[Peetwo]

MH370 SIO search - Breaking News August 06.

Post #119 onwards from AP thread - Australia, ATSB & MH370 - carries the breaking news from overnight that the flaperon found on Reunion island is almost certainly off MH370.

However this sudden announcement from the French authorities poses many more questions than answers in the continued search for MH370...

Which brings me to the excellent ventus45 post which followed #119:

..Taking all that into consideration, it is frankly amazing, that a very senior legal entity, shoud reach such profound conclusions as "a very strong presumption", so "quickly".


It is also interesting to note, that most of the media I have seen / heard this morning are running with the theme "this proves MH-370 is in the SIO and therefore all the "conspiracy theories" are wrong.



Perhaps that is the "real reason" for the "hasty" anouncement.



In other words, for my money, at best, the jury is still out, and at worst ........... ?

Yes indeed passing strange when the provenance history on the flaperon cannot possibly be anywhere near complete...

Continuing on from his many...many insightful & probing posts on the subject Ben Sandilands has been very busy from early AM today...

First:

France puts pressure on Malaysia to tell all about MH370
Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 3:45AM |

In the hours before a press conference in France concerning possible wreckage from missing flight MH370 the public prosecutors office in Paris has pressured Malaysia’s government to stop being evasive about what it knows about the crash.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office as saying “We’ve been asking for information from the Malaysians for a long time.”
The report says “Now that the French have invited the Malaysians to participate in the examination of the wing, the French judge expects information from Malaysia about its criminal investigation into the flight’s disappearance.”

It refers to the evasiveness of the Malaysian authorities and to the frustration that has caused other governments with an interest in solving the riddle of the missing flight, but doesn’t refer to Australia by name, where the policy setting is to be obsequious to the government in Kuala Lumpur and dare not question anything even though its Prime Minister Najib Razak misled it over what it knew about the crash from day one.

Malaysia has been instructing the Australian led search of the south Indian Ocean sea bed for the sunk wreckage of the jet, which disappeared with 239 people on board on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014.

The discovery of a wing ‘flaperon’ on the shores of La Reunion island in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius last week saw it taken to Toulouse for testing, where in French law, a criminal investigation into the loss of French lives in the incident takes precedence over parallel inquiries into the crash.

 
Second (also updated):

Malaysia PM says “it’s from MH370″

Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 3:57AM

Updated  In the minutes before the crucial French press conference the Malaysia PM Najib Razak has said the wing part found on La Reunion is from MH370.

His preempting of the French announcement follows dissatisfaction from the public prosecutors office in Paris of the lack of transparency from Malaysia over what it knows about the disappearance of the flight.

The media conference in Paris should begin shortly.

The Malaysia PM told an almost empty room at about 1.57 am Kuala Lumpur time that “today 515 days since it disappeared it is with a heavy heart I must tell you an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on La Reunion is indeed from MH370.

“The burden and uncertainty that has been faced by the families in this time has been unspeakable…”

Najib Razak said the government of Malaysia is “committed to doing anything …. in order to find out the truth about what happened to MH370.”

This is in striking contrast to his misleading of the search partners for MH370 for a full 11 days when Kuala Lumpur insisted that the search be extended further into the South China Sea and as far as Kazakhstan when according to its then acting Minister for Transport Hishammuddin Hussein, cabinet knew the jet had flown westwards across the Malay Peninsula on the morning it disappeared from air traffic control radar while over the Gulf of Thailand.

And No3:

France says strong presumption part is from MH370 more tests to come

Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 4:42AM |




The wing part from MH370 being recovered on La Reunion last week

The public prosecutor’s office in Paris says there are multiple strong presumptions that the wing part recovered from La Reunion island last week comes from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, but more tests will be done later today, Thursday, in Toulouse.

Significantly, deputy public prosecutor Serge Mackowiak also said forensic tests would be conducted on a suitcase part found on the shores of the Indian Ocean island, near Mauritius.

M Mackowiak said technical analysts from the France’s air safety investigator and information provided by Malaysia Airlines identified multiple strong presumptions that the two metre long object was a flaperon, a part of the trailing edge of the wing of the Boeing 777-200ER that was operating MH370 between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing with 239 people on board on 8 March last year.

“These strong presumptions need to be confirmed by further tests” he said.

Earlier yesterday, Wednesday, in France the public prosecutor’s office told the Wall Street Journal it wanted more reciprocity from Malaysia as to what it knew from its criminal or other investigations into the disappearance of MH370.

In French law the public prosecutors must investigate the loss of the lives of its nationals in disasters such as MH370 and they act independently from its air crash investigator, the BEA, while working closely with it.

When the co-pilot of a Germanwings A320 murdered all 150 people onboard on 24 March this year by locking his captain out of the cockpit and flying it into a mountain in the southern French Alps the BEA released the cockpit voice recorder to the prosecutor’s office in Marseille which immediately made the evidence it contained public.

No doubt there will be further updates from Ben but the three posts from this AM IMO tell a story within a story.

So have the Malaysians yet again jumped the gun with the PM Najib's presser this AM? Especially when you consider the following media release from Minister Truss is decidedly more reserved in the confirmation that the flaperon is definitely from MH370:

High probability aircraft wreckage is from MH 370

Media Release
WT237/2015
06 August 2015

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss has noted statements from the Prime Minister of Malaysia and French authorities that in all probability wreckage found on La Réunion is from Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370.

“The French-led investigation team is continuing to finalise its considerations of the wreckage and we will await further detail from them,” Mr Truss said.

“Our expert from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) remains in France and will continue to aid the international investigation team.

“The finding of wreckage on La Réunion is consistent with our current search area. For this reason thorough and methodical search efforts will continue in the defined search area.
“The Australian Government will continue to work to keep the next of kin of passengers and crew informed of developments as they happen.”

All passing strange? However IMO the biggest, most refreshing observation/revelation, is the French appear not to be interested in brokering/accepting anymore bullshit from the Najib government, nor will they be giving up custody of the flaperon to the Malaysians anytime soon...

MTF..P2   
 

[Peetwo]

MH370 SIO search - Breaking News August 06.

Post #119 onwards from AP thread - Australia, ATSB & MH370 - carries the breaking news from overnight that the flaperon found on Reunion island is almost certainly off MH370.

However this sudden announcement from the French authorities poses many more questions than answers in the continued search for MH370...

Which brings me to the excellent ventus45 post which followed #119:

..Taking all that into consideration, it is frankly amazing, that a very senior legal entity, shoud reach such profound conclusions as "a very strong presumption", so "quickly".


It is also interesting to note, that most of the media I have seen / heard this morning are running with the theme "this proves MH-370 is in the SIO and therefore all the "conspiracy theories" are wrong.



Perhaps that is the "real reason" for the "hasty" anouncement.



In other words, for my money, at best, the jury is still out, and at worst ........... ?

Yes indeed passing strange when the provenance history on the flaperon cannot possibly be anywhere near complete...

Continuing on from his many...many insightful & probing posts on the subject Ben Sandilands has been very busy from early AM today...

