echo + Ocean Shield did the ping-search. As JACC never clarified what the heck the submarine is doing, I am however still interested if some of you can dig up a new reliable reference about what the submarine is currently doing. In case it has started (or just stands ready) to perform a side-scan sonar mapping of the seabed beneath Ocean Shield, then this would also be interesting to report towards the readers of our article. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 08:05, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

This doesn't tell us where HMS Tireless is or what it's doing exactly, but it is quite an interesting article in The Telegraph There is also something about the sonar capabilities at Sonar 2076 Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 21:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• I'm not in favour of the recentist daily blow-by-blow commentary. We certainly should avoid the "there was no search for the last three days due to bad weather" type stuff. Expenditure, fine if it's official and sourced, and not some "expert estimate". But it's early days yet. The search could easily take another three/six/twelve months, or we'll have to update the figures regularly. And when we do include the cost, I suggest it's global and not by country. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:38, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

OK, just to make a short status. Point 3+4 details has now been included by the article, per our agreement to mention when the search areas shifted. I have accepted not to include point 1 about the weather, as you might have a point this is too detailed info - and for this matter I agree it is far better to report overall figures when the search event has ended. In regards of point 2, I have not to added anything yet, and also accept that we await more sources to be released about the search costs before reporting the CNN estimates. The argument that wins is, that such estimates at least need to relate to a historic period going backwards - rather than a forward going forecasted period. Basically all what CNN mentioned so far, was also that the US costs of $4 million had been estimated to last for a month - and that overall costs of the search operation was approximately $30 million per month at the level of assets employeed on 2 April. Danish Expert (talk) 15:41, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

MST vs MYT

Does anyone know which abbreviation is more commonly used or more appropriate for the time zone in Malaysia? There are about 4-5 uses of each abbreviation. The abbreviation needs to be consistent, but I am hesitant to change this without knowing which is more common. AHeneen (talk) 06:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I've converted all to MYT (MalaYsian Time), UTC + 8 rather than MST (Mountain Standard Time) which is UTC - 7: as per This info Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 08:10, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Alternatively, MST represents Malaysia Standard Time, although I can see the confusion. Time in Malaysia begins "Malaysia Standard Time (MST) or Waktu Piawai Malaysia (WPM) or Malaysia Time (MYT) is a standard time used in Malaysia." However, I now notice that that page has no references. Still not certain which is more common (not sure that link is very authoritative). Malaysia Airlines uses MYT while the DCA press releases use "GMT+8" in the header. It seems MYT is more common, but I asked here to see if someone has any better knowledge. AHeneen (talk) 08:53, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

MST is a term commonly used in Malaysia, however the majority of readers of the article are not in Malaysia, but around the world, and many of those will be aware of MST as Mountain Standard Time. There doesn't seem to be any organisation responsible for world time zone names (possibly the World Trade Organisation, but I can't find any references) so finding an authoritative universally accepted definition for particular regions isn't easy. For the purposes of this article, consistency is more important in this regard, and there were less references to MST than MYT, which is another reason for my choice. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 09:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Agree with your choice consistently to apply MYT. In addition, I have just added a hidden note at the top of the article emphasizing, that: "All mentioned dates in the article shall refer to the date registered at the local time of the event". Danish Expert (talk) 11:38, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Detected "Pings" Flight MH370

Could it be signals are being detected from "tagged" sharks. A significant number of Great White Sharks have been "tagged" off the coast of South Africa in recent years. Not sure about the signal frequency from same though but it is food for thought nonetheless.2.50.179.231 (talk) 16:03, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Good thought, but I would think it unlikely. Most shark tags are fitted with ID/logging devices and send back telemetry data, not just a regular pulse. The ULB frequency was chosen particularly to try to avoid confusion with any other marine-borne signals. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 16:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

We would need a good source that specifically states that shark tags could cause the pings in order to mention that in the article. I think most animal tags don't emit a signal, but respond to a signal that is sent by researchers...much like RFID tags. It would be interesting to know specifically what kinds of devices emit a signal at the same frequency and could be confused with the blackbox. AHeneen (talk) 17:31, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

The source would also need to be in the context of the search so that we're not producing original research. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 17:40, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

As an aside, as AHeneen says I believe that most shark studies use Passive Integrated Transponders which as the name implies is passive unless interegated so dont emit anything automatically. MilborneOne (talk) 18:06, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I think the mention of the pings as detected by the Chinese and Aussie ships be mentioned in the articles lead. The information is sufficiently credible for now.--PremKudva^Talk 05:18, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• No. WP is not a newspaper. It might be that there's as much electronic junk noise in the ocean as there is flotsam. The reports are mentioned in the body of the article. There have already been many attempts to scoop the lead for speculative (read unconfirmed) sightings, and it's not credible until it's confirmed. This is yet another one that needs to be nipped into the bud. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 06:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I think you mean "acoustic junk noise in the ocean"^walk victor falk ^talk 08:32, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Also, no. The information is not credible in that it has not been verified. Every single day for the past few weeks there have been reports of "the most promising lead yet" that on later inspection don't pan out. The Chinese ping detector seems to be a handheld model used normally by divers. Someone is reaching over the side of the ship and sticking it in the water.^[20] They reported pings at locations 2 km apart. The water in that area is 14,700 feet deep (4.48 km). The detector seems to have a range of less than 1 km and they are listening from above the thermocline which attenuates the signal. My bet is the sound they detected came from within their own ship. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• No for now, Yes for later: In regards of the acoustic events picked up by the Chinese ship, then yes this was most likely a false positive. In regards of this mornings two new long time recorded acoustic events by Ocean Shield, at respectively 300 meter and 3000 meters depth, this finally looks to be real. I can recommend to listen through Houstons press conference held today at 12:00 MST. Interestingly enough, none of the latest acoustic events changed the surface area being searched on 7 April, which is still being searched by 12 planes and 14 ships. In regards of the lead, I think we still need to await more outcome of the continuous underwater investigation before we can mention it. At 3000 meters debt there is no ocean sound pollution behaving like the emitted pings from a beacon and you would expect other beacons lost in the ocean would run out of battery way before the Flight 370 beacons. But I would like Houston (or Ocean Shield) to present more details about how wide the seabed area with ping signals currently is - including estimates for how long it will take to map this seabed area by Bluefin 21's side-scan sonar, before I think we should add todays promising ping-finding to the lead. Danish Expert (talk) 06:27, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Details from press conference 7 April

Below is a list of all detailed summary points from todays press conference:

1. TPL-25 so far has detected 2 acoustic events. The first in the "middle of the night" a few hours ahead of sunday morning local time, at approximately 300 meters depth for 2hr20min. The second happened between todays and yesterdays press conference, at approximately 3000 meters depth and lasted for 13 minutes.
2. The two acoustic events recorded by TPL-25 were both consistent with signals emitted by beacons attached to an aircrafts black boxes submerged to water, and took place position wise within a 800-2000 yards distance, meaning its possible the sound for the two events had been emitted by the same source on the seabed.
3. Since TPL-25's second acoustic event, it has not been able to re-acquirer the ping-signal again. Currently it is repeatedly moved through the area in vicinity of the first acoustic recordings, with the mission to record a third acoustic event, so that the seabed area subsequently to be more narrowly investigated by Bluefinn 21's side-scan sonar can be narrowed further down. As of the time of the press conference, TPL-25 were doing its fifth run in the same area. Each run is 7 miles long, and after each run it takes approximately 3 hours for TPL-25 to make a turn and get in position for a new run. IF a third acoustic event is recorded by TPL-25, the Ocean Shield expect it can narrow down the seabed area approximately to 3 miles x 3 miles, for the Bluefin 21 subsequently to investigate more closely.
4. Bluefin 21 will not be employed before TPL-25 has recorded a third acoustic event. If no such event occurs within the next 24 hours, JACC will perhaps reconsider to employ it anyway tomorrow.
5. Bluefin 21 has an operational debt limit at 4500 meters below surface. The seabed area currently investigated by Ocean Shield is estimated to be approximately 4500 meters below surface.
6. In comparison with the acoustic event picked up by the Chinese ship, the acoustic events picked up by Ocean Shield is considered to be the most promising. JACC will however continue to investigate both seabed areas.
7. Malaysian investigation team has confirmed they now believe Flight 370 ran out of fuel at 8:19 MST (on time of the partial ping), and that this was equal to the time of impact with the water. Based on the most recent satellite data calculation this meant, that JACC now has drawed a possible impact area. The Ocean Shield acoustic events are at the northern border of this possible impact area, while the Chinese acoustic events were recorded at the southern border of this possible impact area. In both cases, JACC consider there is a match between the locations of acoustic events and the calculated impact area.

Perhaps we should consider adding some of theme to the third phase subchapter of the article? Danish Expert (talk) 08:11, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I have now basically added point 1+2+7 and the first half of point 3 into some short text lines in the article. In order to avoid WP:Crystal, I decided to stay silent about the details about what they predict will happen in the near future with Bluefin 21. Danish Expert (talk) 13:18, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

33.3kHz signals

• The acoustic events picked up my the TPL were at 33.3kHz. Maybe because the pinger is old (yes, it was due to be replaced in June), or it isn't the pinger. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 06:28, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

There was an interesting (but not really info to add) article about the pinger on local news Mon night. Its batteries were reportedly replaced by Malaysia Airlines, rather than overhauled by the manufacturer, in 2012. AHeneen (talk) 01:55, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Details from press conference 9 April

Below is a list of all detailed summary points from todays press conference:

1. On 8 April the Ocean Shield has picked up two additional acoustic events at 3500 meters depth (the first lasted 5min:32s, the second 7min), bringing the total up to four. This map show location of all events within roughly a 30kmx10km (300km2) area. The exact MST time (equal to local Perth time) for the 4 acoustic events were:
   (1) 5 April 16:45.
   (2) 5 April 21:27.
   (3) 8 April 16:27.
   (4) 8 April 22:17.
2. Data analysis of the first 2 recorded events from 5 April, lead to a conclusion the signal had a steady pulse at 1.106s intervals with a constant frequency at 33.331 KHz. It is impossible such signal can be of a natural origin, and the technical team investigating the signal has concluded with certainty, that the signal origin from some man-made electronic equipment being consistent with a Flight Data Recorder.
3. The signal strength for the latest two recorded events was more weak compared to the first recordings on 5 April, which perhaps might indicate the battery power of the signal emitting device is fading.
4. TPL-25 will in the coming days continue searching for more additional ping-signals, before Bluefin-21 will get employed to map the seabed by side-scan sonar. Potentially TPL-25 will continue its ping-search until the point were the black boxes with certainty has no more battery power to emit pings (meaning for up till 13 more days). Reason for this is, that TPL-25 is six times faster to sweap through an area compared to Bluefin-21, and each of its recorded data can be used significantly to narrow down the seabed area subsequently to be searched by Bluefin-21.
5. The seabed beneath the 4 acoustic events is close to the borderline of the Wallaby plateau, where oceanographers expect their could be several tens of meters silt partly dampening the emitted ping signals, and further complicating the subsequent side-scan sonar search for the wreckage.
6. Based on Ocean Shields four recorded acoustic events, todays surface search area (for surface debris) has now been concentrated only to take place at the most westerly square of the previous search area, equal to a narrowing down of the surface search area to 75423 square kilometres
7. In regards of the employment of extra ping-searching assets to assist Ocean Shield, it was noted it needs to operate in silence from other vessels, which is why Echo has not been ordered to travel back to the current Ocean Shield area. Moreover submarine HMS Tireless is not to any help for Ocean Shield at the moment, as it has not been optimized with passive ping-searching equipment. However, later today on 9 April an RAFF aircraft will drop up till 84 modified sonobuoys in an area grid around the earlier acoustic event positions. These buoys will drop down a hydrophone 1000 feets (300 meters) below the surface, and is equipped with battery power to transmit all what it hear around the 37.5 KHz frequency at this debth continuously. It is believed this additional grid will further help Ocean Shield in its search for some more deeb water acoustic events.
8. There has been no additional acoustic events picked up by Haixun or Echo after the first incident on 5 April.

