MH370 11th Anniversary: Seabed Search Confusion [S2Ep31 video]

Armada 78 06 is heading back to the search area, but will it linger?

It was eleven years ago today that Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared from radar screens over the South China Sea.

Since then millions of square miles of ocean have been searched from the air, hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of seabed have been scanned, a few dozen pieces of debris have been recovered from the shores of the western Indian Ocean, but we still don’t have any conclusive answers as to what happened to the plane or the 239 people aboard.

There is a search on—but it’s not clear to what extent. The ship tasked with scanning the seabed, Ocean Infinity’s Armada's 78 06, has set sail towards the search area, but it is displaying its destination as Cape Town, with a time of arrival so soon that it implies that it will spend little if any time on station in the search area.

Today I’m going to talk about what we know about the confusing status of the search right now and what the possibilities are going forward.

In the last episode we talked about how the ship that Ocean Infinity assigned to the search, Armada 78 06, had arrived in port near Perth Australia March 4 for resupply and to change crew.

For a while, the destination displayed on marine tracking was “Jakarta,” which was a bit baffling; when the ship left Mauritius for the search area, the listed destination was “Offshore Australia.”

Then on March 6 the ship left port, and soon after its destination was changed to Cape Town, with a scheduled arrival of March 21, just 15 days from departure. The great circle distance from Perth to Cape Town is 4700 nautical miles. At 10 knots that’s a 20 day trip. So it sure doesn’t seem like there is going to be any significant amount of time for Armada 78 06 to spend loitering in the search area.

Maybe it will stop for a day, launch some AUVs, and take a look at a small area of interest, but if the marine tracking information is at all accurate, it’s not going to be continuing the seabed search in any significant way.

Neither Ocean Infinity nor the Malaysian government is saying what’s going on.

So where are we? All I can really try to do right now is to lay out the possibile explanations based on what we do know.

The first possibility is that maybe the Marine Tracking information is wrong and that Armada 78 06 really is going to spend some time in the search zone.

One reason to hope that this is the case is that based on its current track, the ship does seem to be headed right back where it came from. So it would be well positioned to pick up its work where it left off.

But that might just be wishful thinking.

If we assume that the marine tracking information is accurate, and the ship will only spend a short time in the search area, there are various explanation that people have put forward as to why that might be.

One hypothesis is that during the recent scanning mission Ocean Infinity saw the wreckage and Armada 78 06 will only need a short time at the site to retrieve the black boxes. Unfortunately, as far as we know this particular ship is not equipped with an ROV and getting one would be a lengthy process.

So that kind of definitive resolution of the case does not seem to be in the cards.

Another possibility is that during their recent scanning work they spotted something that raised their hopes, but that needed to be clarified. For instance, perhaps they spotted a single piece of aircraft debris on the seabed. This would mean that the rest of the wreckage had to be within a fairly tightly constrained area that could be searched quickly.

As Victor Iannello wrote on his blog, “Armada 7806 remains on course towards a steep slope that was searched in the previous phase. Revisiting a previously searched area is a very good sign.”

Maybe. Personally, I think that if Ocean Infinity had a confirmed sighting of a piece of MH370 on the seabed it wouldn’t just casually do a quick follow up en route to somewhere else because I think this would be a world historical event. This would really be an all-hands on deck moment for Ocean Infinity.

OK, let’s talk about another possibility. We haven’t heard definitively from either Malaysia or Ocean Infinity that a contract has been signed, even though Malaysian transport minister Anthony Loke annouced that the search was on back in December.

On February 25 the Arab News reported that:

“Loke told reporters contract details between Malaysia and the firm were still being finalized but welcomed the “the proactiveness of Ocean Infinity to deploy their ships” to begin the search for the plane which went missing in March 2014.

Loke added that details on how long the search would last had not been negotiated yet.”

What if Ocean Infinity has been carrying on the search on the understanding that the contract signing was imminent, but then Malaysia kept dilly dallying?