First:

France puts pressure on Malaysia to tell all about MH370
Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 3:45AM |

In the hours before a press conference in France concerning possible wreckage from missing flight MH370 the public prosecutors office in Paris has pressured Malaysia’s government to stop being evasive about what it knows about the crash.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office as saying “We’ve been asking for information from the Malaysians for a long time.”
The report says “Now that the French have invited the Malaysians to participate in the examination of the wing, the French judge expects information from Malaysia about its criminal investigation into the flight’s disappearance.”

It refers to the evasiveness of the Malaysian authorities and to the frustration that has caused other governments with an interest in solving the riddle of the missing flight, but doesn’t refer to Australia by name, where the policy setting is to be obsequious to the government in Kuala Lumpur and dare not question anything even though its Prime Minister Najib Razak misled it over what it knew about the crash from day one.

Malaysia has been instructing the Australian led search of the south Indian Ocean sea bed for the sunk wreckage of the jet, which disappeared with 239 people on board on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March 2014.

The discovery of a wing ‘flaperon’ on the shores of La Reunion island in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius last week saw it taken to Toulouse for testing, where in French law, a criminal investigation into the loss of French lives in the incident takes precedence over parallel inquiries into the crash.

 
Second (also updated):

Malaysia PM says “it’s from MH370″

Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 3:57AM

Updated  In the minutes before the crucial French press conference the Malaysia PM Najib Razak has said the wing part found on La Reunion is from MH370.

His preempting of the French announcement follows dissatisfaction from the public prosecutors office in Paris of the lack of transparency from Malaysia over what it knows about the disappearance of the flight.

The media conference in Paris should begin shortly.

The Malaysia PM told an almost empty room at about 1.57 am Kuala Lumpur time that “today 515 days since it disappeared it is with a heavy heart I must tell you an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on La Reunion is indeed from MH370.

“The burden and uncertainty that has been faced by the families in this time has been unspeakable…”

Najib Razak said the government of Malaysia is “committed to doing anything …. in order to find out the truth about what happened to MH370.”

This is in striking contrast to his misleading of the search partners for MH370 for a full 11 days when Kuala Lumpur insisted that the search be extended further into the South China Sea and as far as Kazakhstan when according to its then acting Minister for Transport Hishammuddin Hussein, cabinet knew the jet had flown westwards across the Malay Peninsula on the morning it disappeared from air traffic control radar while over the Gulf of Thailand.

And No3:

France says strong presumption part is from MH370 more tests to come

Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 4:42AM |




The wing part from MH370 being recovered on La Reunion last week

The public prosecutor’s office in Paris says there are multiple strong presumptions that the wing part recovered from La Reunion island last week comes from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, but more tests will be done later today, Thursday, in Toulouse.

Significantly, deputy public prosecutor Serge Mackowiak also said forensic tests would be conducted on a suitcase part found on the shores of the Indian Ocean island, near Mauritius.

M Mackowiak said technical analysts from the France’s air safety investigator and information provided by Malaysia Airlines identified multiple strong presumptions that the two metre long object was a flaperon, a part of the trailing edge of the wing of the Boeing 777-200ER that was operating MH370 between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing with 239 people on board on 8 March last year.

“These strong presumptions need to be confirmed by further tests” he said.

Earlier yesterday, Wednesday, in France the public prosecutor’s office told the Wall Street Journal it wanted more reciprocity from Malaysia as to what it knew from its criminal or other investigations into the disappearance of MH370.

In French law the public prosecutors must investigate the loss of the lives of its nationals in disasters such as MH370 and they act independently from its air crash investigator, the BEA, while working closely with it.

When the co-pilot of a Germanwings A320 murdered all 150 people onboard on 24 March this year by locking his captain out of the cockpit and flying it into a mountain in the southern French Alps the BEA released the cockpit voice recorder to the prosecutor’s office in Marseille which immediately made the evidence it contained public.

No doubt there will be further updates from Ben but the three posts from this AM IMO tell a story within a story.

So have the Malaysians yet again jumped the gun with the PM Najib's presser this AM? Especially when you consider the following media release from Minister Truss is decidedly more reserved in the confirmation that the flaperon is definitely from MH370:

High probability aircraft wreckage is from MH 370

Media Release
WT237/2015
06 August 2015

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss has noted statements from the Prime Minister of Malaysia and French authorities that in all probability wreckage found on La Réunion is from Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370.

“The French-led investigation team is continuing to finalise its considerations of the wreckage and we will await further detail from them,” Mr Truss said.

“Our expert from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) remains in France and will continue to aid the international investigation team.

“The finding of wreckage on La Réunion is consistent with our current search area. For this reason thorough and methodical search efforts will continue in the defined search area.
“The Australian Government will continue to work to keep the next of kin of passengers and crew informed of developments as they happen.”

All passing strange? However IMO the biggest, most refreshing observation/revelation, is the French appear not to be interested in brokering/accepting anymore bullshit from the Najib government, nor will they be giving up custody of the flaperon to the Malaysians anytime soon...

Further news today with the release of a review conducted by Mike Exner and titled - Implications from the Reunion Debris found July 29, 2015
- which was also reported on (presumably in between naps.. ) yet again by Ben from Planetalking... :

IG review says torn MH370 flaperon implies mid air break-up

Ben Sandilands | Aug 06, 2015 11:37AM |


IG's annotated image of the damaged 777 wing part

The Independent Group of scientists studying the MH370 disappearance thinks that the 777 flaperon found on La Reunion island was torn off the wing of the jet after it ran out of fuel and before it struck the ocean.

A member of the group, Michael Exner has published an analysis of the likely scenarios for explaining the damage seen on the part, which is now in France being examined in a military aviation laboratory in Toulouse.

The IG paper favours in-flight detachment because of the apparent lack of damage to its leading edge compared to the torn state of its trailing edge.

It says if the flaperon was on the wing when it contacted the water it would exhibit some compression damage on the leading edge, but almost none is apparent.

The paper says “this is much more consistent with the flaperon being torn from the wing while in flight and forced rearward by the airflow.

“The ragged tear along the trailing edge is indicative of flutter induced stress and ultimate fatigue failure. Not a break off due to high bending moments at impact.

“If the flaperon separated while still in flight, it indicates an in-flight breakup most likely due to very high speeds, and perhaps loss of hydraulic/electrical power power to the flaperon actuator post fuel exhaustion.

“This scenario is consistent with the steep spiral descent observed in the Boeing 777-200 simulator.

“If the in-flight separation is confirmed it would reduce the likelihood that the plane flew on (for) any significant distance past the seventh arc as some have speculated, and reinforce the theory that  the point of impact is relatively close  to [a point along] the seventh arc. “

MTF..P2

[aussie500]

Even if the jagged tearing along the thinnest edge is due to flutter induced stress and signs of high speed, there is nothing to prove it had anything to do with that 7th arc. Could have happened further south after MH370 flew through the 7th arc. Similar tears were seen in the MH17 wreckage, so it seems possible impact with the water or something else could also cause that sort of damage.