Perhaps we should consider adding some of theme to the third phase subchapter of the article? Danish Expert (talk) 08:38, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

From the above, Moreover submarine HMS Tireless is not to any help for Ocean Shield at the moment, as it has not been optimized with passive ping-searching equipment - That wasn't what was said: There was a tantalising reference to And, of course, there is one submarine (presumably HMS Tireless), but then Peter Leavy said: The short answer is the utility of submarines has been evaluated and it was—when we first started commencing this search, (when was that - two-three weeks ago?) and it was determined that the Collins class submarine would not be optimised for this search. That doesn't confirm the Tireless wasn't already so-equiped. The Collins class are Australian diesel-electric subs, unlike the Tireless. I've not heard any previous reference to the Collins' subs, and don't believe they are involved at all with MH370. regards, Lynbarn (talk) 11:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying the submarine part for the above point 7. When I listened through the press conference I took notes of it all - except about what he said about the submarine because he spoke so fast. So that part was only based upon my pure perception. After checking the later published transcript, I can see you are absolutely correct. I have also been reading the submarine article you posed in our other discussion. Thanks for that. It makes it easier to understand why neither Leavy/Houston want to comment detailed on the technical capabilities of HMS Tireless - they have probably signed a Non-Disclosure-Agreement. :-) Danish Expert (talk) 15:22, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

ping analysis

• blog post with some acoustic analysis of the recorded pings.

I'll leave it to others to decide if this is usable in the article. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 17:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Unfortunately its WP:OR and can not be used. However, the acustic experts employeed by JACC has already reached the same conclusion today "that the signal had to be man-made as it was steady with a pulse at 1.106s", which we can mention in the article based on todays "JACC press conference source". Danish Expert (talk) 18:07, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

More discussion over News Coverage

So I mentioned on the 8th talk page, seen here: [21] that I think there should be some kind of mention in the article, maybe in the criticism section, of how much news coverage this event has garnered. --Matt723star (talk) 22:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Our content is based on what re;iable sources tell us. If good separate coverage arises OF the media coverage, we could include something, but it's not our job to do our own analysis. HiLo48 (talk) 23:03, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

US analysis

The revert here is wrong. The source is referring to a single analysis carried out by the US team, which is then later shown to concur with an independent analysis carried out by the UK team.--Anders Feder (talk) 00:01, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• Agreed. Hishamuddin mentioned that the data were sent twice to "the US team", but we are not told precisely who these were sent to – whether it was two separate agencies. Hishamuddin's statement seems to imply that there was one single analysis from the US – once using raw data and a second run using refined data. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 02:26, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

additional Australian craft involved in search

Too new here to make the changes, so will leave to someone else These need to be added in to list of assets provided by Australia HMAS Toowoomba, HMAS Perth & DMS Maritime Seahorse Standard here is one reference to start with http://news.navy.gov.au/en/Apr2014/Operations/971/Many-countries---one-purpose.htm#.U0Yx6_mSwXA also two RAAF E-7A Wedgetail planes http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/learmonth-base-activated-for-mh370-search/story-fn3dxiwe-1226879483511 StuB63 (talk) 06:10, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Figure That Illustrates The Difficulty of Finding and Recovering Flight 370's Wreckage

For editor's of this article information, a figure that provides a sense how deep the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 might be is found in Depth of the Problem. in the Washington Post. It is worth an editor's time to look at as it will provide anyone editing this article a sense of how difficult it will be to find any wreckage and recover the data recorders. Paul H. (talk)

Thanks for sharing, but the info provided (i.e. at what ocean depth Titanic was found and the height of the Eifel Tower) is WP:Trivia, and thus not appropriate or allowed to be added as part of the article. Danish Expert (talk) 08:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Amount of info in Timeline

Can we agree to put as little as possible in the Timeline? Only the essentials? Several of us have been editing it for length but others seem to regard it now as the only place to add info. For example, we don't need to know who said what at a press conference, just what they said. Thanks Roundtheworld (talk) 15:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed!!! The timeline should really just highlight, with bullet points, the more detailed information in the body. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 15:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreeeee -- Ohc ^¡digame! 15:50, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Relax!!! While I fully agree about the current length of timeline, I have to insist you fully overreact upon my latest clarification words, which I believe was very appropriate. I think we should center this discussion on, whether or not we should agree if it was good/bad you deleted the bolded words from the April 5 line (which is really the only thing you and I currently disagree on):

• A Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 detects through a handheld hydrophone a 37.5 kHz pulse signal at 25°S 101°E. Ocean Shield also picked up two longer lasting signals at respectively 300 and 3000 meters depth.

Do you really think my above bolded words do more damage than good in the time table? Reason for including them is to at least mention what the difference was between the quality of the Haixun and Ocean Shield recorded signals. To the informed reader the bolded words tell that story, and this is why I !vote we should include them, Best regards Danish Expert (talk) 17:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

It's all a matter of balance, between getting enough information across, and making it so dense that readers lose concentration and miss the salient details. The timeline in particular should be brief. If additional detail is in an online reference, those interested can look at it there. If additional detail is in a note to the body text, they can read it there. If additional detail is available from a wikilink, they can read it there - IF they want to. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 18:06, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you consider my above point as a long essay? In my point of view it was clearly a summary. If we should follow the proposal by Roundtheworld to scrap all details, then I guess we end up with a line saying: "Two ships detected pulse signals." If this is what you prefer (without telling the reader where it occurred and by what type and quality), then so be it. Personally I prefer an amount of details noted in the time events which differentiate the events from each other. So to speak a one line summary for each significant event. And on 5 April we had two significant search events: First the Chinese acoustic event and then the Australian acoustic event. Danish Expert (talk) 18:23, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I would not have deleted any of that text if it had been inserted in the main article. But the timeline cannot just duplicate what appears elsewhere. It should just serve as a quick summary of major events. Roundtheworld (talk) 19:48, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

I think the way to treat the Haixun signal is to remove it from the table as not having the same significance and weight as Ocean Shield in the final analysis. The Haixun signal can go in the body and be labelled as 'chasing one's own tail'. In fact, we already mention in the body that unconfirmed report that Haixun 01 had picked up two short episodes of pulsing 37.5 kHz signals through a handheld hydrophone, at about 25°S 101°E, one on 4 April, and another the day after at 15:36 MYT. The following day the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) ordered HMS Echo to the area, to attempt verification with more advanced equipment, which I think is adequate. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 02:31, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes we all agree the story has been adequately reported in the articles main text. We now try to solve the question: What the timeline shall include and how long the summary lines are allowed to be for each timeline event? It seems like the search operation team today has classified the initial Haixun recorded signal as a false positive. Does this mean we should then remove this signal detection event from the timeline (as you now suggest)? Or is it still significant to mention (as argued by me), partly because of all the media fuss it generated and partly because this happening ment HMS Echo vasted 5 days of valuable time investigating this ghost signal - instead of supporting Ocean Shield in the correct area?
In my point of view the timeline is supposed to cover all major events in the ongoing investigation and search, including those who were later proofed to be false trails. Otherwise if you insist about such removals, then we should also remove the investigation line about the two passengers with false passports - because this was later also proofed to be a false trail. Again my argument goes, that when this story was reported as a major event at the time the story broke, and as it thus had significant ramifications towards the families being part of the story - while also being a proof of the Malaysian authorities handling the investigation unprofessionally/badly, then this justify we also keep that story reported by a single line in the timeline table. Danish Expert (talk) 08:25, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The issue is about WP:SUMMARY and WP:DUE within the article as a whole. In the timeline table, I don't feel there's any need to go into great detail because that detail is already in the body. We summarise the key points, I have no problems with that. Whether an event turns out to be significant or dud will become apparent as time progresses and the timeline develops. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 10:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

To move this debate further ahead, I will ask you to reply more specifically, how many lines you then want completely to remove from the current timeline table? After reading WP:DUE there is no help/guidelines helping us to decide what we shall keep/skip in the timeline table, at least not if we stick to the argument I presented above that: "the timline table is supposed to feature a single summary line for all major events in the ongoing investigation and search, including those who were later proofed to be false trails". Do you agree on that (which would imply its OK to keep a summary line about the falsepositive signal recording by the Chines ship)? And if not - why have you then (per your same argument) still approved that the timetable feature 3 single Investigation summary lines about the "stolen passports" - which also proofed to be a false trail? Danish Expert (talk) 10:33, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

I and others have trimmed the table and I think the current content is roughly in balance for the moment. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 11:56, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

AWST vs CXT

All the times of specific search events are reported by JACC sources according to AWST time (equal to MYT). Personally I prefer to keep it this way, per the argument AWST is a more commonly known timezone format, and the timezone format applying for the JACC headquarters in Perth + the rest of the western coast of Australia. However to be strictly correct the entire search operation takes place in a the UTC+07:00 timezone known in Australia as CXT (Christmas Island Time) - stretching from 97.5-112.5 degree east. Do any of you know if Wikipedia demand us to use the local time format applying for the area where the event occurred? Or is it OK (which I hope), that we continue reporting search event times per the time in AWST? Danish Expert (talk) 10:06, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Agreed WP doesn't demand, but in the absence of any guidance (well, I haven't found any) and as MYT = AWST, I would say it should be okay. I've added a wikilink to the first occurrence of AWST. I haven't done this yet, and I'm not sure how many there are, but it may be worth converting any MYT references to AWST from the time the JACC was established? Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 10:18, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• I do not believe that AWST is a more commonly-known time zone. I also believe that we should stick to using one time zone so as not to overly confuse the reader. In this case, we should note somewhere (maybe more than once) that AWST=MYT, but let's not switch over to "AWST" now that much of the earlier article is quoted in "MYT". -- Ohc ^¡digame! 13:39, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Links

.> Australian Search Plane Detects Possible Signal in Ocean[22][23]Lihaas (talk) 13:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, JACC today reported, that "whilst conducting an acoustic search this afternoon on April 10, a RAAF AP-3C Orion aircraft has detected a possible signal in the vicinity of [where] the Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield [earlier heard pings]. The acoustic data will require further analysis overnight but shows potential of being from a man-made source." The signal was collected by one of those sensor-equipped sonobuoys today being parachuted into the area, with an attached hydrophone being dropped into 300 metres depth, which subsequently floats on the ocean surface and transmits it measurements data to the aircraft. I will now cook the story down, and add it in the article. Danish Expert (talk) 14:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

• I like this rather well constructed and comprehensive report of the entire story so far. Nice photographs too. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:10, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Time to split out search article?

