[Gobbledock]

The Australian government is truly at risk P2;

"Hmm...maybe some more potential for political embarrassment in that lot for miniscule Dazzling Dazza and PM Malcolm... "

The Chinese were never really going to contribute any additional value to the search. And as anyone in the 'security' industry knows, although the Dong is not by nature an intelligence gathering vehicle, it will have some capability and will have intelligence analysts onboard. Freemantle is not the place that you want Chinese hardware parked.

Then again, this is the same Government that sold Darwin port assets to the Chinese!!!! Of all places and of all infrastructure, the port in Darwin!!! UFB. Idiots.

[Peetwo]

Is Dong, is good suspect?? - 

The Australian government is truly at risk P2;

"Hmm...maybe some more potential for political embarrassment in that lot for miniscule Dazzling Dazza and PM Malcolm... "

The Chinese were never really going to contribute any additional value to the search. And as anyone in the 'security' industry knows, although the Dong is not by nature an intelligence gathering vehicle, it will have some capability and will have intelligence analysts onboard. Freemantle is not the place that you want Chinese hardware parked.

Then again, this is the same Government that sold Darwin port assets to the Chinese!!!! Of all places and of all infrastructure, the port in Darwin!!! UFB. Idiots.

Today in the Weekend Oz Bailey is back with yet another sideswipe at the perceived ignorance and ineptitude of the ATSB, while calling for the search to continue... :

MH370 search must go on

12:00amBYRON BAILEY

In a couple of months the longest and most expensive search in ­aviation history will come to a close.

...This “head in the sand” attitude by the ATSB has not enhanced its professional reputation. It must be awful for the families of the ­deceased not to know where the bodies of their loved ones are.

The search must go on...

 
Also 'that man' Higgins, with a few minor additions (i.e. he got a 'no comment' from the Defence Minister's office), has almost word perfectly regurgitated his piece from Friday's Oz...   

Lips mum over Chinese ‘spy ship’

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

Marise Payne has dodged claims a Chinese ship searching for Flight MH370 is probably spying on the Australian military.

Not sure what the Oz is playing at? Maybe there is a bump in circulation whenever the repetitive lines are again rehashed?

The following comment from Byron, in his post from 3 days ago, would seem to suggest there is some Editorial method in the madness:

Byron

3 days ago

@Brian Not so. Pilot could have started slow descent after first engine flameout. Below 20,000' start APU and select flap before second engine flameout. I write when requested by the editorial staff - why dont you give it a go.

 So maybe it is some editorial strategy about keeping the pot boiling until something breaks that the Oz has got wind of??- too much for my wooden head..

However the Higgins recent Dong stories does raise a spectre of suspicion on the less than stellar performance of the designated Chinese search vessel...

So for the benefit of Higgins and the Oz, Mike Chillit has put together a package of Dong related tweeps, that track all the movements (or not ) of the search ship ever since it came on line back in late February.

Courtesy MC via his blog the 7th Arc... :

China’s MH370 Efforts
Posted on September 23, 2016 by Mike Chillit

For now, this post is just a summary of my (Mike Chillit’s) Tweets related to the Chinese vessel Dong Hai Jiu 101 since February 2016 when she was tasked by China to assist Australia’s ATSB locate Malaysia Airlines’ long lost MH370. This follows an article in The Australian (paywalled) that notes the vessel has not spent much time actually scanning, and speculates that she and her crew may actually be “spying” on Western Australia’s military apparatus. The article further estimates that Dong has only engaged in scanning for the lost plane some 17 to 30 days since her arrival in early February.

While Twitter’s format for the tweet archive I have included below does not include date, it appears to me that the only serious scanning Dong engaged in was between February 27th and 29th in an area off to the east of the main scan strip that some observers – inside and outside of Australia – believed Fugro vessels passed directly over aircraft debris and failed to grasp the importance of what they were seeing. Fugro has been using EdgeTech sidescan sonar, which is believed by some to be inferior to the ProSAS-60 installed on Dong.