And if MH370 did conveniently drop on that 7th arc, why is it all those ships chasing false BB pings further north, and the planes still doing a surface search never saw any debris? It is not impossible they missed it, it might have already moved out of the search area, but when they do the drift models it would be nice if they did it with no preconceived notion it started on the 7th arc. They are meant to be working out a probable starting point. Not pinning the donkeys tail on the 7th arc, we already had all the mathematicians doing that.

[Kharon]

The Ben Sandilands article on – Plane Talking this morning is as always worth reading, but this offering has provoked a different response.  I, for one am sick of dancing around the daisies with this event.  It is indeed time for some very plane talking.

 
Things are in a mess in the search for MH370 wreckage on La Reunion island this morning, at least in terms of official statements.

The search itself is reported as orderly and thorough, with plans to begin a much better resourced beach combing operation from next Monday.

But at the executive level, Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai hasn’t yet produced the goods, after announcing much.

Lets start at the end – this aircraft has finished it’s days in the ocean.  We may, I believe safely assume this was done deliberately, by a person or persons unknown.   From this end point, we may begin to work backward to the starting point, accumulate what evidence we may and then let that evidence tell the tale.  To do this we must look at the wreckage provided thus far.  It ain’t much but we may at least begin to think in reality, not fancy.

If and it is a purely speculative if; you intended to do the maximum damage, in the minimum amount of time during a ‘ditching’ and sink the ‘evidence’ quickly; you would thinking as a pilot, take care to alight as smoothly and gently as possible. If your intent was to disappear the wreckage, then you would want to sink the substantially intact hull as quickly as possible, to keep the debris field to a minimum.  In a high velocity impact, there would be no ‘control’ of the debris, which could spread far and wide.  One way to avoid this would be to configure for landing, at minimum speed.   The landing weight, thus speed would be low, but hitting a brick wall of water even at 120/130 knots, the impact on the undercarriage could, conceivably tear it off; or, at least create substantial damage, weakening structure, maybe some big holes.  The rapid nose down pitch would increase the magnitude of that damage, perhaps tearing the fuselage at the weaker parts.  The engine fan discs rapidly following, acting like barn doors, driving the nose down even further, increasing water pressure rapidly filling the voids; once water weight became greater than buoyancy and the pressures equalised the aircraft would sink and keep sinking.  

It is truly horrendous scenario and I most sincerely apologise to any who are suffering through this ordeal; but explanations are required, this involves speculation.  That this event has occurred is terrible, but hiding from reality has not, thus far helped anyone.

A terrible event has occurred, we must now come to terms with the how and the why of it.  ALL of it, not just certain, selected parts.  The families deserve the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.  Warts and all.

Selah.    

[Peetwo]

The Ben Sandilands article on – Plane Talking this morning is as always worth reading, but this offering has provoked a different response.  I, for one am sick of dancing around the daisies with this event.  It is indeed time for some very plane talking.

 
Things are in a mess in the search for MH370 wreckage on La Reunion island this morning, at least in terms of official statements.

The search itself is reported as orderly and thorough, with plans to begin a much better resourced beach combing operation from next Monday.

But at the executive level, Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai hasn’t yet produced the goods, after announcing much.

Lets start at the end – this aircraft has finished it’s days in the ocean.  We may, I believe safely assume this was done deliberately, by a person or persons unknown.   From this end point, we may begin to work backward to the starting point, accumulate what evidence we may and then let that evidence tell the tale.  To do this we must look at the wreckage provided thus far.  It ain’t much but we may at least begin to think in reality, not fancy.

If and it is a purely speculative if; you intended to do the maximum damage, in the minimum amount of time during a ‘ditching’ and sink the ‘evidence’ quickly; you would thinking as a pilot, take care to alight as smoothly and gently as possible. If your intent was to disappear the wreckage, then you would want to sink the substantially intact hull as quickly as possible, to keep the debris field to a minimum.  In a high velocity impact, there would be no ‘control’ of the debris, which could spread far and wide.  One way to avoid this would be to configure for landing, at minimum speed.   The landing weight, thus speed would be low, but hitting a brick wall of water even at 120/130 knots, the impact on the undercarriage could, conceivably tear it off; or, at least create substantial damage, weakening structure, maybe some big holes.  The rapid nose down pitch would increase the magnitude of that damage, perhaps tearing the fuselage at the weaker parts.  The engine fan discs rapidly following, acting like barn doors, driving the nose down even further, increasing water pressure rapidly filling the voids; once water weight became greater than buoyancy and the pressures equalised the aircraft would sink and keep sinking.  

It is truly horrendous scenario and I most sincerely apologise to any who are suffering through this ordeal; but explanations are required, this involves speculation.  That this event has occurred is terrible, but hiding from reality has not, thus far helped anyone.

A terrible event has occurred, we must now come to terms with the how and the why of it.  ALL of it, not just certain, selected parts.  The families deserve the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.  Warts and all.

Selah.    

Ferryman in support of your hypothesis, the following is an article from Bloomberg...

Intact MH370 Part Lifts Odds Plane Glided, Not Crashed, Into Sea

How hard did Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 hit the water after it ran out of fuel and plummeted from cruising altitude? Not as hard as you might think, accident experts say.


The relatively intact condition of the wing piece that washed up on Reunion island off Africa suggests the Boeing Co. 777 may have hit the water more gently than in a head-on crash, according to former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigators Greg Feith and Jim Wildey, and Hans Weber, president of aviation consultant Tecop International Inc.

“That piece maintained its integrity. It’s not crushed,” Feith, a former senior investigator with the NTSB, said by phone from Denver. “You can deduce it was either a low-energy crash or a low-energy intentional ditching.”

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak’s statement early Thursday that the piece, known as a flaperon, came from MH370 confirms that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean. But it brings investigators and family members of the deceased no closer to understanding why the plane deviated from its Kuala Lumpur-to-Beijing route and what happened in the flight’s final moments.



Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, right, confirmed debris found on a remote island a week ago is from flight MH370.
Photographer: Mohd Rasfan/AFP/Getty Images

There’s no firm evidence of the angle at which the plane hit the sea, let alone whether a pilot was at the controls. A high-powered stalling crash, like the one that plunged Air France Flight 447 into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, isn’t the only way a plane can fall into the sea.

“The speculation among pilots right now is that it must have come down at a relatively shallow angle,” said Tracy Lamb, an aviation safety consultant and former Boeing 737 pilot. “It looks like the flaperon was broken off by the engine pod ripping off as it was dragged through the water on the initial impact.”

Despite their lumbering appearance, commercial aircraft are quite capable of gliding considerable distances without engine power. After birds were sucked into its engines over The Bronx in 2009, U.S. Airways flight 1549 completed a turn and flew about two-thirds of the length of Manhattan island before ditching in the Hudson River.

In a 2001 incident, an Airbus Group SE A330 en route from Toronto to Lisbon ran out of fuel over the Atlantic and glided for 144 kilometers (90 miles) before landing 19 minutes later at a coastal airfield in the Azores islands.