Per Wikipedia:Summary style, I think a separate article Search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is now needed. Are there any objections to that? Moondyne (talk) 14:54, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• This has been discussed before with support from several users, but of course no action has been taken. I support this. AHeneen (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• Agree of course, but I think people are hesitating because the plane hasn't been found. Soerfm (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• We should be wary of recentism, though. It doesn't seem like Air France Flight 447 has a separate search article. I'm assuming that once the false leads are determined, all of the content concerning them can be consolidated. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 16:05, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Not even close. The search for MH370 is far more complex and involved than for flight 447. ACARS messages sent coordinates to Air France maintenance less than 5 minutes before the plane crashed. An extensive amount of debris was located within 7-10 days and seas were relatively calm (unlike the South Indian Ocean), making both recovery of debris easier and made it somewhat easier to locate the wreckage (the pingers on the blackboxes were damaged) by calculating the movement of the currents/debris. Of course, it took 2 years to map the mountainous terrain on the ocean floor to locate the sunken fuselage. The search for MH370 meanwhile has, of course, been plagued by difficulties and has gain significant media attention/public interest. I don't think the intense search will wane in importance and it would be great for Wikipedia to have a detailed article on the search. AHeneen (talk) 18:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Good point. It's probably a good idea to create a separate article eventually then, if not now. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 01:26, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• Support - but prefer to delay it until the search chapter becomes too bulky. I think we have both notability and enough amount of details to justify the creation of a search related sub-article. The search event can not be compared with Air France Flight 447, as it did not have a similar highly reported search event. I mean, CNN did not cover that search 24-7 for 40 days, and the search itself did not each week shift around to new differently located areas, like it did for Flight 370. Based on that, I support the creation of the suggested subarticle covering the search event. I just think it will be best and most easy to slightly delay the spin-off, until the point of time the aircraft has been detected. Danish Expert (talk) 16:35, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• Support - the search deserves an article unto itself, albeit not until the aircraft is found. kencf0618 (talk) 04:25, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose because the plane will likely be found and all the false leads will then be easily consolidated into one short paragraph.--MONGO 16:51, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Mongo! Moondyne (talk) 04:46, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Let's hold out for a little longer. The article is only 37k in readable prose size, well under the 100k recommended for a split. Weather permitting, we should know in a week or so whether some of the crucial wreckage has been found.

  While that search is going on, we should consider a strategy for the article – what we can lose, and what/how we split out. If we create a search article, we will generate a lot of duplication because context is needed for it to be stand-alone. We could instead consider other ways of splitting,such as ejecting the timeline into a separate article. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 17:23, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

An alternative is for a user to create a draft in their sandbox then come here to invite others to work on the draft before moving the page into the main space. It may be easiest to copy/paste the current search section to that page (be sure to credit & link to the version history of this page!) and then try to work on a new heading/subheading section. The article will need to start with some background information about the flight/disappearance, but that is easily remedied by adding a link at the top of that section "Main article: Malaysia Airlines Flight 370". The trickier part will be how to prevent excessive overlap when discussing how the search relates to new revelations/information in the investigation. AHeneen (talk) 18:13, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

• Wait Not yet. Things are developing in this search that may turn out to be something. Or it may not. So much is still so uncertain, I think splitting at this time is premature. I like The above suggestion for creating a sandbox draft. -- Winkelvi ● ✉ ✓ 20:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• Wait Just be patient. HiLo48 (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment. I don't really understand why the split should be deferred-perhaps someone can properly explain that other than just saying "recentism". By that logic why not shut down this article until after the plane is found and recovered? Roughly 60% of the current prose (excl refs and tables) and 90% (WP:OR) of recent edits relate to the search. To say "under the 100k recommended for a split" is a complete misread of that guideline. 447 was 5 years ago-a lot has changed since then, including WP. Search for MH370 has been variously reported as the largest and most expensive search in history which I would have assumed would warrantdemand a stand alone article. That is as of now, not in the future. 90% (WP:OR) of the 50k hits per day will be for info on the search. I would caution against a sandbox article unless its only a very temporary arrangement prior to moving into main space, or if someone is going to volunteer to keep both articles updated with the rapidly changing info. Migrating the ever expanding section into a new article will only get more difficult as it grows (ref sharing etc.). But, I will stand by the majority. Moondyne (talk) 04:02, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
  • @Moondyne:I have said so above, and am not vehemently opposed to splitting the article if it is the right thing to do. I'm currently in favour of keeping the article as one for holistic reasons. We are not in any real position to say what people come to this article for. People don't need to come here just to look at the latest on the search – there are plenty of news sites for that purpose and it's not our vocation to compete with the news media. The size criteria also suggests that it should stay as one article. Please explain how "under the 100k recommended for a split" can be a complete misread of that guideline? If we talk purely about size, the article is currently at 37 kB (5840 words). FYI WP:SIZERULE says:

> 100 kB Almost certainly should be divided

> 60 kB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)

> 50 kB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)

< 40 kB Length alone does not justify division

Please note:

These rules of thumb only apply to readable prose (found by counting the words, perhaps with the help of Shubinator's DYK tool or Prosesize) and not to wiki markup size (as found on history lists or other means).

-- Ohc ^¡digame! 04:53, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• • • Your phrase "under the 100k recommended for a split" implies that an article less than 100k is not recommended to split. I never argued that size was a reason to split, but rather the proportion related to the search is. Moondyne (talk) 05:35, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose, but only until the aircraft is found... once that occurs I'd support. My thoughts on this matter are largely contingent on the status of the search. --CrunchySkies (talk) 04:56, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Wait until wreckage is found, then split. 203.9.185.136 (talk) 05:36, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose Please look at how AF447 is structured. The whole accident is a natural holistic unit, and splitting it thoroughly artificial. The user would have to keep flipping between the pages to get a comprehension of the event. The fact that the material about the search is ever growing is only due to that we are in the middle of it because of recentist accretion, once the wreck is found it will be streamlined and summarised. Having then to handle a major re-merge that was unnecessary to begin with is a headache I don't want to think about. ^walk victor falk ^talk 07:47, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment: At the moment the lede reads like a summary of the search section; if the black box is found the lede may be rewritten based on its data and the present lede can be used as a summary for the search. If it is not found and the search section grows out of propotion we will have a problem, but still, let's wait. Soerfm (talk) 10:18, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose The search is very much a nine day wonder (albeit 30 days so far). I think the fact that it lead the news for so long is partly because of the incompetence of the Malaysian Government news handling. When they ran around not knowing what to say and making muddled and contradictory statements without explaining the corrections, the Press Conference was often the news instead of the search. Contrast this now with the consummate professionalism of the Australians, where they make clear statements, and release both the statements and the transcript of the press conference on the web, as well as maps of the search area. Even though there is more positive news, it has already slipped down the news agenda. If they find the plane, then the search section will be reduced to something pretty short: they searched areas 1, 2 and 3. Lots of countries involved, lots of false leads. (Like MONGO says). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kulath (talk • contribs) 16:43, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose Do we really need a Dead ends in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 article? Only the final and successful search is encyclopedic and the rest is barely arguably news patsw (talk) 13:21, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Removal of the search assets list?

I've been waiting for the right moment and the right source to do it, and have now simplified the list of assets to a summary level based on this source. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 08:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Info for other editors: The words spoken above by OHC mean, that he has completely deleted the entire search assets list and replaced it by a summary line saying that "At the peak of the search on 17 March, before the search was moved to the south Indian Ocean, 26 countries (a,b,c....z) were involved in the search, contributing a total of nearly 60 ships and 50 aircraft". And while OHC above noted the entry-portal web-address as the source, here is the direct source link for the summary line: Chapter 5 of the source. Personally I think such a radical removal, needs to be debated/commented, to check if we can all agree or find consensus about it. Danish Expert (talk) 09:12, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Oppose (partly): I did not like the previous asset list, as it did not provide enough overview. But I oppose a complete removal of the info, as I think a short assets list is fully supported by WP:Summary. To be more exact, what I instead propose is a new short sortable wikitable listing each of the search assets being employed in the Australian-led search area (from 18 March onwards). Reason why I think it is acceptable not to have a similar asset list for the other more northern search areas (8-17 March), is because this initial search was not even near being performed at the correct part of the planet - and thus it can be accepted we provide no search asset details about that. However, we now have a very separate well-defined search operation subsequently going on in Australia (18 March onwards) where this operation is much more significant and notable to report facts about, because it was all along being performed in a "correct" search area, being more close to the impact area of the plane and being performed by same assets while also being led by the same Australian AMSA+JACC.