So Dong initially sailed directly to that area and used her sidescan equipment to investigate. Without saying it in so many words, Dong failed to find anything related to the plane and joined the other vessels farther south on February 29th. That was essentially the end of Dong’s contribution to the effort. Three weeks later, Dong “lost” that ProSAS-60 in a March 21, 2016 mishap that remains fuzzy.

Dong never returned to active scanning. She “tested” sidescan west of Mandurah, AU after two months spent recovering and repairing her sonar, then spent most of her time north of Broken Ridge because weather was too severe south of there in the search area.

After another port call, Dong aborted her return to the search area due to a “non-life-threatening” incident involving a crew member. That was it for Dong.

The paucity of scanning conducted by Chinese vessels has been noted several times by moi via Twitter posts. It is not just Dong. All three of the vessels China has formally tasked to “assist” with the search have spent the majority of their time in port or “sailing around” with little obvious contribution to the primary search effort.

There may be good reasons for China’s arm-length distance from the Australian-led effort. For starters, most honest observers do not believe Australia has any idea what it is doing after repeatedly refusing to consider scanning any but the now certifiably pristine search area they began in two and a half years ago. It is obvious to even the most casual observer that if Australia did the data analysis as well as it claimed, it would have tried other locations long before now. And China is equally capable of coming to the same conclusion. So in the world of international relations, China may be trying to avoid a public split with Australia over the latter’s inability to conduct a proper search for the missing airliner.

With that brief intro, here is a downloadable index page (“archive.html”) that displays 314 Tweets and images posted by me. They are also available on Twitter, of course, but are all in one place here. Please let me know if you have problems accessing the material.

Downloadable Tweets from Mike Chillit

    
As usual MC choc frog quality summary and with MTF possibly a gold key to the Tim Tam cupboard...



MTF...P2  

[ventus45]

This is Mike's Archive link. 26 Megabytes in a ZIP file.
http://seventharc.net/files/public-docs/...rchive.zip

Mike's page on China's search efforts is:-
http://www.seventharc.net/2016/09/23/chi...0-efforts/

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log - DOI archive entry 01.10.2016 

Via Chillit's 7th Arc blog... :

Australia’s Struggle With Insanity
Posted on September 30, 2016 by Mike Chillit 



The critical “7th Arc”, where MH370 is believed to have crashed, is 4,000 km long in the Indian Ocean, and stretches from Java, Indonesia to -40° South. The 7th Arc appears to be reasonably correct, but less than 25% of it has been searched by Australia’s ATSB, which has lead investigative authority. In spite of not finding anything in the original 60,000 square kilometers, Australia has repeatedly refused to search any other portion of the 3,000 km that remain unsearched.

I will have all vessel AIS information for a 300 km strip on each side of the entire Indian Ocean’s 7th Arc sometime next week. Both “Satellite-AIS” and “Terrestrial-AIS” versions for a 4,000 km strip of ocean. Everything. Deliverables for the now awarded RFP posted one week ago include a graphic of vessel locations between midnight March 5, 2014 and midnight March 10 / 11, 2014. I will also use accompanying digital information to prepare graphics in my own format, but the contractor’s effort to provide its own version is greatly appreciated.

Separately, I will encourage one or two research analysts I trust to conduct their own review of the data. More eyes are better than fewer eyes in all complex analyses, from my point of view. The goal, of course is to identify vessel positions that might help determine where best to look for the missing plane. I continue to place a fair amount of trust in the “7th Arc”. It’s one of the meager bits of information we have that seems to actually be helpful. I have tried to find fatal problems with the 7th Arc construct, and one or more may yet emerge, but so far I have always come back to it as one of the few fairly useful metrics we have.

As readers will know if they follow my mumblings on Twitter and here, the commercial cargo vessel “Stella” was within 150 km of ATSB’s “crash location” at 00:19 UTC March 8, 2014 when ATSB claims the plane crashed in “Penguinville”. And Stella was headed directly into the plane’s descending flight path. If the plane had been anywhere in the area, it would have been seen to within a gnat’s eyelash of absolute certainty. Yet, to my knowledge, no one connected to any Australian entity has attempted to speak to the ship’s Captain or owners to determine if anything was seen. There were thin patchy clouds overhead, but it was daylight in the early morning hours of Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.