That might explain why the seafloor search for MH370 found no evidence of the aircraft in the immediate vicinity of a zone where its fuel is thought to have run out.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau initially searched in a box 10 nautical miles on either side of that zone on the assumption that the plane would have plummeted in a fairly tight spiral into the sea, Commissioner Martin Dolan said in an interview in March.

The zone has since been extended to a wider radius to cover the possibility of a lower-energy crash at a more shallow angle.

Such a scenario would help explain the absence of debris on the ocean surface, Tecop’s Weber said.

“A nose-first plunge is unlikely, in my opinion, since the part is too big and intact for that,” he said by phone. A higher-energy impact would tend to disintegrate large objects like the flaperon found on Reunion: “Such a plunge should have resulted in the plane being shattered into smaller pieces.”

The absence of debris from the crash has confounded investigators. Previous crashes in water have almost always left floating debris, the bureau said in a briefing note on its website yesterday.

Much of that debris could have sunk by the time the surface search began in that area nine days after the plane disappeared.

“By this time much of any debris left floating after the crash would likely have either sunk or have been dispersed,” the bureau wrote. “The opportunity to locate and recover debris from the sea surface diminishes rapidly over the first few weeks from the time of a crash.”

Investigators scanned 4.6 million square kilometers (1.8 million square miles) of ocean surface, with 29 aircraft carrying out 334 flights and 14 ships on the sea as part of the operation, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said at a press conference in May.

The search “initially, briefly, targeted the correct area,” the bureau said yesterday, adding that this was the best chance investigators had to recover material.

There are other possibilities to explain the good condition of the flaperon. Other parts of the plane could have taken the brunt of the crash, shielding the wing, according to Jim Wildey, former chief of the NTSB’s materials laboratory.

While pictures of the flaperon suggest the crash was relatively benign, “if they find just one piece, it’s going to be a far stretch” to assess how the accident occurred, he said in an interview.

That hasn’t stopped conjecture among pilots puzzled by the chain of events.

“It’s currently speculated by a lot of other pilots in the industry that there was a pilot at the controls,” consultant Lamb said. Someone might have needed to adjust the degree at which the nose was pointing up or down to get the plane from cruising flight to a shallow-angled descent.

Any resolution to the mystery will depend on more detailed analysis of the flaperon, and ultimately on discovery of the flight recorders somewhere on the Indian Ocean floor.

“Was the flaperon extended, which would indicate that it was flown under pilot control?”
Weber said. “Sounds crazy, but there is no scenario for this accident that doesn’t have some crazy aspect to it.”

 
MTF..P2

Ps aussie500 good to see you back - love this bit...

"..They are meant to be working out a probable starting point. Not pinning the donkeys tail on the 7th arc, we already had all the mathematicians doing that..."

--  

[aussie500]

I am still hoping New Zealand finds something washed up on some remote desolate island of theirs, that would fix the position problem, two different currents. Of course as usual no one would be looking.

And you cannot sink a plane intact in the SIO, QZ8501 fell straight down, wings still attached in bath tub depth and and look how much debris she left floating. They ever find the wreckage site, history will prove there was no suicide dive, spiral of doom or any other sort of dive.

A plane flying in a straight stable path with probably no autopilot is not going to dive when the fuel runs out. None of that primary radar was ever proven to be MH370. And this investigation was lead astray from the start. Something happened, they turned back or attempted to. And I have said all along, that was the only turn that plane made. A B777 does not turn like a fighter jet, does not fly low at the speed that primary radar was recording. That blip might have been at the site of the incident (strange they never showed that after what they said at the start), but I doubt it was the victim.

It was a cover up, you do not lose a B777 without a trace.

[Gobbledock]

Herr Ventus;

"It was a cover up, you do not lose a B777 without a trace".

Absolutely correct. I've said this all along. There is no way that the Yanks or Chinese missed this event. Someone has satellite detail of where she went down. Unfortunately they don't want to admit to 'looking' from on high at areas they shouldn't be looking at, and probably using equipment they don't want us to know about. Several previous Yank rocket launches and former shuttle missions were done in a very secretive manner when it came to disclosing what the payload was that they were carrying and why and what they were going to use it for. "Out of sight and out of mind" more like it, space a giant vacumn in which it is easy to hide things from prying earthling eyes!

As for flotsam and the theory that the aircraft sunk in almost one piece - bullshit. People need to analyse prevailing weather conditions at the time and probable location that she contacted the water. Even if she was 'gliding' she would have contacted large waves out there at perhaps 300 km/h (all assumptions) at night, and she would've been broken apart. Maybe there were some big pieces, true, but she would've been ripped apart. She didn't land on the Hudson in the day time and glide from a low altitude. Very big differences here.

Then again WTF would I know, we need to ask that 'font of all things aviation knowledge' Beaker what happened.

[P7_TOM]

961 on a calm ocean, in broad daylight.  Not often we get to watch a hijacked aircraft run out of fuel. Is it?

[aussie500]

The SIO especially in or near the roaring 40's is never calm though, 961 might have made it in calm water if she had not snagged an engine on something. There is no way a plane even under the control of an experienced pilot could land a B777 intact in the SIO with or without fuel. We believe this one came down with no pilot at the controls and no fuel, that might not be correct but either way, the plane would break up, there would be a lot of debris. If you look in that Malaysian Factual Information report, there was a storm in the search area and south of it when MH370 vanished. Might have still been rough first thing in the morning, or even an hour later.

They can hear ice falling in Antarctica to form a new iceberg, but cannot hear MH370 hit the water going a lot faster? Or was the supposed iceberg something else. Just how far would a B777 get in an hour after flying though that 7th arc on one of the more likely predicted flight paths? Down where the Aussies suddenly abandoned their search on the 27th March soon as the Chinese got there ready to take over things.

They went to a lot of trouble to discount that area they were so enthusiastic to search at first. Digital Globe started taking images of that area looking for MH370 on the 16th March, they were not the only ones looking that far south. Their reasons for moving the search further north never held up, a dead whale and some beeps that were not from a BB proved a waste of a lot of time, and surely if MH370 had flown slower, and landed further north, something would have turned up sooner, or be seen by all the passing shipping. And now the ATSB have super glued the searchers to that 7th arc and are not going to let them stray too far from it.

[Kharon]

Brock Mc; Tweeted the following.  It is a simple, elegant example of the ATSB politically influenced "attitude" to anything which gets to close to exposing their methodology. Small wonder JACC went 'dark'.

HERE

Food for thought; indeed.  12 pages, download available, worth the time.

[aussie500]

The ATSB response and damage control for the off drift drift predictions.
http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2015...lysis.aspx

Which still seem to be adrift in a wash of uncertainty, wait and see, New Zealand goes looking and finds something, there will be chaos literally. And I still find it hard to believe nothing washed up on Tasmania, Victoria or South Australia, did the ATSB just discount stuff out of hand because their first drift model mistakenly said stuff would wash up on the west coast of Sumatra first?

Maybe they should be chasing fishing boats for clues, on real drift patterns, and debris.