We should not misread WP:Summary. If you check the rating policy for the highest quality of Wikipedia articles, it is clearly stated they need to embrace all relevant facts and info involving the scope of the article. If some of you have concerns about the length of the assets table I have proposed (currently featuring 30 lines of wikilinks for: 15 aircrafts + 14 ships + 1 submarine), then such table could even be presented by an auto-collapsed format, so that it only opens up once a reader click on it to learn which assets were applied during the real Australian-led search operation. Only if you can accept my proposal about creating this wikitable, I will be willing to accept and support the complete removal of the previous search asset list. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 09:12, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• I have no problem to referring to the efforts of notable contributions of specific assets. I think that we're doing quite well. Of course, we need an overview too. But thirty lines, even if collapsible, seems like WP:UNDUE to me. It's an impossible list to maintain at this stage. The assets are big and small, and each have a role to play, but not all contributions are of equal importance – for example, there's only so much a frigate or fishing vessel can do without getting into the way of the Ocean Shield. Just indulge me in a simple exercise: count the number of times the Shield is named on this talk page and compare it to the count of other assets mentioned... -- Ohc ^¡digame! 09:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• The list is not impossible to maintain at this stage. On the contrary the most possible time to create such a list is now, where all editors around the world can help report country specific links for it. At the same time we also have AMSA+JACC+Maritimetraffic supplying us with some specific good overall references. The proposed auto-collapsed and sortable wikitable, would have the following four columns: Name, Type, Function, Nationality. As shown by the two examples below:
  00Ocean Shield, Ship, Subwater search, Australia.
  00Cesar Chavez, Ship, Replenishment (fuel supply), United States.
  The importance of each asset is implied by its function. The point where I agree with you, is that we shall entitle the table "Main search assets employed in the AMSA search operation (since 18 March)", because such title would imply we only list aircrafts+ships+submarines, and refrain to mention any of the helicopters or merchant ships transitting through - while also skipping all info about the satellites shooting pictures. Danish Expert (talk) 11:11, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Support: I support Ohconfucius removal of the long list, the list of ships and aircraft are not really notable and the summary that Ohc did is fine, I also object to any list in a collapsable format, being hidden doesnt make it right. In the end the list was just a bit of willy waving and response to news stories when we had little else to add to the article, but it didnt and still doesnt have an encyclopedic value. MilborneOne (talk) 11:31, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• The point where we disagree is, that I feel the search event is a key topic by-itself given the amount of media coverage and financial ressources it has already consumed and will continue to consume. In that light, I think its of encyclopedic value to list at least by a collapsible wikitable all the main assets being part of this notable "search event". The encyclopedic format and value of it, is beside of providing an overview of the employed number and type of search assets employed, that wikilinks in the table at the same time point to more specialized articles about "search function" and "details about the ship" for those readers who whish to jump on to obtain such additional geeky info. I think the short collapsible wikitable format indeed ensure that we at one hand can avoid the article to get clotted by "geek info", but at the same time provide a wikilinked tree so that geeks also can visit relevant associated subarticles about the exact main assets employed. By this format, we would have something that satisfy the needs of both casual readers (only wanting to read summary) and more geeky readers (searching to obtain more factual details about the search operation). Danish Expert (talk) 12:06, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• The search is a key topic but listing every coastal patrol boat and the like is not needed. Collapsible tables are just a cop out to hide stuff that most readers dont care about, so really is not needed. If any of these ships or aircraft (although we listed individual ships but not individual aircraft!) actually contribute anything then they like Ocean Shield and Echo are mentioned in the main narrative. Listing individual Indonesian patrol boats for example, although nobody doubts they all helped just is not notable. One quoted above the Cesar Chave, bimbles up refuels and replenishes stuff (which is what it is designed to do) and carries on, yes it all helps but notable, afraid not. MilborneOne (talk) 13:02, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• No patrol boats are taking part in the search area. Only specialist search ships with educated search crew and appropriate equipment has been tasked for this search operation. Likewise for the 15 employed aircrafts. JACC actually has mentioned all names for the employed aircrafts as part of their media briefings, so it will be very fast and easy to reference that part. My entire point is, that the wikitable only shall comprise main search assets employed which also happen to be the ones deciding the costs of the search operation. If you google, then you can find that we almost had 1 journalist on board of every aircraft and ship involved in the investigation, writing articles about how the search is being done. If they are not, they are still reporting about what all main assets are doing. At the time of arrival of the Cesar Chavez ship, CNN broadcasted during the subsequent 24 hours, what it was tasked to do. You seem to question the notability of mentioning what comprised the main search operation, but you have certainly not convinced me about that. Just because you have no personal interest to learn about it, this does not mean it then should be qualified as non notable. As a reader, I would really find it appropriate to have such a wikitable included as it enlight me with facts about a certain important notable part of the search operation. When the next aircrash happen out in the sea and a similar search operation starts, most readers would also have an encyclopedic interest to look up: "what assets were employed last time we had a similar search operation - and how many assets were in play back then compared to now". So I think mentioning the name of the main assets employed in the search operation is both notable and encyclopedic relevant. Danish Expert (talk) 14:48, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• Not sure we are on the same page certainly a list of Indonesian Patrol Boats was removed in Ohc edit. MilborneOne (talk) 17:48, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• Apparently not. The list OHC removed, included all assets employed from 8 March onwards (incl. Indonesian Patrol Boats). My counter proposal is that we instead now replace the removal by a short wikitable over the main assets employed in the Australian-led search operation (18 March onwards). This is a much shorter lists of specialized assets (15 aircrafts + 14 ships + 1 submarine), which is a lot shorter compared to the previous list that included info about provided satellites assistance, radar info, technical and criminal investigation support, and the mentioning of over 60 ships and 50 aircrafts searching in vain at the incorrect part of the planet. I support the removal of all that, but only at the condition we instead can display my proposed collapsible wikitable (as a table with wikilinks for the 30 main assets employed). Danish Expert (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• I would not support any proposal to use collapsible wikitables for anything in the article. If any of the assets used in the Australian (or any) search area are notable then they will get a mention in the main narrative. MilborneOne (talk) 18:27, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

co-pilot's in-flight phone call?

IP editor 36.72.166.9 recently posted this interesting update and reference:

the Co-pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 cell phone also reportedly connected with a telecommunications tower in the Malaysian city of Penang, before plane went off primary radar, Call traced to co-pilot's phone - The New Straits Times, 12 April 2014

It has been removed for the time being, but it might be worth keeping an eye on... Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 18:28, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I think we need more info, like why only one phone connected and not any from the rest of the passengers but that is getting into speculation so we need to wait for the investigation to report whats going on. MilborneOne (talk) 18:35, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

The story is not necessarily about a phone call (which the first source of the NST article claim), but about the co-pilots mobile establishing the automatic network-connection with the nearest telecommunication network ("as a different set of sources close to the investigations told the NST"). All airline companies still only allow for mobil phones to be swiched ON during the entire flight, on the strict condition people put them on flight mode. When on flight-mode all communication parts of the device gets disabled, which include disabling any automatic connection-attempts to potential nearby telecommunication towers. This would explain why only very few mobil phones on board Flight 370 connected to the telecommunications tower in Penang, as it perhaps only was the co-pilot who had powered on his mobile at a high altitude without taking care to put it into flight-mode (presumably because he knew there is no "communication risk" at high altitudes anyway).

If the first NST source is correct that the co-pilot also dialed in a certain phone number (which we however still need minimum one more source to confirm - to ascertain the first one did not misinterpret the situation), this story is certainly significant to include as info in the article. If it was just an ordinary automatic hook-up to the nearest communication network due to the phone not being put into flight-mode during the flight, it is also possible the co-pilot ahead of the flight had powered off his mobile and then after reaching 35000 feet's height had just powered it on again to listen to music (without putting it into flight-mode), then 3 minutes later he could even have been killed by the captain or an intruder taking control of the plane, and while flying over the telecommunications tower the dead co-pilots phone (still powered on playing music) just automatically hooked up to the telecommunications network available in Penang. Danish Expert (talk) 04:04, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

A clarification. The article does not mention a cell phone. It mentions a mobile phone. That's the terminology used in Malaysia, and in much of the rest of the world, and it's the name of the Wikipedia article on such devices. If we ever do include anything on this, it's the terminology we should use. HiLo48 (talk) 21:34, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Hishamuddin has ruled it out, so if it belongs anywhere, it should go into the Conspiracy theories article. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 05:38, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

HMS Echo was today ordered to help Ocean Shield

CNN this morning broke the story, the HMS Echo now has been ordered to abandon the Haixun-01 acoustic location point, and sail as fast as possible 600km north-east to assist Ocean Shield. The story was confirmed by the British defense minister, who stated the importance of the Chinese acoustic recording had now been disregarded, and this was why Echo now was sailing over to help Ocean Shield instead. This is a quiet interesting story, but I still wait for a JACC press conference to provide more details before reporting it. Until that point of time, I can recommend all those of you being interested to visit the Marinetraffic.com website. The website show realtime positions of all ships (incl. their names) at the Indian Ocean, and if you click on the filter menu its also possible to select their predicted course. If you at the search menu type in Ocean Shield it focus directly on this ships current position and reports it speed. When zooming out, you will be able also to see the names of all other ships. If you click on the ships additional info pop up with their nationality and links for historic positions. It is a quiet interesting realtime source, and here you can also currently whatch how Echo is sailing directly towards Ocean Shield, with an expected time of arrival 16:54 UTC, 10 April. Danish Expert (talk) 11:20, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

By the way, here is a direct link for a table with all Ocean Shields historic positions during the last week. Another fact to be learned, is that Haixun stayed at its acoustic recording point from 5 April until 9 April 00:58, where it suddenly speeded up from 1 to 17 knots and headed straight west towards the current surface-debris search area, where it arrived and joined the surface search on 23:00 9 April. This mean that Haixun has only been searching for surface-debris - and no ping signals - all time throughout today (10 April). Danish Expert (talk) 11:20, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The Marinetraffic site is interesting - many thanks for that, except that it seems to indicate that at the moment, Echo is sweeping at 7 knots, against Ocean Shield's2 knots. Any source that can confirm this, or why such a speed discrepancy? Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 21:14, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Could be rough sea state, could be trying to pinpoint a possible source by staying in the same position, could be lag in relaying position from going back and forth over a small area; really no too much should be inferred; it'd a bit like trying to navigate an aircraft from the passenger in-flight positioning display. ^walk victor falk ^talk 21:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

The Ocean Shield is towing the TPL-25 which gets it's best detection results at 1.5 knots or lower. The Echo may be deploying sonobuoys. For a while, they were towing divers who were watching for debris that floating just under the surface. You'd think that could be done with cameras but using divers has a better probability of detection. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:21, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

During the entire day of 11 April, Echo has sailed within the impact area with a speed of 0.1-0.9 knots. At the same day Ocean Shield sailed approximately 18 nautical miles out to the west from the impact area, perhaps to avoid creating noice disturbing the work of Echo. I very much look forward to learn what the heck Echo has been doing today. Apparently they are now done, because since this afternoon thay have left the impact area again, with Ocean Shield at the same time (since this morning) slowly sailing towards the impact area again (eta later this evening), with a speed between 1.6-2.1 knots - implying TPL25 has been redeployed. Perhaps Echo has mapped something - or some seabed corridors, that Ocean Shield shall now attempt to ping-search more closely? Danish Expert (talk) 14:43, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Danish Expert, the TPL is towed out at the end of about 55,000 feet (nearly ten miles) of cable. To do a run with the TPL you need to sail at least 10 miles beyond the start of the run, drop the TPL into the water, and sail forwards while deploying the cable. Roughly ten miles into the run you are towing the TPL but likely still need to adjust its depth to be 1000 to 1500 feet above the ocean floor. In one of the press conferences the Australians reported that it can take as long as eight hours to set up for a run with the TPL. Also, that as part of the bracketing they were planning on doing both north/south and east/west runs with the TPL.