The obvious explanation for the absence of reports from the Stella crew about a crashing airliner is that it did not crash anywhere near where Australia has been searching for nearly three years. There is no other plausible explanation.

If you are in charge of an important investigation, how do you justify closing your mind and all of your senses to the things that were going on at the time you believe such an important event happened? How can you do your job when you close yourself to everything that is at odds with what you prefer to believe? It’s known as being DELUSIONAL.

MTF...P2

[Kharon]

And: FWIW more from the Negroni pen - HERE-.

[Peetwo]

And: FWIW more from the Negroni pen - HERE-.

Actually "K" I think that is from the Clive Irving keyboard and has much of the usual journalistic factual vagaries we come to expect from most attempted MSM coverage of the MH370 disappearance. (There is also some fundamental typo errors, for example...

"..By any measure the disappearance and death of 329 people is a serious event.."

...I think is supposed to read 239 people... )

However there is some interesting commentary, observations and opinion from Irving, which
for a refreshing change does not get lost in too much speculation or theorising on the shambolic MH370 search and accident investigation...
 
Examples:

...In her book Negroni writes that she was disturbed by a discovery made during her reporting that “for all the apparent effort to try to solve the mystery of MH370, authorities may not be as committed to finding out what went wrong.”

Negroni discloses the impotence of the internal auditors at Malaysia Airlines. This disclosure goes to one of the most fundamental questions: Why was Flight MH370 not equipped to report its position and condition more frequently than at half-hour intervals?

---

...When it comes to aviation, Malaysia presents an illusion of governance. It has institutions that by name imply international standards of regulatory vigilance—a Ministry of Transport and a Department of Civil Aviation to supervise airlines, for example, and Malaysia Airlines itself has a Department of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs (that’s who the auditors reported to). It’s when you come to question who gets appointed to these bodies and who ensures that they work as they should that it begins to look like a Potemkin charade...

---

..Cronyism permeates all the national institutions, including those that for years have had oversight of commercial aviation. Inevitably, when a crisis as serious as the loss of MH370 occurs it exposes the cost of having political placemen, rather than professionals, in key positions. For example, CNN’s Richard Quest, the author of another book about MH370, interviewed Hussein more than a year after the disaster and reported: “…there is an astonishing gap in the minister’s perception of what happened and the rest of the world’s.”

Irving also summarises quite well on the unwieldy structure and strange dichotomy, when dealing with so many DIPs involved with either the investigation & search efforts:

To begin with, the internal hierarchy of the investigation is difficult to fathom. Politically the three most involved nations, and those financing the search, are Malaysia, China (152 of the passengers were Chinese), and Australia—because the crash site is closest to Australia and because of Australia’s expertise in air crash investigations.

However, a more comprehensive tally of involved parties reveals a burgeoning bureaucracy and a forest of acronyms.

At the head is the Malaysian Ministry of Transport’s Safety Investigation Team for MH370. In addition, by November 2014, there were five international partners providing specific skills: Boeing; Rolls Royce (maker of the airplane’s engines); Thales (a European aerospace conglomerate); the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board; and Australia’s equivalent of the NTSB, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

Since then more groups have been listed as involved—the Australian Defence Science and Technology Group; the French equivalent of the NTSB, the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, BEA; Great Britain’s Air Accident Investigation Branch; Inmarsat, the British satellite operator that identified the most likely search area; and Honeywell, the avionics company that provides systems to Boeing.

One part of the investigation appears to have grown into a minor industry, requiring technology that is not normally part of a crash inquiry: trying to pin exactly where over the southern Indian Ocean the flight ended. This is a wholly Australian-created gaggle of scientists led by the Search Strategy Working Group and the Flight Path Reconstruction Group, and includes a company called Global Environmental Modelling Systems, GEMS; the Australia, Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization, CSIRO; Geoscience Australia; and the Australian National University.