[Peetwo]

MH370: Reunion Is flaperon discovery - Latest update 11 Aug '15

Over the last 2 days there has been several MSM regurgitated versions of the following:

MH370: Malaysia to send team to Maldives


New debris will be examined, origin determined
 UPDATED 3:04 AM CDT Aug 11, 2015  




LAC Oliver Carter/Australian Defense Force


 (CNN) —Malaysia has said it will send a team to the Maldives to inspect debris found on the Indian Ocean archipelago to determine whether it might be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The team will carry out an initial verification to establish if any of the debris is from an aircraft, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement Monday.
"At this stage, it is highly premature to speculate on whether this debris is in any way connected to MH370," he cautioned.

The discovery late last month of part of an aircraft wing on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean has intensified interest in the hunt for remains of Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Malaysia says the wing part, known as a flaperon, has been conclusively confirmed to be from the missing Boeing 777. But French authorities overseeing the analysis of the object say that although there is strong evidence to support that belief, they need to do more tests to be absolutely sure.

Searches continuing around Reunion

France has stepped up its efforts on and around Reunion, which lies off the east coast of Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean, to look for more potential debris.
And authorities on the island of Mauritius, about 175 kilometers (110 miles) east-northeast of Reunion, have also been searching.

A lot of debris has been turned in to authorities on Reunion for verification. But so far, no leads as strong as the flaperon have been reported.

The remnants of a suitcase discovered the day after the flaperon have been sent to a French lab for testing.

Maldives far outside Australian models for debris drift

According to models calculated by Australia, which is in charge of the underwater search for the wreckage of MH370, debris from the plane wouldn't have made it as far north as the Maldives.

Australian officials say Reunion is within the range of where debris from the missing plane could have drifted over the months from the remote area of the southeastern Indian Ocean where the aircraft is believed to have gone down.

But the Maldives, situated off the southern tip of India, are in a different part of the ocean. The archipelago is thousands of kilometers northwest of the area of ocean that Australia is searching.

The Australian drift models suggest the winds and ocean currents would have pushed the aircraft debris in a predominantly westerly direction, toward southern Africa.

Maldivian authorities say they have been sending photos of debris found on the islands to Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation. Police have retrieved and placed items reported to them in a storage space in Male, the capital, said Mohammed Shareef, an official in the Maldivian President's office.

Report: Debris could be from capsized barge

Further doubt was cast on the possibility that the debris is from MH370 by the captain of a barge that capsized off one of the atolls in the Maldives earlier this year, according to local media.

The barge captain, Abdulla Rasheed, told the Maldivian news site Haveeru he believes the debris people are finding comes from the wall panels that accounted for most of the vessel's cargo when it overturned.

"From the pictures of the debris found on most of the islands, I can almost certainly say that they are from the cargo we were carrying," Rasheed said.

Source: Investigators still not ready to confirm flaperon

In France, meanwhile, analysis of the flaperon found on Reunion is continuing.
Investigators from France, Australia, the United States and Boeing are still not ready to say that the part is definitely from MH370, according to a source close to the investigation.

Representatives from Boeing and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have now left France where they were assisting the initial inspection of debris and are back in the United States, the source said.

French officials haven't said when they plan to announce the final results of the analysis of the flaperon.

Next is from the WSJ, & although a couple of days old is very interesting because it looks at the interesting dynamic of having a French Prosecutor conducting a Judicial (criminal/terrorist) investigation into the bizarre disappearance of MH370:

French Deepen Role in MH370 Probe

Investigating judge plans travel to Malaysia as questions persist over wing section found on Réunion Island
 
Officers on Réunion Island last month carried a flaperon from an aircraft, which the Malaysian prime minister this week said was part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: raymond wae tion/European Pressphoto Agency
By
Matthew Dalton in Paris and Andy Pasztor in Los Angeles
Aug. 7, 2015 6:47 p.m. ET

A French investigating judge plans to travel to Malaysia as part of his probe into the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, deepening France’s involvement in the search for answers to the jet’s mysterious disappearance.

The move is likely to heighten scrutiny of Malaysia’s handling of its criminal investigation into the plane, which didn’t implicate anyone on board. France on Friday also joined the hunt for plane debris, starting patrols in the waters around Réunion Island, a French territory in the western Indian Ocean.

Questions still surround the recent discovery of a section of an airplane wing found roughly a week ago on the island. Malaysia Airlines officials are convinced the recovered wing section, called a flaperon, came from the missing Boeing 777. But a team of investigators led by Alain Gaudino, a French counterterrorism judge examining the flaperon at a military laboratory near Toulouse, isn’t yet certain.

French investigators have said the flaperon very likely came from the missing jet. But French authorities “want more undeniable evidence before they are willing to say the flaperon broke off Flight 370,” a person familiar with the investigation said.

On Thursday Mr. Gaudino briefed Ghyslain Wattrelos, whose wife, son and daughter were on the plane. The investigating judge told him an examination of the wing section didn’t yield confirmation it came from Flight 370, Mr. Wattrelos said.
 
Ghyslain Wattrelos, second from right, who lost his wife and two children on Flight MH370, took part in a March protest in Paris over the continuing mystery of its fate. Photo: thomas samson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“They know it’s a Boeing 777,” Mr. Wattrelos said. “But today they have no proof at all that it’s coming from MH370.”

French investigators drilled into the recovered wing section, searching for signs of a maintenance seal that Malaysian authorities documented when the missing jet previously underwent repairs, according to Mr. Wattrelos and people familiar with the matter. The findings of the French investigators didn’t match the Malaysian records, Mr. Gaudino said, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

Malaysian officials, however, believe the discrepancies aren’t significant enough to challenge their conclusion, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Malaysia’s transport minister said this week that paint on the wing section helped identify it as coming from the missing jet. But Mr. Gaudino told victims Thursday that the paint on the component appeared to come from its manufacturer, Boeing, not Malaysia Airlines, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

“To my knowledge, there isn’t paint specific to Malaysia Airlines,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors who are working with Mr. Gaudino. In addition, the wing section’s placard—containing a serial number—appears to have fallen off, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Gaudino couldn’t be reached to comment.

To confirm the piece is from Flight 370, the experts will now have to examine parts in the interior of the flaperon, find their serial numbers, and match them if possible to parts known to have been inside the Flight 370 flaperon. Investigators are also trying to match records with an identifying mark on a portion of the internal structure that would establish the flaperon’s origin, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation.

On Friday, France began a search for additional plane debris in the waters around Réunion that will last for a week. Réunion officials said Friday they couldn’t yet identify new debris found on the island as coming from an airplane, contradicting statements from Malaysian officials that the objects are from an airplane.

Several U.S. and foreign safety experts said Malaysian authorities seem to be repeating some of their earlier missteps in prematurely announcing that debris has been found, only to have to later walk it back. Malaysian officials promised to coordinate more closely with foreign counterparts after coming under widespread criticism for repeated miscommunication at the outset of the probe.

“They seem to have moved backward,” said John Cox, an industry consultant and former pilot union safety official. “They are making many of the same mistakes again.”
France will be looking for smaller debris, not the main pieces of Flight 370 such as the fuselage. The jet, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is presumed to have crashed in the eastern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Australia. Authorities say it is possible that ocean currents could have transported the debris found last week across the Indian Ocean to Réunion.