I have been wondering if any military submarines are involved yet. Those use towed array sonar. The TPL25 has one hydrophone while a towed array is a string of hydrophones that can allow for triangulation. It's my understanding that some US military arrays use a Y shape where they are towing two strings of hydrophones to improve on their ability to triangulate the source of a sound. --Marc Kupper|talk 17:34, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

HMS Tireless has been on station and involved with the search since 2/3 April, but there is tantalisingly little information about exactly what it is doing or even - perhaps for obvious reasons - what its full capabilities are, see This article for example. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 17:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

@Marc Kupper: Yes, the AMSA commander in chief explained that when TPL-25 is "fully deployed", they tow it at 3000-3500 feet's depth (equal to 1000-1500 feet above the ocean floor). And you are absolutely correct to point out, that they of course need to drop it first and then sail some miles before it is "fully deployed". I completely forgot about that detail when looking at the map, and this indeed explain why Ocean Shield sails a bit outside the search area each time making a turn. However during its last 2 latitude horizontal runs (the first took place 08:48-15:52 and the second from 15:52-04:43 UTC), it only sailed 6 nautical miles out of the search area - which is a lot less compared to the 18 miles recorded the other day. But perhaps we should not over-interpretate that particular move. On a sidenote, this morning -in fact right now at 06:30 UTC - the US Ship Cesar Chavez has paid a visit to Echo (presumably filling up its tank with extra fuel). Another interesting fact is, that Echo the entire time has sailed in rectangular routes (with the longest line paving through as a cross-line of the search area), and that the speed of this ship constantly is between 6-8 knots while operating. So Echo is roughly sailing 4 times as fast compared to Ocean Shield. I am curious to learn: What equipment Echo currently use for their subwater search, being able to handle this speed? Can anyone enlighten me on that? Danish Expert (talk) 06:34, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I just caught part of an interview this morning with Echo's Captain. As I understood it, At more than 4000 mtrs depth, the TPL on Ocean Shield is more effective than Echo, so Echo is concentrating more on getting a "control" signal of background noise for Ocean Shield to calibrate any signals against, as well as mapping the seabed for likely anomalies. That will likely explain the speed differences. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:18, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Final para in Intro

Are these two lines really needed in the Intro? Roundtheworld (talk) 10:02, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Turning a section into prose?

Hello! I have noticed one of our fellow Wikipedians, namely Lihaas, has added the template "Prose" to the section "Timeline of events" of this article, which is currently presented as a list. They did it in this edit, apparently without posting any message on the article's talk page, and presenting only the summary entry "break the section down o [sic] notable prose". So they didn't quite present much of a reason. The template merely states that this section could be better if presented in prose rather than in a table.

I still don't understand why. I have come here to publicly oppose to this change. I think that table is very good, and very useful. Personally, I can tell you I've come to this article nearly every day to check that list and see "what's new". It's very easy to locate anything you want, you can easily accompany the progress of the investigation and the search, and the information is very well summed up, so that you don't have to read much to get to what you want. In prose, it could be harder to locate what you want, and it harder to follow the progress. In many cases, a table, a graph or another kind of scheme is better than a long text describing everything that could be more easily displayed and understood by means of a scheme. That is why I think the table should be kept. I'd really miss it if it were gone. I am, however, not against the possibility of writing a text in addition to the list, if you feel it's better. I just think the table should be kept.

But since the user who posted the message didn't talk to us first, I've decided to present the subject here, and I'm going to send him a message asking them the reason, and pleading them to come here and discuss the matter. I have told you why I oppose to the removal of the table. Please share your thoughts as well so we can reach a consensus. Thanks! -- Sim(ã)o(n) * ^{Talk to me!} _{See my} efforts! 23:22, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

As the time line was intended to lay out key chronological facts already in the body of the article text in a concise visual summary, the suggestion makes little sense to me neither. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 01:04, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

MOS:TABLE says "They can be useful for a variety of content presentations on Wikipedia, though should be used only when appropriate; sometimes the information in a table may be better presented as prose paragraphs or as an embedded list."

I suspect the Timeline of events section could be improved by converting it to prose but it'll be tough to avoid WP:PROSELINE. I would not mind seeing it broken into separate sub-sections for the search vs. media. Doing it as rows in the table gets confusing at times.

Also, in a few months we should be able to collapse the search into a paragraph rather than a day-by-day list. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:06, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose Like Sim(ã)o(n), I have found the table very helpful to orient through the events and easily keep up to date with the most recent developments. It is a complement to the rest of the article, which do tell about them in a narrative form. ^walk victor falk ^talk 04:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Despite CHANGELOG, the OP makes a very good case, so Im inclined to invoke IAR in that regard. However, ill BOLDly propose a merger with the search section. Maybe after a few months we can THEN change it. Good discussion, good compromise, all happy ;)Lihaas (talk) 06:17, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose both the first idea to convert it to prose, and the second to move it into the search section. Currently it serves a purpose to provide overview of all developments within all 3 key topics of the overall article (media, investigation, search). Having this compiled in an overall table makes sense, as the 3 key topics are often interrelated. In example, when the search finds the black box, then the investigation a week later can conlude something upon retrieved flight data, which also might create reason for a new significant/critical media statement. So reading the overall table chronologically from top to bottom, makes good sence to me. Danish Expert (talk) 11:02, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Last words of the pilot

The last words of the pilot were "all right, good night"; this was then later changed to "good night, Malaysia three-seven-zero" (or words to that effect). Isn't this an important enough event to be included (A) in the timeline of the disappearance at the top of the article; and (B) in the timeline of events at the bottom of the article? I believe so. Thoughts? Or is it in there already, and I missed it? Thanks. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 09:45, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Actually, does this even appear anywhere in the article at all? I can't seem to find it? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 09:51, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

It's mentioned among the notes (Malaysia Airlines Flight 370#cite note-290).--Anders Feder (talk) 13:46, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I think this merits more than mere mention in a footnote. This is a pretty significant detail. No? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:48, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

We won't know if it's important until we know what actually happened. HiLo48 (talk) 22:15, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

Regardless of what actually happened, this is still important. It reflects the last known contact with the plane, no? That is pretty significant in an article about a missing plane. No? It's certainly no less important than: when was the last radar "handshake"; when was debris spotted in the ocean (which has nothing to do with the plane); when was a ping heard (which may or may not be from the plane). Am I wrong about this? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 23:50, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure of the point you are trying to make - Nobody really knows where the "all right, good night" words came from - did it came from an official source? I think this says more about the media repeating viral memes rather than any conspiracy or anything of significance. Andrewgprout (talk) 00:14, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

I am confused. And I am not sure what point you are trying to make? Isn't it well established (and well sourced, etc.) that the pilot spoke the last words ... and that they were "good night, Malaysia three-seven-zero" ... ? No? Am I mistaken about this detail? Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 00:54, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

• No, his actual words as was revealed are utterly unimportant. What's important, however, is the fuck-up the Malaysians made by misquoting him instead of publishing the transcript outright in the first place. It generated more hot air than was necessary because his words were exactly what were expected and what protocol demanded. Even then, I think the footnote about the bungle is sufficient and is presented with due weight along with the other bungles. As to the relevance and weight of all the other points mentioned, I'm with HiLo. The article has been adjusted along the way according to the latest developments, but we probably need for the dust to settle to arrive at a definitive position of whether some need to be removed, downweighted or expanded. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 00:15, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

can you provide me with a reference where any Malaysian official said the pilot said "all right, good night".Andrewgprout (talk) 00:24, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

oh, just google. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 00:44, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

These are all used in the article to reference the point in question: [24], [25],[26]. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 01:29, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

@User:Ohconfucius None of the three references you provided actually even pretend to say where the "all right, good night" quote came from. You said - "What's important, however, is the fuck-up the Malaysians made by misquoting him instead of publishing the transcript outright in the first place." Apart from it being rather rude you can only misquote something if you actually said it. As for the transcript is is presaumptious to assume the Malaysians had an obligation that early in the (crminal) investigation to release it.Andrewgprout (talk) 19:59, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

To sum up, I completely agree with OHC that this story has been reported by the article with due weight. The main conclusion is, that when it was first reported as "all right, good night" several pilots hypothesized it could imply a secret message for having been hijacked, because it deviated from the standard routine for pilots always close their comment by mentioning their flight number. The moment the correct line was published it removed that hypothesis, because the words actually said was according to standard procedure and did not raise any flags of concern. This mean, that the significance of the "last spoken words" disappeared. The second question raised by Joseph, why we have not got a sentence in mainbody article emphasizing "the last spoken words were spoken by the pilot rather than the co-pilot", is basically because this fact by-itself tells us nothing. Several pilots have said, that normally the captain and co-pilot share the roles so that it is the other one not flying who handles the radio-communication. Several media has reported "the captain was in control of the aircraft upon the moment the last words were spoken". But what does this mean? We shall remember here, that the unexpected course change and operational halt of the transpondor happened 3 minutes after the last spoken words. All kind of things could have happened during this time. Basically we don't know what happened, and whether or not it was the captain or co-pilot speaking the last words is completely irrelevant. Danish Expert (talk) 10:19, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

A Google News search by dates indicates Fox News reported "All right, good night" on March 12, 2014 which says "Malaysia’s civil aviation officials said Wednesday in Beijing that the final voice communication heard from the missing Malaysian Airlines jet to air traffic controllers was, 'All right, good night,' The Straits Times reported."^[27]

A Straits Times article from March 12, 2014 says of the words "which were revealed for the first time at a meeting in Beijing on Wednesday morning between the Malaysian government and Chinese relatives. The flight then disappeared from radar screens, said Malaysia's civil aviation officials at the meeting fronted by its envoy to China, Datuk Iskandar Sarudin, and held in a packed room with nearly 400 relatives at the Metropark Lido hotel."^[28]

It appears "All right, good night" was from the Malaysian government and was reported an an official function.