Having so many players involved must create a nightmare of an organizational chart. Who reports to whom? Who is in charge of what? When it comes to issues of transparency the ATSB has been put in the hot seat—they issue weekly updates on the search but they are not empowered to address such basic questions as, Why has the recovery of the debris washing up on beaches in the western Indian Ocean been left to amateurs? Why has not one cent been allocated to a methodical search there while $180 million has been spent on an undersea search that is so far fruitless?

Reading between the lines of ATSB news releases it’s obvious that the Australians are constrained by guidelines issued from Kuala Lumpur, guidelines intended to deflect or ignore any light being shed on the overall credibility, integrity, and competence of the investigation. The ATSB tries its best but although it is transparent about its own investigations into Australian accidents, in this case it limits its responses to reporters to technical details of the deep sea search and analysis of the debris.

---

..In an attempt to counter the most lunatic theories 15 current and retired aerospace and communications professionals set up a body called the MH370 Independent Group. But having swatted away some noisome parties and issued some rather prolix technical documents they have recently gone dormant. They have probably succumbed to the kind of exhaustion that overtook those tasked to watch the Kremlin in the darkest days of the Cold War. Indeed, circling the MH370 investigation to probe it for clues is a new kind of Kremlinology, driven by a sense of duty but mostly ending in futility.

The people who suffer most from the Malaysian cover-up are the families of the passengers and crew. In September the High Court in Kuala Lumpur allowed an application for a general discovery document to go ahead, brought by 76 family members (66 Chinese, eight Indians, and two Americans). The families are asking for the release of 37 documents, including communications, correspondence, documents, notes, and investigators’ reports. The civil suit names those holding the documents as the Malaysian Airlines System, the Director General of the Department of Civil Aviation, the Royal Malaysian Air Force, and the government.

IMO where Irving totally nails it is contained in the last two paragraphs:

..The time has surely arrived when the responsibility for the investigation can no longer be left to the Malaysians. Other parties to the investigation with reputations for integrity to uphold, like the crash investigators from the U.S., Britain, France, and Australia, as well as Boeing, should end this farrago. After all this time, they cannot any longer hide behind the defense that the investigation is continuing and, calling up the lawyers, assert that as long as it is they are obligated not to comment.

It ought to be straightforward to distinguish between what is known and what remains unknown about what happened on that night in March 2014. That would be a start toward transparency. It is not a mark of failure to admit that much remains unknown or even unknowable, at least until more substantial evidence, like the flight data recorders, is discovered. And even if it is not, and in the end the mystery remains a mystery, there must still be accountability for the way the investigation has so far been handled. There surely must be no doubt now that the investigation of Flight MH370 is unfit for purpose.

So totally agree with Irving's sentiments -

For what it's worth & for those interested the Weekend Oz also ran a more expanded version of the Christine Negroni MH370 theory/story:

Good night, Malaysian

12:00am Christine Negroni

What happened to MH370 after this final message from the cockpit? An air safety specialist offers a theory.

 

MTF...P2

[Gobbledock]

Imagine for the briefest moment that MH370 was actually Airforce One. Would we be witnessing the same nonchalant abysmal investigation?

[P7_TOM]

Who's the man?

THIS - is - the man.

No doubt about it.

[video=vimeo]<script src="https://static.change.org/product/embeds/v1/change-embeds.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <div class="change-embed-petition" data-petition-id="6080174"></div>[/video]

Bugger it - click the link while I try to get this sorted.

[Cap'n Wannabe]

Who's the man?

THIS - is - the man.

No doubt about it.

Bugger it - click the link while I try to get this sorted.

Unfortunately the petition's closed..

P2 - Yes Chillit made that plea back in March I believe? Might be a good time for him to reignite that flame. As he did back then, he gets my vote...