Australian officials are leading an extensive underwater search some 2,000 miles away from Réunion for the main wreckage of Flight 370, which likely contains the black boxes that record the plane’s flight data, as well as conversations and sounds in the cockpit. Investigators and outside safety experts are convinced such information is essential to solve the mystery of what happened to the plane.

Malaysian authorities investigated the passengers and crew of the jet last year, announcing in April 2014 that the passengers had been “cleared.” Malaysian police seized a computer, which had been rigged as an aircraft simulator, from Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home in the days following the disappearance of the flight. Some data had been deleted from the computer, and police tried to retrieve it. Later, the police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded they found nothing suspicious on the device.
Neither Capt. Zaharie, 52, nor his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 26, was ever accused of wrongdoing.

French authorities opened a separate criminal investigation months ago, because four French nationals were on the plane. Since then, Mr. Gaudino has been waiting for Malaysian authorities to turn over information, including files from Malaysia’s own criminal investigation and satellite data used to identify where the jet may have crashed, French officials said.

“We have no reason to think the information won’t be transmitted,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors, adding that Mr. Gaudino hadn’t set a schedule for his visit to Malaysia.

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

 
Q/ I have a question in regards to the flaperon (see pic):

Supposition is that if the flaperon is from MH370, then it was ripped from the wing either in flight or on hitting the water. Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage? And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?- just asking..
MTF..P2

[Gobbledock]

P2;

Supposition is that if the flaperon is from MH370, then it was ripped from the wing either in flight or on hitting the water. Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage? And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?- just asking..

Good question P2. I might go ask somebody who would actually have an idea - Alan Stray!!

Doc

[Kharon]

I was having a chat with P2 the first time we saw the pictures of the flaperon, “those ends look very neat and undamaged” said I “they do” says he.  We had a lengthy discussion but, neither of us being qualified to hold an opinion, decided to shut up and wait and see what the ‘experts’ made of it.  

But it still puzzles me; knock off the barnacles give it a buff and you could just about put it back where it came from (slight exaggeration, but).  For something which has been ‘torn off’ the airframe the overlaid diagrams depicting the various attach points fit very neatly over the part; the holes undistorted.  

Newton gave us F=Ma; have a little look at the damage to a car door which has been ripped off by a passing car; the distortion to the attach points is incredible, the supporting frame work unusable.  The mathematics of that analysis can easily be understood, take an average bus @ 40 Kph hitting a stationary door of a four wheel drive the forces are large; multiply that by the weight of a 777 and you can glean an idea of the forces involved, they are colossal.

Now I’m not an engineers bootstrap, let alone a forensic investigator of such matters; but the questions raised are worthy of an answer, I don’t like ‘lingering doubt’ ; any answer would do, even it’s just to tell us to sit down and shut up.  Anyone qualified care to comment?  Tinkicker?

I wish Alan Stray was on deck for this one; we may not get all the answers, but at least the ones we would get would be credible, balanced and more than likely accurate. Which would beat Beaker Bollocks for breakfast, lunch and tea, especially the French flavoured ones.  

Toot toot.

[aussie500]

If MH370 did end up in the roaring 40's on the 7th arc or further south, the current could have broken up the wreckage, yet not further damaged the flaperon. The crash itself might not have been violent enough to detach the flaperon from the wing. Just a thought. Could have equally been ripped off by contact with the water on a glide or maybe it came off under the forces of that infamous nose dive and still broke on the thin unsupported edge when it hit the water. Looking forward to seeing if the French actually come up with anything to tell how it was detached.

And those barnacles being so small, would seem to indicate Reunion was the first time that bit of debris had been close to land. They are only a recent attachment.

[Gobbledock]

I am not a marine biologist (hopefully the Frogs have now employed one) but Barnacles are a strange beast. They like the warmer waters and don't reproduce in colder waters, but as an example on occasion they attach themselves to flotsam (and occasionally Beakers chin) and sometimes that flotsam is carried into colder oceans by the currents with the Barnacles still attached. An example would be a barnacle covered piece of flotsam being taken into colder seas by the North Atlantic Drift.

So one could reasonably presume that MH370 did crash into warm waters. But then again it could've crashed into colder waters that are not barnacle conducive, but as the flaperon floated through warmer waters the barnacles attached themselves to it. They are pretty hardy just like the Miniscuels Y-fronts.

Anyway, it's all chatter chatter, but at least we are pretty sure that MH370 didn't crash in the Antarctica.

Gobbles

[Peetwo]

If MH370 did end up in the roaring 40's on the 7th arc or further south, the current could have broken up the wreckage, yet not further damaged the flaperon. The crash itself might not have been violent enough to detach the flaperon from the wing. Just a thought. Could have equally been ripped off by contact with the water on a glide or  maybe it came off under the forces of that infamous nose dive and still broke on the thin unsupported edge when it hit the water. Looking forward to seeing if the French actually come up with anything to tell how it was detached.

And those barnacles being so small, would seem to indicate Reunion was the first time that bit of debris had been close to land. They are only a recent attachment.

Good summation aussie500, I came across the following from Rakyat Post which very much supports that summation & the glide (not dive) hypothesis and is a narrative that I can personally very much relate to:

MH370 went down the Indian Ocean in one piece, claims expert




Investigators, who scrutinised the shoreline of the remote island after the finding also have found more debris, including a seat cushion, window pane, as well as remnants of a suitcase and empty water bottles. But it is still unclear whether the latest items belonged to the missing plane.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 12, 2015:

The missing MH370 aircraft is believed to be “largely intact” and lying somewhere beneath the southern Indian Ocean, according to local satellite communications expert Zaaim Redha Abdul Rahman.

His theory is that the ill-fated aircraft sank into the deep sea in one piece “after probably floating for a while” on that day the plane went down.

“I believe that when the aircraft went out of fuel, it glided downwards and landed on the water with a soft impact… that’s why I believe the plane is still largely intact,” said Zaaim Redha who had, immediately after MH370 went missing, helped to read and deduce its flight data relayed via the satellite operated by United Kingdom-based global satellite communications firm Inmarsat.

Based on the analysis of data relayed between MH370 and the ground station by the Inmarsat satellite, investigators concluded that the flight had ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak made an announcement to that effect on March 24 last year, 17 days after the Beijing-bound MH370 vanished from the radar.

Speaking to Bernama in an interview recently, Zaaim Redha said his theory that the plane probably “glided down” was supported by evidence in the form of the integrity of the two-metre-long flaperon, which was discovered on La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean and confirmed to be part of the missing MH370 plane.

“It (the flaperon) was only slightly damaged and was just encrusted with barnacles. Its appearance indicates that it was not violently torn off from the aircraft’s main body… it does seem that it got detached pretty nicely at its edges.”

Zaaim Redha, who is now principal consultant at Zeta Resources Sdn Bhd —  which provides, among others, satellite communications consulting and engineering services — used to be part of the pioneering team at Measat which was responsible for developing and launching Malaysia’s first satellite.