Here’s an intriguing possibility: What if Ocean Infinity found the plane or even a highly promising clue, and realized, “Hey, if we announce we’ve found this thing and Malaysia hasn’t signed the contract, we’re out $70 million?” So they want to put pressure on the Malaysian government to get a contract signed by threatening to take their toys and go home.

Actually, this scenario works even if they hadn’t already found the plane, but are just sick of Malaysia’s dilly dallying and want to play hardball by effectively calling off the search until Malaysia inks the deal.

There's no evidence for any of these scenarios, these are just some of the ideas that are getting mooted in various MH370 discussions forums.

As I write these words the most recent data that Kevin Rupp has post shows Armada 78 06 about 575 miles from the search area, moving at a speed of 8.9 knots, meaning it should arrive in the search area around the morning of Tuesday March 11 universal time. Once it does, I think clarity will emerge in short order. Hopefully either they’ve found the plane or they’ll get back to work and scan a nice big area for us.

And if they don’t, or if they do continue the search and they don’t find the plane, then we’re going to be at an impasse, and frankly I think we will need to have a serious discussion about taking a different approach going forward.

For 11 years now, the focus has been on searching the seabed on the assumption that the plane went south. If the plane isn’t found during this third search, then I think that there is really no more hope for this approach.

We’re left with a new kind of challenge, which is to figure out how make sense of the mystery if the plane didn’t go where the calculations said it did.

Now the fact is, there are different answers to these questions. I have proposed an answer, others have proposed answers, and these answers have different degrees of merit. In the course of this two-season podcast I’ve tried to go through the pros and cons of some of them. Some of themm I think are just ridiculous and some of them I think are intentionally misleading.

But what I think is unambiguous is that merely having an extended conversation, whether on YouTube or Substack or Twitter or BlueSky or Victor’s blog or wherever, what we’re going to get is a proliferation of ideas with no sense of moving towards a conclusion, no forming of a collective consensus. Or if there is a consensus, it’s not one that’s informed by careful expert weighing of the evidence, it’s just all about vibes and what appeals to people on a gut level that they then want to argue for in public forums.

Without a government body like the ATSB or the NTSB here in the states, there is no authority to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

Now lately I’ve been talking to a couple of family members, and I won’t say that their personal viewpoints are necessarily indicative of the mood of all family members and loved ones of the missing. But what I’m hearing is that they are frustrated and they don’t know what to believe. They’ve gotten assurances from search officials that haven’t borne out, most notably the promise that they would keep searching until the plane was found, and they don’t really know what is real and what is a lie.

So on the occasion of the 11th anniversary I want to say what I think is the only path forward, in the event of a seabed search failure. And that is to convene a blue-ribbon panel of independent experts who can weigh the evidence from the perspective of a wide variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise, to try to come up with a well-informed, carefully reasoned understanding of what might have happened to MH370. It could be an official government body, if Australia or Malaysia wanted to set one up, or it could be an unofficial one consisting of an independent commission that makes a good-faith effort to round up the relevant expertise.

I think this is the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I think if such an effort got underway it would have support from a large proportion of the MH370 community. Victor Iannello and I have exchanced messages on this, we’d both like to see something like this happen, and I think the family members would appreciate it as well.

The thing is, it would take a lot of effort, and maybe some money. I don’t really know because I’ve never organized an effort like this. So I’m not exactly sure what the path is from idea to implementation, but I did want to put it forward because I do think that ultimately its our only way forward.

There’s one other thing I’d like to say. It has been 11 years. I would like to extend my condolences to the loved ones and family members of the missing, and I would like to extend my thanks and recognition to everyone in the extended community of people who care about MH370 and have done their part over the years, whether that’s sharing their expertise, conducting research or mathematical analysis, or just sharing ideas and encouragement online. This has always been a collective effort, and if we ever do solve this mystery it will be because a lot of people put their heart and their soul into it and for that I am grateful, it is a sign that people can work together for the great good, regardless of what the outcome is. And in these dark times that is a comfort.