I am wondering if "All right, good night" was a translation issue. The meeting with Chinese relatives likely was in Mandarin Chinese and also was not an audience of aviation geeks meaning the translator may well have paraphrased rather than giving an exact quote. My search was in English. I do not know Chinese well enough to see how this meeting was reported in the Chinese media. --Marc Kupper|talk 03:56, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Marc for finding that - yes lost in translation! Andrewgprout (talk) 04:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

No, as far as I remember this was not a translation issue. It was presented as a fact during one of Malaysia's daily press conferences during the first days of the search, and it was presented in English. A couple of days later the Transport minister arrived and rectified these were the last words according to the transcript, however it should be noted the transcript might not be one hundred percent accurate, so some of the wording could have been slightly different. This was fallowed by one or two weeks of silence, and then they upon pressure from families released the exact transcript. This can be documented by listening to some of the video clips from the first days press conferences. I invite those who are curious, to post these evidential video-links, and then we can add those video links as supplementing references to convince those who do not believe the story. Danish Expert (talk) 10:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Although many are excellent English speakers, the first language of the Malaysian government ministers who have been involved in this drama, and the pilots, is Malay, not English. There could still have been a problem in translation. HiLo48 (talk) 10:21, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Do you really believe it was a translation problem going from "good night, Malaysia three-seven-zero" directly to "all right, good night"? This is very unlikely. The critical point here is not the "all right", but the fact that they forgot to mention the "Malaysia three-seven-zero" part. To me it seems much more likely, that an aviation expert told the Malaysian authorities that the last spoken words ment "all right, good night" (as a response to the previously message from the aviation control center), and then the Malaysian authorities by accident thought those were the last spoken words (and presented it as such at their English press conference). This is for sure not a huge incident by-itself, but it is a part of the story that the Malaysian authorities were bad to handle the press conferences. Sometimes denying things they then confirmed the next day, giving inaccurate information, and sometimes contradicting themselves. It was very clumsy. At least until the point of time, when the Malaysian Transport Minister arrived and took over the control of the press conferences. Danish Expert (talk) 11:16, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

How much do you know about the Malay language and Malay culture? HiLo48 (talk) 11:23, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Nothing. But I know a lot about logic. (1) When you translate figures - then they never disappear - no matter what language you translate to in the world! (2) In all other pilot or co-pilot comments noted in the initial published English transcript of the communications with Flight 370, they each time repeatedly ended their comment by saying 370 (which is a worldwide pilot standard thing to do). Only exception was the last message (according to the published inaccurate translated transcript). By applying logic upon that observation, this was not due to a translation mistake. Otherwise the same translation mistake would have appeared at all the other listed comments, which it did not! So what we have was an accurate transcript of all communications, except for the last line. We can only guess why. But the most likely reason is, that they accidently messed up the wording of the "last spoken words", due to an investigator having made a note next to it "what the last words meant". And when finding out about the mistake, they did not communicate it immediately to the public, but waited two weeks (before being pressured to admit it - as they were required to release the original transcript instead of the translated transcript). No matter how you put it, the most simple fact to present at a press conference would be the last spoken words, as this is something noted in the directly recorded audio transcript. When Malaysian authorities failed to do that, in combination with other inaccurate communication of facts, this tells an overall story that they did not handle the press conferences about the missing flight in the professional way one would normally expect. This is also why so much mistrust developed in the minds of the related families.

Wow, you are all completely missing my point. Forget it. Joseph A. Spadaro (talk) 01:05, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

well, don't be shy. what point was it, then? That those misattributed words are important, or the actual ones? IMHO only the act of misattribution is of any importance.-- Ohc ^¡digame! 05:43, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Fuel.

I have read in the corespondence section of Aviation Week & Space Tecnology that to use up all the fuel in the aircraft somebody have to switch fuelfeed in the cocpit, which means that somebody was handling some functions in the cocpit. (Sorry, I do not have the issue with me at present, and the internet site is only accessible by subscribers, I will dig up the issues and give references to issues and pages after easter. There is many interesting knowledgeable tecnical pieces in the issues)Seniorsag (talk) 12:27, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I think maybe we can check this out on Highbeam. --Rsrikanth05 (talk) 13:01, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Four ULB sources, but no triangulation?

We've heard that they had 4 separate strong detections of beacon signals/pings. We heard much beforehand that once they had 3, they could triangulate based on the directional strength of each detection. So why are we not hearing about that anymore? What good does 4 detections do, if it doesn't allow you to triangulate and find the source? And what makes them think any further detections would help? Has any of this been discussed in the media anywhere? If so, I think it would be helpful to add a short explanation in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:558:600A:63:4D5:E075:431:685D (talk) 03:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The hydrophones used seem to be omnidirectional meaning all you know is the signal strength. You don't know the direction. You don't know the distance. I did see a media article that talks about the process. Essentially, they were sweeping back and forth first to discover the pinger signal and then its area of greatest signal strength. The plan was to then run sweeps in a perpendicular direction, again looking for the greatest signal strength. I think the batteries gave out after one cross scan.

The Speed of sound#Seawater article section talks about some of the technical challenges that someone attempting to triangulate needs to deal with. A pair of towed array sonar can be used to triangulate but needs to be attached to a fairly large submarine as the array both creates a lot of drag and needs significant computer resources to process the data. Military submarines can't operate at 4500 meters. I could see an semi-autonomous unmanned submarine with its own propulsion and a cable running to the surface for both power and the data feed back from the array. Such a vehicle sounds useful but the greatest challenge is finding the pinger at all. To do that you want to be able to scan as quickly as possible with the most sensitive hydrophone possible. Since the pingers broadcast over such a small range once you find a pinger you are more or less on top of it. With Air France Flight 447 they did not find either pinger using passive listening before the batteries gave out. AF 447 was subsequently found by looking in an area of the search box they had not had time to scan using a pinger locator. South African Airways Flight 295 was another flight, also lost in the Indian Ocean, where passive pinger locators were unable to find the aircraft though again they had the benefit of knowing which areas had been searched with the pinger locators before commencing an active sonar search. --Marc Kupper|talk 22:22, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

It's almost as if aviation authorities have no real plan for locating based on a pinger. My idea: change the pinger design so that it's constantly fed the plane's latest position via GPS, which is saved to powered memory once every few seconds. Then when the pinger is activated upon contact with water, it's programmed to retrieve that GPS position and broadcast it audibly instead of (or in between) the current-style 'clicks'. The broadcast sounds should be unique to the plane and unmistakable. This would solve both the issue of being uncertain if what they're hearing is even a pinger, and more importantly, locating the position. These planes cost a quarter of a billion dollars new -- we can't have emergency locating tech that at least matches that of OnStar in your $25K car? 74.116.173.2 (talk) 23:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Obvious question then, why would they use omnidirectional mics if they were trying to triangulate the signal? You wouldn't need a wide towed array necessarily, even a single line from a ship could drop a single assembly of several unidirectional mics pointing outward from a center mount, and measure the relative signal strength received by each to determine the direction of the source. With four of those encounters, you would have more than enough to nail it down. As the other poster said, it's as if the Navy or NTSB had no contingency plan whatsoever to mount a successful search based on underwater beacon pings. 2001:558:600A:63:4D5:E075:431:685D (talk) 04:50, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

waves travel differently through water than through air. omni directional detectors guaranteed the best chance of hearing something – important because it ws only a best guess locale. at 4500m depth, they would be close to the limit of detection range. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 12:15, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

That's not really an explanation though, they could have done both omni- and unidirectional at the same time, omni- to increase odds, and uni- to narrow direction when they do get something. It will always be a "best guess" at first to some degree, or you wouldn't be listening for the pinger in the first place. As I said yesterday, even for as long as these devices have been around, it's as if they've had no set protocol or equipment prepared for actually pinning down location based on a pinger. How would such a search hypothetically work in a best-case scenario? 74.116.173.2 (talk) 17:15, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Criticisms

Seems like the shoe's on the other foot. Feel free to chip in/add to/remove/discuss. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 03:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Though it is probably correct, there has been no official statements regarding this issue with media reports either listing unnamed sources or are hearsay. Countries involved in the search consider openly answering questions on this subject will only hinder the current search process. This may change in the future StuB63 (talk) 04:44, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Like most/all other criticisms its only 50% of the story. I would let it stay, and wait for the remaining 50% counter arguments to be covered by later sources.

In regards of the so-called JACC vs. Chinese rescue organization communication/coordination problem, we should first of all be aware that JACC is not doing the coordination and communication inside the search operation itself, which is handled by AMSA+ATSB. JACC is basically just an external communication platform linking up and coordinating with the "outer world". As far as I remember, neither JACC nor AMSA has criticized Haixun for attempting to pick up sounds by a handheld hydrophone 300 kilometers away at the southern border of the calculated impact area. In order to duly weight the seriousness of the criticism we would need a clarifying statement about what happened by AMSA. My own suspicion goes, the Chinese heard that due to a lack of pinger detection assets, only the Northern part of the impact area would be checked by Ocean Shield and Echo, and that the American sonobouys deploying hydrophones at selected places on 300 meters depth were first ready to be dropped starting from 10 April. As China at this point of time already had 7 ships in the search area, and realizing it was a race against the clock with pinger batteries soon to die, they thus decided to let one of their ships, Haixun, start searching for ping sounds at 1 meters depth at the Southern part of the impact area. They did not disturb/delay the search operation by doing that. The only part were criticism might be just, could be that the Chinese ship communicated their observed acoustic signal directly to the press instead of to AMSA+JACC, and thus indirectly pressured them to order Echo down to investigate it further. Perhaps Echo might have obtained a fifth ping-signal beside of the four already recorded by Ocean Shield, in case it had stayed with her during all the ping-searching days, and that could perhaps have helped to further narrow down the seabed area to be scanned. We do not know. In particular, we even do not know if AMSA still would have ordered Echo to attempt verifying Haixun's recording in case the communication had been only internal and not shared immediately with the media. Perhaps AMSA condoned Haixun was in the area and in all circumstances would have ordered Echo to investigate their finding, and in that case the "media fuss" can not be blamed to have hampered the search operation.

In order to focus the criticism chapter, it might be a good idea perhaps to split it up, into three subchapters dealing with "criticism about investigation", "criticism about search" and "criticism about media handling". In my point of view, the posted Chinese story we now discuss, can only be put into the category "criticism about media handling", due to being all about a bad Chinese media handling leading to a potential false hope rollercoaster ride in the minds of related families - while not significantly interrupting the search operation itself. Danish Expert (talk) 06:54, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

On a sidenote, CNN this morning runs another new criticism story against AMSA+JACC, for not (at the same time of chartering Bluefin-21) having chartered an additional AUV capable to dive deeper than 4500 meters depth; which CNN claim is now needed, because some parts of the seabed search area is below that depth. According to CNN, this chartering delay mean that this highly needed additional AUV is currently unavailable, and that it will take long time (presumably one month) before it can be in place at the search area. Instead AMSA had to come up with a new untested idea, how they can tweak Bluefin-21 to go deeper than its original design limit. CNN further reported, that valuable search time would be lost because of that, which was critical as they only have about two months left to search before the winter wild weather kicks in and will force the search operation to be suspended. The criticism story has also today been reported as a slightly different version by SBS. Danish Expert (talk) 08:03, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Confuzing:

The aircraft's last known position on 8 March at 01:21 local time (17:21 UTC, 7 March) was at the navigational waypoint IGARI in the Gulf of Thailand, at which the aircraft turned westwards, heading towards a waypoint called VAMPI in the Strait of Malacca,[26] primary radar tracking suggests that the aircraft descended as low as 12,000 feet (3,700 m). From there, the aircraft flew towards a waypoint called GIVAL, arriving at 2:15 local time (18:15 UTC, 7 March), thereafter to the Southern Thailand Islands (Andaman Coast) of Phuket, and was last plotted heading northwest towards another waypoint called IGREX.[27][28][29]

I'm confused. If the last known position was at waypoint IGARI, how could they have known it was later at VAMPI, GIVAL, and later heading towards IGRX? --Oh wait. Now I understand: the editors for this article are from Malaysia. --66.41.154.0 (talk) 05:33, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

This was the last position reported to ATC - the last time it was known to be where it should have been, and before it "dropped off the radar". The later knowledge of the track after that point is explained in the article. and No, I'm not from Malaysia - haven't been there since 1968! Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:04, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Prove that you're not from Malaysia by fixing the article so its sensible. --66.41.154.0 (talk) 17:42, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