He had previously worked for NEC Japan, where he led a multinational team to design and develop the Inmarsat-P ICO System (Generation 4), a mobile satellite communications system.

Elaborating how the size of debris from an air disaster would be consistent with the impact of the crash, Zaaim Redha pointed out to the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash in the French Alps in March this year, saying that none of its debris had exceeded one-foot (about 0.3 metre) in length due to the hard impact.

“If MH370 had crashed with a really hard impact, we would have seen small pieces of debris floating on the sea immediately after that. Furthermore, the flaperon that was recovered (from La Reunion Island) wouldn’t have been in one piece… we would have only seen bits and pieces of it.”

He firmly believed that after gliding onto the water, the MH370 aircraft had “floated for a while” before sinking into the deep sea “in one piece”.

He added that it was also not impossible for an aircraft to float on water as proven by US Airways Flight 1549, which had to opt for an emergency landing on the Hudson River after multiple bird strikes caused both its jet engines to fail in January 2009.

“It’s possible that the (MH370) aircraft may have been submerged deep inside the ocean for quite some time before the flaperon (a part of the plane’s wing) got detached itself.
“Similarly, other parts would also become detached and float with the help of the strong water current, before being washed up on the shores of
islands like La Reunion.”

On whether it was possible for the flaperon to have floated on water for over 4,000 kilometres before ending up on La Reunion Island, Zaaim Redha said it was plausible based on sea current modelling by oceanography experts.

“Going by how the earth rotates, it’s highly possible that the piece of debris could have floated (over a long distance) because the ocean’s current can be really powerful.

“One cannot underestimate the power of the ocean current… recently, a Russian woman who was considered one of the greatest free divers of all time failed to surface after a dive in the Mediterranean and she was feared to have encountered a strong underwater current.”

On March 8 last year, the Beijing-bound MAS Boeing 777-200ER aircraft with 239 passengers and crew members on board disappeared from the radar about 49 minutes after taking off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am.

Recently on July 29th, an aircraft wing part, called a flaperon, was discovered on the shores of the French governed La Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.

Later, on Aug 6, Najib announced that international experts had affirmed that the maintenance record seal on the aircraft part provided the conclusive proof that it belonged to MH370.

Investigators, who scrutinised the shoreline of the remote island after the finding also found more debris, including a seat cushion, window pane, as well as remnants of a suitcase and empty water bottles.

But it is still unclear whether the latest items belonged to the missing plane.

 
MTF...P2

[aussie500]

I am no barnacle expert, but the things only seem to colonize things near land, not out in the ocean. These barnacles seem small, so I doubt they are going to tell the investigators much. Flaperon could have floated most of the way barnacle free.

On the insistence of some especially the NOK refusing to believe this is from MH370, not only was MH370 the only B777 lost in the SIO, so the only one missing the thing, but it would be only lost B777 flaperon involved in a crash. There are what appears to be some shrapnel holes in one end, possibly something sprayed from one of the engines as things came apart. So not a lost spare part. I have not seen any really detailed pictures yet, but did not notice any obvious exit holes. A better look at it would be nice, for all us amateur crash investigators.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4dapab807ed2vv...e.jpg?dl=0

[Tinkicker]

MH370: Reunion Is flaperon discovery - Latest update 11 Aug '15

Over the last 2 days there has been several MSM regurgitated versions of the following:

MH370: Malaysia to send team to Maldives


New debris will be examined, origin determined
 UPDATED 3:04 AM CDT Aug 11, 2015  




LAC Oliver Carter/Australian Defense Force


 (CNN) —Malaysia has said it will send a team to the Maldives to inspect debris found on the Indian Ocean archipelago to determine whether it might be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

The team will carry out an initial verification to establish if any of the debris is from an aircraft, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said in a statement Monday.
"At this stage, it is highly premature to speculate on whether this debris is in any way connected to MH370," he cautioned.

The discovery late last month of part of an aircraft wing on the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean has intensified interest in the hunt for remains of Flight 370, which disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people on board.

Malaysia says the wing part, known as a flaperon, has been conclusively confirmed to be from the missing Boeing 777. But French authorities overseeing the analysis of the object say that although there is strong evidence to support that belief, they need to do more tests to be absolutely sure.

Searches continuing around Reunion

France has stepped up its efforts on and around Reunion, which lies off the east coast of Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean, to look for more potential debris.
And authorities on the island of Mauritius, about 175 kilometers (110 miles) east-northeast of Reunion, have also been searching.

A lot of debris has been turned in to authorities on Reunion for verification. But so far, no leads as strong as the flaperon have been reported.

The remnants of a suitcase discovered the day after the flaperon have been sent to a French lab for testing.

Maldives far outside Australian models for debris drift

According to models calculated by Australia, which is in charge of the underwater search for the wreckage of MH370, debris from the plane wouldn't have made it as far north as the Maldives.

Australian officials say Reunion is within the range of where debris from the missing plane could have drifted over the months from the remote area of the southeastern Indian Ocean where the aircraft is believed to have gone down.

But the Maldives, situated off the southern tip of India, are in a different part of the ocean. The archipelago is thousands of kilometers northwest of the area of ocean that Australia is searching.

The Australian drift models suggest the winds and ocean currents would have pushed the aircraft debris in a predominantly westerly direction, toward southern Africa.

Maldivian authorities say they have been sending photos of debris found on the islands to Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation. Police have retrieved and placed items reported to them in a storage space in Male, the capital, said Mohammed Shareef, an official in the Maldivian President's office.

Report: Debris could be from capsized barge

Further doubt was cast on the possibility that the debris is from MH370 by the captain of a barge that capsized off one of the atolls in the Maldives earlier this year, according to local media.

The barge captain, Abdulla Rasheed, told the Maldivian news site Haveeru he believes the debris people are finding comes from the wall panels that accounted for most of the vessel's cargo when it overturned.

"From the pictures of the debris found on most of the islands, I can almost certainly say that they are from the cargo we were carrying," Rasheed said.

Source: Investigators still not ready to confirm flaperon

In France, meanwhile, analysis of the flaperon found on Reunion is continuing.
Investigators from France, Australia, the United States and Boeing are still not ready to say that the part is definitely from MH370, according to a source close to the investigation.

Representatives from Boeing and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have now left France where they were assisting the initial inspection of debris and are back in the United States, the source said.

French officials haven't said when they plan to announce the final results of the analysis of the flaperon.

Next is from the WSJ, & although a couple of days old is very interesting because it looks at the interesting dynamic of having a French Prosecutor conducting a Judicial (criminal/terrorist) investigation into the bizarre disappearance of MH370:

French Deepen Role in MH370 Probe

Investigating judge plans travel to Malaysia as questions persist over wing section found on Réunion Island
 
Officers on Réunion Island last month carried a flaperon from an aircraft, which the Malaysian prime minister this week said was part of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: raymond wae tion/European Pressphoto Agency
By
Matthew Dalton in Paris and Andy Pasztor in Los Angeles
Aug. 7, 2015 6:47 p.m. ET

A French investigating judge plans to travel to Malaysia as part of his probe into the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, deepening France’s involvement in the search for answers to the jet’s mysterious disappearance.