[P7_TOM]

Cheers CW. Thanks for sorting the video – us older folk struggle.  The closed ‘petition’ is acknowledged – P2 actually had the link to that video up not long after it hit the wires. However, I was more interested is putting a face and a motive to what is now a very well known, highly regarded name.  Of all the various groups and pundits milking the MH 370 story, Mike has quietly, modestly and without thought of what may be in it for him; persevered and provided some bloody solid field work.  His ethic is ‘find’ not theorise which, in the considered opinion of many, is the only sensible solution.   The next logical step is to complete the current search mission, for obvious reasons and if that turns out to be a ‘dry’ well; revaluate, regroup, refinance and go back to search.

There is a long list of ‘corporate’ bodies who could, collectively, easily put a few dollars in the sock and keep the search going. The sea floor topographical data must be worth a fortune – just to know what’s there; I’d bet Shell or BP spend the search cost every year looking for ‘black-gold’ beneath the sea floor.  Hell it’s probably tax deductible.

Chillit hopes to motivate and encourage; not sell books, get on TV; just works away praying that someone, somewhere gives a monkeys. Even if they don’t, he tries to make ‘em see the light.

I say Bravo, that man. We shall induct him into the BRB Hall of Fame at the next indaba, he is a very worthy gentleman.

[Peetwo]

Captain's log: DOI Update 07.10.16 - ATSB Debris report No.5

Via @atsbinfo:

Published: 7 October 2016

Debris examination – update No. 5

Identification of wing trailing edge debris recovered from Mauritius

Introduction

An item of composite debris was recovered on the island of Mauritius around 10 May 2016. The item profile was consistent with the trailing edge of an aircraft wing. The item was subsequently collected by a member of the Malayisan investigation team and hand-delivered to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau for identification.

This document is a brief summary of the item identification, designated part number 6. It follows the previous identification and examination reports available on this website. This summary is released with the concurrence of the Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370.

Identification

Part No. 6

A part number was identified on a section of the debris, identifying it as a trailing edge splice strap, incorporated into the rear spar assembly of a Boeing 777 left outboard flap. This was consistent with the appearance and construction of the debris.
Adjacent to the part number was an “OL” part identifier, similar to those found on the right outboard flap section (Examination update 3). The flap manufacturer supplied records indicating that this identifier was a unique work order number and that the referred part was incorporated into the outboard flap shipset line number 404 which corresponded to the Boeing 777 aircraft line number 404, registered 9M-MRO and operating as MH370.

Figure 1: Left outboard flap trailing edge section showing part identification numbers

Source: ATSB

Conclusion

Part number 6 was a trailing edge section of Boeing 777 left, outboard flap, originating from the Malaysian Airlines aircraft registered 9M-MRO.

_____________
Download PDF of the Debris report 5

Here we go watch all the armchair experts come out of the woodwork; (No.1) we finally have identified flap debris from the LHS of 9M-MRO; & (No.2) the part is fractured.

Depending on which side of the fence you sit the ad nauseum debate will be certain to contain elements of; the pilot did it vs the pilot didn't do it; the pilots, crew & pax were all dead from hypoxia vs the pilot did some sort of death dive; the flaps were retracted vs the flaps were extended...blahblahblahblah    

From my point of view the speculation is tiresome and the only real conclusion you can make from this latest identified piece of debris is that the % probability continues to increase that the ATSB led MH370 SIO deep sea search is looking in the wrong area...

It also reiterates why it is extremely important to find & recover both the MH370 fuselage and the black boxes. However for that to be achieved we need the likes of Sir Tim Clark, Al Baker, Boeing, Thales et.al to put their money where their mouth is and help fund the continued search for MH370.

Like Clive Irving said (below) in his blog - or see HERE - it is high time the adults wrested back control of the JIT investigation because the corrupt Malaysians have proven time and again (for whatever reason) that they are conflicted and dishonest when it comes to dealing with the MH370 investigation and search...  

..The time has surely arrived when the responsibility for the investigation can no longer be left to the Malaysians. Other parties to the investigation with reputations for integrity to uphold, like the crash investigators from the U.S., Britain, France, and Australia, as well as Boeing, should end this farrago. After all this time, they cannot any longer hide behind the defense that the investigation is continuing and, calling up the lawyers, assert that as long as it is they are obligated not to comment.