5th phase

It will take 6 weeks to 2 months to map a 500 sq. mi. area with a UUV (cf. Knifefish (robot)), now that the pings have ceased: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-long-search-ahead-as-black-box-falls-silent-9257185.html ^walk victor falk ^talk 08:54, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

If you are proposing that we have a new sub-heading "Fifth Phase" then I fully agree. Although I am not quite sure why the third phase was split into two and would be quite happy if the third and fourth phases were merged again. Roundtheworld (talk) 10:02, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

The earlier splitting of the previous 3rd fase into a 3rd and 4th, is appropriate and related to the fact that the first 4 phases deals with the different search areas. The first phase deals with the search in the "South China Sea". The second deals with a search operation 3000 km southwest of Perth. The third deals with a search operation 2000 km west of Perth. The fourth deals with a search operation 1000-2100 km west of Learmonth. Based on that, I object the proposal to merge the third and fourth phase. In regards of opening up a new 5th phase subchapter, I think we should delay such a decision. Initially the subchapters were entitled "seach area 1", "search area 2", search area 3". Then someone changed it to phases. I can accept that, but my initial position is, that as long as we are within the same search area, then we do not necessarily need to open up a fifth phase subchapter. In the so-called fifth phase, we are still dealing with a search conducted by Echo + Ocean Shield, in the exact same search area where they have been operating since the 4th of April. So this can also be covered by our current 4th phase subchapter. Danish Expert (talk) 10:34, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Seeing today's surface search area is back in the northern part of "phase 3 area" I think it will be very difficult to maintain them as two separate phases. StuB63 (talk) 00:43, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The distinct difference between the first 4 phases, was that the calculated impact area shifted to new locations on the planet (while the surface search area for debris moved along). Now starting from 15 April, you are indeed correct that the surface search area for debris has shifted to the area between the one being searched in phase 3 and phase 4. which perhaps could be a valid argument to open up a phase 5. However, the impact search area has still been maintained on 15 April onwards, which is a valid argument for my point that we still have a phase 4. Right now, I think we should let the impact search area decide the various phases. In particular because I suspect they will mawn and move the surface search area bit by bit upwards again during the following days, from where they are today. It seems to be a last desperate attempt to find something. But as Houston mentioned at his press conference on 14 April, AMSA will reassess whether or not to completely halt the surface search within 2-3 days, due to the assumption it will be impossible to find any Flight 370 related floating debris 40 days after the crash. If this happens, it would support my point, that we should now focus on radical changes of the subsea search, rather than on less important changes in the surface search, when determining when to open up a next "phase 5" chapter for the search. Danish Expert (talk) 06:53, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Just out of interest do any of the reliable sources use these "phases" ? MilborneOne (talk) 18:01, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

The word "phase" does pop up. Its use has been more obvious for the transition from TPL to Blufin. I am not aware of any that count the same way as we do, though. -- Ohc ^¡digame! 06:55, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• An improvement could be to add an explanation in the headline of each phase for justification. E.g.: First phase, search near last contact...Second phase, search along corridors... Soerfm (talk) 10:42, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Or just use the explanation and forget about titling with 'Phase n'. --66.41.154.0 (talk) 18:08, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

RfC: Is this the appropriate location for generating potential content for another page?

Is this talk page, in particular Compiling a search assets list, which was until recently HMS Echo was today ordered to help Ocean Shield, a suitable location to collate data for possible use in another article, or should it be moved elsewhere - to the user's sandbox for example? Lynbarn (talk) 19:45, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Survey

• Please comment as to whether you Support or Oppose this item being removed from here as you feel fit;
• Comment I see there is already a fairly civil debate in the #What is the point of this talk page section? section and don't see a need for an RFC about the same subject. I get the sense from the existing debate that the people creating the assets lists will soon move to another page. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:41, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
• Comment Wikipedia supports WP:Workpages for compiling such lists typically located at /workpage in talk namespace and sporting a {{workpage}} banner -- 65.94.77.36 (talk) 21:38, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• Please discuss the matter here, to avoiding further confusing and cluttering the section in question;

Side-scan sonar

Someone might want to improve Side-scan sonar, as this is what Bluefin-21 is designed to do. So linking to it to explain the seafloor search would have more relevant information. -- 65.94.77.36 (talk) 21:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes it does look like an update will be useful! I've added a wikilink from the phase four section anyway. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 22:27, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Relevant information is constantly getting deleted

There are a few users who are apparently not willing to allow an investigated point about the Flight 370 mystery into the article backed by reliable sources, and deleted the below information a number of times. I would appreciate you help revising this so we can establish consensus on the subject before adding it back to the article:

After the aircraft disappeared, some news reported that it may have been the result of an act of terrorism, possibly a Jihad attack.

Sources:

• "Was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Lost Because of Terrorism?". Frontpage Magazine. March 28, 2014. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
• "Malaysia Airline MH370: 9/11-style terror allegations resurface in case of lost plane". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
• "These are all the Internet's 'best' theories on Malaysia Flight 370′s disappearance". The Washington Post. Retrieved 18 April 2014.
• Pamela Geller. "Flight MH370: Terrorism expert backs theory of pilot suicide flight -". Retrieved 18 April 2014.
• "Police investigating Uighur Muslim with flight training who was on board missing Malaysian airliner". Retrieved 31 March 2014.

Thanks, Shalom11111 (talk) 05:05, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

To me, the problem in that content is the word "may". It may have been terrorism. It may have been aliens, as suggested in your third source. It may have been the devil, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. There is no point reporting media speculation that has led to no serious action from investigators. HiLo48 (talk) 06:20, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Of course the word "may" is used, because the fate of the plane is unknown. As the sources show, some terrorism experts have acutally looked into this possibility. All of these sources (and there are more) establish a notable enough speculation to be inlcuded in the article, don't you think? Shalom11111 (talk) 06:56, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

These would belong better on the conspiracy theories page. Even if we were to use these sources, it would have to be in the context of "some random people think x", which is arguably not germane to the page. Remember that media sources reporting on people claiming certain things does not mean those same media sources claiming that the "terrorists may have been responsible for the loss of the plane", but rather that there are just people out there who claim such things. This is different from a media report saying "x country searched y location yesterday". – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 07:03, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Alright, I appreciate the input. So for now, I'll add it to the conspiracy theories page as you said (even thought many would argue it belongs here and not there). Thanks Shalom11111 (talk) 18:43, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Links

>> MH370 search heads underwater againLihaas (talk) 13:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Just a heads-up that there is a DMOZ Directory category on the subject. Elper (talk) 22:31, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Bluefin-21

Seems like we should write an article about this AUV [29] -- 65.94.77.36 (talk) 05:04, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

• Indeed, the military Knifefish (robot) is based upon it. ^walk victor falk ^talk 06:42, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
  • Go ahead. I've removed the Knifefish linkage from the timeline. kencf0618 (talk) 02:21, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
    • Created a stub: Bluefin-21 ^walk victor falk ^talk 07:23, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Passengers and Crew/Passengers

The article states: 'One passenger who worked as a flight engineer for a Swiss jet charter company was briefly suspected as potential hijacker because he was thought to have the relevant skill set.'

It is probably not very significant but this passenger was not a FLIGHT engineer but probably ground engineer or other type of aircraft engineer. I have been a flight engineer for 18 years at KLM and the profession is not well understood by the general public. It is a vanishing profession which lately only existed on old type of planes like B747-200/300, DC10, Concorde, some Airbus A310 (Air France)and military planes. The flight engineer works on the flight deck and has his own seating position and Panels. He is part of the flight crew and has more than enough skills to divert a plane.

A Swiss jet charter company uses very likely smaller executive type small jet engined planes and does not own this old fashioned type of planes, they are mainly used as cargo planes nowadays. Seen his age, 29 years old, it's very unlikely this person ever functioned as a flight engineer, more likely as a ground engineer, which makes him a technical skilled person but with less skills on the subject of routine navigation like a flight engineer.

So I would propose to remove the word 'flight' which suggests such skills and just use the term 'engineer' which does not suggest this kind of flight experience. --Patrickdef (talk) 07:59, 17 April 2014 (UTC) Or 'Aviation Engineer' like also used in the second paragraph of the article in the Straits Times where the word flight engineer came from. --Patrickdef (talk) 07:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC) --Patrickdef (talk) 08:02, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

News articles have Mohd Khairul Amri Selamat occupation listed as a 'Flight Engineer' or 'Aircraft Engineer', but I can't find any valid references to his actual occupation.

Reading this section in the wiki I think the wording "was briefly suspected as potential hijacker because he was thought to have the relevant skill set" is erroneous. Malaysian authorities said they were investigating any passenger or crew that may have technical flying knowledge.

I believe a more appropriate wording is "was investigated as a potential hijacker...." StuB63 (talk) 08:16, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Most likely everyone is dead — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.212.6.84 (talk) 14:26, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Purpose

I am concerned about the purpose of this article. The discussion I read here seems to be about how to manage information for "the public." You are the public. We all are. This information is from us, by us, and for us. We should not be concerned with how to manage people's perception of the information; we should be concerned about how to ojbectively and honestly provide the information.

One issue I have with the article is the lack of sources which are the ultimate source. A news report is often the result of nothing more that a press release, as is the case with many references to the Malaysian Star2 news website. The assumption here is that by clicking that link you can somehow "confirm" the information. Confirmation requires attribution to a source. A news article provides information, but is not itself a source. Such information must be verified.

And if citations of news sources is used validly, such as reports of statements; the text in the Wikipedia article should be structured to assure the reader that they are reading a statement reported in a news article; such as citation pointing to a news article in which the cited information is a quote from a source. If, for example, there is a mention in the article of a fact reported through statement, it should state so explicitly: "The flight was reported to then change course to the south" would be better written "The Australian Prime Minister stated that the flight changed course to the south." This removes any possibility of a reader drawing any incorrect conclusions.

Care and consideration must be given to objective accuracy. We cannot draw conclusions based on suppositions, only fact. And where we cannot confirm fact; we must explicitly state so. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.7.26.198 (talk) 17:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm really confused as to what you're talking about. Try reading WP:PRIMARY, WP:RS, and WP:V for Wikipedia's policy on sources. So you don't like primary or secondary sources. What other sources do you suggest? And Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate collection of information. If you have specific suggestions, then please raise them. But Wikipedia is not a place for original research, so unfortunately we are not the ones drawing the conclusions. Everything in here is largely based on reliable sources. If there is a specific source you are concerned about, you can replace it or discuss it here. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 20:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

I have discussed this before, now here. The published press release from the relevant authority (e.g. the Malaysian Ministry) is the secondary source. It is an interpretation, analysis, or evaluation. If anything, the media reports are just tertiary sources. The article is at the moment full of unverified information, and the references to the media reports are often misleading. Largely speaking, the article should not refer to media reports. At the moment, this article looks like an indiscriminate collection of information from the media. The links given in the "External Links" section are the reliable sources of information.