The move is likely to heighten scrutiny of Malaysia’s handling of its criminal investigation into the plane, which didn’t implicate anyone on board. France on Friday also joined the hunt for plane debris, starting patrols in the waters around Réunion Island, a French territory in the western Indian Ocean.

Questions still surround the recent discovery of a section of an airplane wing found roughly a week ago on the island. Malaysia Airlines officials are convinced the recovered wing section, called a flaperon, came from the missing Boeing 777. But a team of investigators led by Alain Gaudino, a French counterterrorism judge examining the flaperon at a military laboratory near Toulouse, isn’t yet certain.

French investigators have said the flaperon very likely came from the missing jet. But French authorities “want more undeniable evidence before they are willing to say the flaperon broke off Flight 370,” a person familiar with the investigation said.

On Thursday Mr. Gaudino briefed Ghyslain Wattrelos, whose wife, son and daughter were on the plane. The investigating judge told him an examination of the wing section didn’t yield confirmation it came from Flight 370, Mr. Wattrelos said.
 
Ghyslain Wattrelos, second from right, who lost his wife and two children on Flight MH370, took part in a March protest in Paris over the continuing mystery of its fate. Photo: thomas samson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

“They know it’s a Boeing 777,” Mr. Wattrelos said. “But today they have no proof at all that it’s coming from MH370.”

French investigators drilled into the recovered wing section, searching for signs of a maintenance seal that Malaysian authorities documented when the missing jet previously underwent repairs, according to Mr. Wattrelos and people familiar with the matter. The findings of the French investigators didn’t match the Malaysian records, Mr. Gaudino said, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

Malaysian officials, however, believe the discrepancies aren’t significant enough to challenge their conclusion, according to two people familiar with the investigation.

Malaysia’s transport minister said this week that paint on the wing section helped identify it as coming from the missing jet. But Mr. Gaudino told victims Thursday that the paint on the component appeared to come from its manufacturer, Boeing, not Malaysia Airlines, according to Mr. Wattrelos.

“To my knowledge, there isn’t paint specific to Malaysia Airlines,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors who are working with Mr. Gaudino. In addition, the wing section’s placard—containing a serial number—appears to have fallen off, the spokeswoman said.
Mr. Gaudino couldn’t be reached to comment.

To confirm the piece is from Flight 370, the experts will now have to examine parts in the interior of the flaperon, find their serial numbers, and match them if possible to parts known to have been inside the Flight 370 flaperon. Investigators are also trying to match records with an identifying mark on a portion of the internal structure that would establish the flaperon’s origin, according to one of the people familiar with the investigation.

On Friday, France began a search for additional plane debris in the waters around Réunion that will last for a week. Réunion officials said Friday they couldn’t yet identify new debris found on the island as coming from an airplane, contradicting statements from Malaysian officials that the objects are from an airplane.

Several U.S. and foreign safety experts said Malaysian authorities seem to be repeating some of their earlier missteps in prematurely announcing that debris has been found, only to have to later walk it back. Malaysian officials promised to coordinate more closely with foreign counterparts after coming under widespread criticism for repeated miscommunication at the outset of the probe.

“They seem to have moved backward,” said John Cox, an industry consultant and former pilot union safety official. “They are making many of the same mistakes again.”
France will be looking for smaller debris, not the main pieces of Flight 370 such as the fuselage. The jet, which disappeared on March 8, 2014, on the way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is presumed to have crashed in the eastern Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles off the coast of Australia. Authorities say it is possible that ocean currents could have transported the debris found last week across the Indian Ocean to Réunion.

Australian officials are leading an extensive underwater search some 2,000 miles away from Réunion for the main wreckage of Flight 370, which likely contains the black boxes that record the plane’s flight data, as well as conversations and sounds in the cockpit. Investigators and outside safety experts are convinced such information is essential to solve the mystery of what happened to the plane.

Malaysian authorities investigated the passengers and crew of the jet last year, announcing in April 2014 that the passengers had been “cleared.” Malaysian police seized a computer, which had been rigged as an aircraft simulator, from Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s home in the days following the disappearance of the flight. Some data had been deleted from the computer, and police tried to retrieve it. Later, the police and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded they found nothing suspicious on the device.
Neither Capt. Zaharie, 52, nor his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 26, was ever accused of wrongdoing.

French authorities opened a separate criminal investigation months ago, because four French nationals were on the plane. Since then, Mr. Gaudino has been waiting for Malaysian authorities to turn over information, including files from Malaysia’s own criminal investigation and satellite data used to identify where the jet may have crashed, French officials said.

“We have no reason to think the information won’t be transmitted,” said a spokeswoman for Paris prosecutors, adding that Mr. Gaudino hadn’t set a schedule for his visit to Malaysia.

Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com and Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com

 
Q/ I have a question in regards to the flaperon (see pic):

Supposition is that if the flaperon is from MH370, then it was ripped from the wing either in flight or on hitting the water. Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage? And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?- just asking..
MTF..P2

“Okay if that is the case then where is the ripped & torn structural damage?”

It’s more a matter of what you don’t see, with regard to damage in attempting to answer the question.  What is notably absent in the photo (& similar photos), is the flaperon support structure where the hinge attachment points, & the PCU attachment point, are located.  The observation applies equally to the outboard end of the flaperon.


It appears from the photo that the aft portion of the PCU attachment point can still be seen in the foreground, proximate to the “hole” in the nose rib (see: **).  Unfortunately the poor photo quality prevents meaningful analysis relating to possible failure loads.


“And why is the hole that presumably holds the connecting hydraulic actuating rod, not flogged out and ripped through?”


I believe the large round **“hole” being referred to, is a structural component commonly known as a ‘nose rib.’ In this instance, no mounting or actuating hardware is associated with the “hole.”

The upper & lower inboard leading edge panels appear to contain crush damage consistent with impact loading. There also appears to be ‘witness’ marks associated with the damage.

Significant impact damage is also visible on the outboard end of the flaperon.  In addition to the missing support hardware, impact damage is visible on both upper & lower leading edge panels.  It also appears that the upper leading edge panel has completely failed aft of the forward lap joint.  Crush damage can also be seen on the adjacent nose rib.  The upper & lower leading edge panel aft lap joints show signs of separation.

Any close-ups I’ve seen of the trailing edge damage, fail to provide enough detail to offer an opinion regarding failure loads.
Out on a limb   

[P7_TOM]

Thanks TK – solid, good sense always welcome.  A rarity when MH370 is mentioned.  I’m pleased the French are not shooting ‘from the hip’ and a dialogue like yours explains why.  Problem of course for us is being ‘bloody pilots’ the finesse of ‘investigation’ and the subtleties of complex ‘engineering’ are a mystery to most.  I dare say the wise French owls will give us detailed analysis; in one form another , just as soon as they are sure.  Nice to know that at last, no faeary tales will be spun; or, phoney ‘experts’ will be polishing and spinning.