It ought to be straightforward to distinguish between what is known and what remains unknown about what happened on that night in March 2014. That would be a start toward transparency. It is not a mark of failure to admit that much remains unknown or even unknowable, at least until more substantial evidence, like the flight data recorders, is discovered. And even if it is not, and in the end the mystery remains a mystery, there must still be accountability for the way the investigation has so far been handled. There surely must be no doubt now that the investigation of Flight MH370 is unfit for purpose...

MTF...P2

[Gobbledock]

Pretty much sums things up;

" and in the end the mystery remains a mystery, there must still be accountability for the way the investigation has so far been handled. There surely must be no doubt now that the investigation of Flight MH370 is unfit for purpose".

Hence my disgust and disappointment in the supposed only 'power' who can cut through all this BS - ICAO. ICAO, the UN, Chicago Convention, all a nice safe and structured platform from which authority could be taken from Malaysia and Australia and then wielded in a different format. But no, after more than 2 years of investigative pony pooh ICAO proves to be nothing more than another alphabet soup acronym. Hell, ICAO don't even wield a wet lettuce leaf! They are limp like Barmybaby's doodle in the Tamworth trough selfie.
Pffff ICAO, hosting big wank sessions in Montreal and pontificating about like a mob of prize roosters but achieving nothing while the MH370 investigation gets mishandled on the other side of the world.

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 14.10.16: A word from MC's 7th Arc -

Via Mike Chillit:

The Botchulism of MH370

Posted on October 13, 2016 by Mike Chillit

Hindsight is Pretty Good

This is a brief history of how the search for MH370 has come to be botched so badly that we find ourselves – now – right back where Australia and China originally found the plane in early April 2014, but erroneously concluded it was an “old fishnet pinger”.

Surprise! Global Fishing Watch has been monitoring those waters for commercial fishing activities since 2013 and it says there was NO fishing activity out there at all for months before or after Ocean Shield’s “fishnet pinger” claim. And, of course, Australia did not go to the trouble of fishing out the “fishnet pinger” it claimed at the time had sent false pings. So, no physical evidence that there was ever a fishnet pinger in the vicinity.

Moreover, Australia did not have the equipment to physically scan the ocean floor in one of the deepest areas of the entire Indian Ocean.

Those who have followed me for a while know I did not initially believe the Zenith Plateau area held the plane’s remains. I initially went along with the crowd down to the ongoing search area SW of Perth. But, fortunately, I have more faith in the analysis that ATSB, Inmarsat, and others did to put them there than they had in their own work. I also tend to try to learn from new information. Probabilistic models convinced me by January 2015 that the plane was not down there; had never flown south of Broken Ridge. But where should I look?

If Not Penguinville?

My next inquiry was back up to the Waypoint Igari area where the plane was last known to be before the tragedy occurred. That led me to review possibilities in the Gulf of Thailand, in the South China Sea, and eventually all the way up into the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal where concern had been expressed by some that the North Sentinelese had Shish Kabobbed half of the Indian Marine Corps that had ventured out to beat the bushes for Boeing debris. But there was nothing to any of those investigations and two+ years later they now all seem to be fairly well out of favor by even the most now wizened debris sleuths.

But I didn’t give up. By June 2015, with not so much as a used flaperon to suggest the plane was anywhere in the vast Indian Ocean, I decided the next place to look was the Annamite Mountain Range in Vietnam. It was very close to the 7th Arc, and it appealed to me because it is remote and easy to hide large objects from satellites and people. Such a location would also certainly prevent debris from drifting or coming in contact with water.
But, fortunately, it was about then that the first debris find occurred on Reunion Island. It was the flaperon and there was a steady stream of finds after that that at least helped confirm the plane had indeed gone down somewhere in the Indian Ocean; not in the Annamites; not on North Sentinel Island. To be more precise, it had gone down south of the equator, somewhere between southern Sumatra and … who knows where? We knew that much because if the plane had gone down north of the equator, it would have been highly unlikely a flaperon would have drifted all the way south to Reunion Island (i.e., across 10 degrees of slack and haphazard currents, and then another 11 degrees all the way down to -21 degrees south).