Since the Malaysian authorities provided so little concrete information, I don't think it would be a good idea to just delete all the material that comes from "unconfirmed media sources", so I would like all the material that comes from "unconfirmed media sources" to be moved to a separate section at the end of the article.

A particularly egregious example is the use of the Inmarsat statement which is used as a citation at least 11 times. The real source is the Malaysian Ministry publication of the information provided by the AAIB here. It should be pretty clear that Inmarsat are saying "all this interpretation, analysis, or evaluation is entirely the responsibility of the Malaysian authorities, nothing to do with us (but we don't mind the publicity, so don't forget we had something to do with it". The Inmarsat statement is only a brief summary of a few points, not the full statement. There is really no need to refer to the Inmarsat statement at all, because it adds nothing to the Malaysian Ministry publication.

It is a fine point whether you say (1) "The last voice contact was at 01:19" or (2) "The Transcript released by the Malaysian Authorities show the last voice contact as being at 01:19". I suppose if you make every statement in form (2), it may increase to length of the article. It also implies that you doubt the veracity of everything the Malaysian Authorities say, which may be a bit undiplomatic, but given their track record, perhaps that is what you are trying to do. Kulath (talk) 00:22, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding what that document said. Inmarsat did indeed do the doppler analysis to determine that the aircraft followed a southern route. Further analysis to narrow the final location after this document was released may have been done by Malaysian authorities. --66.41.154.0 (talk) 06:57, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, OK, but that is not the point I was trying to make. There were three documents:

• The original research that Inmarsat did, and presented to AAIB on 27 March PDF. Although the PowerPoints are present on the net, the details of the conclusions are not present. This is a Primary source. It is incomplete.

• The Information provided to the MH370 investigation by the AAIB PDF. This is a very reliable Secondary source. This is what the wikipedia article should be referring to throughout.

• The Inmarsat news item "Malaysian government publishes MH370 details from UK AAIB" site. This is NOT a source that wikipedia should be using. It is just an unreliable republication of part of the AAIB report.

Kulath (talk) 22:15, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Four ULB sources but no triangulation

> How would such a search hypothetically work in a best-case scenario?

I have been asking just this question myself, plus the following:

• Why couldn't they get some approximate single line of bearing information from the first contact that was held for 2 hours 20 minutes? Even with a single detector, doesn't such a long contact give you some information about the contact?
• Why does the black box pinger use ultrasound which apparently has an order of magnitude less range than audible? Is it true that it is also more susceptible to path distortions?
• Why does the Towed Pinger Locator not have either a half mile long array of sensors (like the typical towed sonar array) or a set of microphones as you suggest?
• Why is the TPL towed at some considerable distance above the sea floor (I can't find information about exactly how high it was towed in this case); does this make it more or less susceptible to confusion by thermal or salinity gradients?
• Why is the TPL that they used only designed for a maximum operating depth of 6,000 m when that is about the depth of some parts of the region it was to work in?
• Why did they hire and deploy an UAV that was not rated for the depth of the water?
• Why did the survey ship HMS Echo (which apparently wasn't being used as a passive pinger detector because its detector could only run at 4,000metres) not discover that the water was too deep for the BlueFin?

Unfortunately not sure that these questions are appropriate for this article. There do seem to be some references to the inadequacy of the current arrangements in Underwater locator beacon.

The AF447 report says:

• The utilisation of ULB beacons capable of transmitting for 90 days would have made it possible to prolong the search for the ULB beacons in this vast zone.

• The 37.5 kHz ULB beacons have a limited range, which means that specific equipment, not very widely found, must be used for depths greater than 1,500 metres, above all when the wreckage is far from the coast. The utilisation of beacons transmitting at lower frequencies (for example between 8.5 and 9.5 kHz) would have made it much easier to detect the wreckage. The French and foreign military equipment is designed to detect these low-frequency signals, which carry further, quickly from the surface.

Kulath (talk) 23:09, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Media Coverage

"New" material was deleted: "Americans tended to stay interested in this story well after other countries, even China, had moved on to other stories. After six weeks, it remained the top story. Some analysts attributed this to Americans obsession with lost persons.[30]"

In a country that is obsessed with "lost" people, it seemed relevant to point out exactly why the story, not only in Wikipedia, but in the American media, is still getting top priority, weeks after China (and most other countries) have moved on to more relevant topics. In the greater scheme of things, this is a relatively minor event, important only because there have been few commercial passenger plane crashes in the past decade or so. But long after the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce, Judge Crater, and Jimmy Hoffa, most people, including those for whom these events are ancient history, still recognize these names and why they are "important." But only in America.

It is important to report why a story is important. While the fact is US-centric, it is often Americans that are interested in this story and editing this article. Student7 (talk) 23:19, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I happen to disagree. The linked article reads more like an opinion piece, not a neutral report of matters of fact. It doesn't really add anything to the subject matter of how and why the plane disappeared. Not that the questions raised in the article are not interesting; they just don't seem to belong here.--90.184.154.70 (talk) 00:27, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the content being proposed is not actually about the missing plane. It's about Americans, or one commentator's thoughts on Americans. It doesn't belong in this article. HiLo48 (talk) 00:57, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Relevance of Cairo Accident

The final report on the Cairo accident investigation was released in September 2012. The report described a fierce fire that quickly destroyed the cockpit and burned a large hole through the fuselage. It focused on defective wiring as a likely ignition source for a fire in the copilot's auxiliary oxygen line. The report noted that Inadequately protected wiring in that area was reported in about 380 777's. It is possible that the aircraft on Flight 370 shared this defect, as it was a similar model and was built about the same time (the Egyptair serial number was 28423, the Malaysia serial number was 28420.) Boeing reacted to the accident by issuing voluntary technical advisories encouraging aircraft operators to secure and protect the wiring and replace the oxygen lines. It is not known yet whether Malaysia Airline acted on this advice. 69.255.45.86 (talk) 19:59, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but the talk page is not really for speculation or discussion on every possible theory. MilborneOne (talk) 20:29, 20 April 2014 (UTC)

The Wikipedia entry as currently written notes that aviation experts believe the 777 has an almost perfect safety record and it glosses over the destruction of the Egyptair aircraft. Look at the accident investigation report before you dismiss this theory. The issue is whether or not Malaysia Airlines took remedial action on a potentially catastrophic defect.69.255.45.86 (talk) 04:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Key word is "Theory" one of thousands so unless you have reliable evidence why 9M-MRO is missing then it is all speculation and not encyclopedic, it not our place to investigate why it is missing. MilborneOne (talk) 09:17, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Some modification is warranted, as the current text misleads readers regarding expert opinion about the safety of the 777. I recommend adding the following: The investigation on the Cairo accident revealed that about 380 777's were manufactured with defective wiring in the area of the cockpit where the fire ignited. Boeing issued several voluntary Alert Service Bulletins that were made mandatory by the US Federal Aviation Administration. However, it is not known whether Malaysia Airlines acted on them. 69.255.45.86 (talk) 17:06, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

There are plenty of reports (such as This one There’s no doubt the 777 held a very good safety record prior to the disappearance of flight MH370... and until the cause of the disappearance is known, there is nothing we can add to say that structural safety issues were a factor. The Cairo incident has - as far as is known right now, nothing to do with MH370. I don't believe any change is necessary. Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 17:44, 22 April 2014 (UTC) Also, see This league table Lynbarn (talk) 17:47, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Official meaning of "missing"

Even though this topic has been discussed and settled, there is an interesting aspect to it. The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) writes the rulebook covering the response to aviation incidents and accidents. All the states involved with the MH370 incident are bound by their rules (called standards and recommended practices).

ICAO has a specific definition of "missing": "An aircraft is considered to be missing when the official search has been terminated and the wreckage has not been located."

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is running the physical search and I haven't seen them describe the plane as missing in their releases. The other parties are describing it as missing. Clearly, since great efforts are being made in looking for the plane, common sense says that it is missing in the way most people would perceive it.

ICAO's definition of "accident" is also interesting: when a person is fatally or seriously injured, or: the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure, or: the aircraft is missing.

A strict application of that definition leads to the odd judgement that the event cannot yet be officially called an accident. (It can be called an incident).

It can be officially called an accident when: people are declared deceased, or: wreckage is found, or: the plane is declared missing (which requires the search to be terminated). Note that the Malaysian government is moving towards issuing death certificates. Maybe there are legal ramifications once it is declared an accident.

Contributed with due respect for the victims and all affected.

Opal2 (talk) 12:08, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Useful information - thanks - and the article correctly defines the status as an incident (see infobox) not an accident, but if not missing what is the official definition of the current situation? unlocated perhaps? Regards, Lynbarn (talk) 12:32, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

The Annex 13 definitions are to do with the steps involved in the investigation, they dont have a legal meaning outside of ICAO so we are fine with the common term "missing" as well as the ICAO term "incident". MilborneOne (talk) 12:36, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

This would be called an emergency and it would be described as being in the distress phase. Some understatement, eh? As far as I can see, the ATSB are the only agency not using the word "missing". I guess it is rare for wreckage not to be found after six weeks. I'm sure the public would have no care for this pedantic definition, which MilborneOne tells us is for facilitating investigation procedures under ICAO's rules.Opal2 (talk) 13:57, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

I don't know how ICAO would describe the aircraft's current circumsatance. Here's how they define "search": "An operation, normally co-ordinated by a rescue coordination centre or rescue sub-centre, using available personnel and facilities to locate persons in distress." Even there they avoid the obvious words like "missing", "lost" or even "location unknown". It is odd. Opal2 (talk) 14:49, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

That all seems clear enough. If we wanted to align the article with ICAO's nomenclature we would use "search and recovery" as the current status. I'm personally satisfied with using "missing" or "search underway" in the article though the searchers have recovered many pieces of evidence that so far have all turned out to not be from MH370.

We have already passed the line between "Search and Rescue" vs. "Search and Recovery". For example, the JACC is using "search and recovery"^[31] implying they are operating under the assumption that the MH370 crew and passengers are dead. --Marc Kupper|talk 18:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Use of coordinates in the Timeline

Do we need to retain all the coordinates given in the timeline? Specifically, I feel that those for the entries of March 12,20, 22 and 26 could now be deleted. Roundtheworld (talk) 14:32, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Rather then deleting them I'd prefer that they get wrapped in <ref> tags. That'll drop them into the references list. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:09, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

<ref group=Note> you mean? If they're not refs they should not use the regular ref tag -- 65.94.171.206 (talk) 07:11, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

• Having all of them in the body text would be inappropriate, except for the location of the latest sonar contact/search area, but they belong in the timeline table, as a simple way to get an overview of the evolution of the search locations. Clicking back and forth between references makes this impossible. ^walk victor falk ^talk 19:57, 24 April 2014 (UTC)