The flaperon find was the singular event that suggested to me the plane went down somewhere east of Reunion Island; somewhere in the vicinity of Exmouth, Australia. Indeed, a smallish private fishing boat (less than 30 feet) near Exmouth had broken loose from it’s moorings in a storm a few months earlier and had ended up not so far north of Reunion Island. It was documented, but how reliable was a sample of one in an area measured by thousands of kilometers in all directions?

It turns out, after another year of investigation, that that sample of one was quite accurate. Some 35 years of NOAA satellite-tracked drifter data ends up in the same place when it begins 977 km west of Exmouth, Australia. So now we have our cross-hairs, something lacking with ping rings alone. We don’t quite have an “X Marks the Spot”, but we know we are very close. What we need is a partner more interested in shedding light on this tragedy and concluding it than in deflecting political fallout.

Now Back to the Zenith / Batavia Areas

There were a few surface searches initially, but invariably, debris that was spotted from the air could not be found and recovered by surface craft. That appears to include “a large debris field” spotted by the Chinese crew aboard Hai Xun 01 on April 2, 2014.
This is the best, most complete chart of the early search effort I have found anywhere. It is by Andrew Heneen and is available on Wikimedia, Wikipedia, and probably lots of other places.

[/url]

As thorough as this map is, it fails to note a couple of important issues. First, the Sonobuoys that were deployed in the debris field in April 2014 were all defective, probably for the same reason Malaysia Airline’s ULB batteries failed to work properly: they had not been inspected and maintained. Second, Cyclone Gillian blew through the Zenith Plateau area (marked as “TPL search”) a week BEFORE Australia and China put vessels out there. That means the plane’s debris had already been widely scattered by the storm.

[url=http://www.seventharc.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/heneen2.jpg]

I have taken the liberty of adding notes of my own to this Heneen map. Mostly in white lettering, they show where Hai Xun 01 detected ULB signals and where the debris field was found “X”. But keep in mind that was AFTER Cyclone Gillian rearranged things the last week of March 2014. Gillian did not get that far south. She turned west near the north side of the most northern brown patch that straddles the black 7th Arc.

Nevertheless, after three + weeks and one cyclone, it is reasonable to expect debris there to move one way or another about 22 km per day.

As troubling as it is to realize Australia and China had the plane within reach a month after if vanished, it also helps explain why none of the plane’s debris hit Western Australia as far as anyone knows. Cyclone Gillian’s “power quadrant” was on her east side as she came down from the middle of the Wharton Basin. She then turned sharply right (west) at Zenith Plateau, effectively pushing all remaining debris off to the west.

So on one hand, it is remarkable that China and Australia were able to find the plane so quickly given the paucity of information available to them at the time. On the other, it is a tragedy on top of a tragedy that they gave up and moved 2,000 km south just as it was within their collective reach. Still, better to emphasize the remarkable achievement of finding the right location. Now time to go back and finish the job.



This shows not only the general area where Ocean Shield and Hai Xun 01 picked up ULB pings, but also the exact location of four commercial (2 tankers, 2 cargo) vessels at 00:19 March 8, 2014 when the plane is believed to have crashed.

So, while I have generally favored the area where Ocean Shield detected ULB signals, it makes more common sense to me that the plane did not come down “on top of” Zenith Plateau where four commercial vessels happened to be at the time. I’ve tried to learn from new evidence at each stage, and right or wrong, I’ve decided those crews would have reported sightings to authorities if there had been anything there. (I believe the same to be true in the search area 2,000 km south where the vessel “Stella” would have been nearly hit by the falling plane if it had come down on ATSB’s preferred location.) It also makes sense to me that the debris field Hai Xun 01 reported was, to a near certainty, the remains of MH370.

Notice that there are no vessels around Batavia or farther north of Zenith in the graphic above. They are not show because there were none there at the time. Technicians with Germany’s Fleetmon AIS Services helped me investigate all vessel traffic along the entire length of the Seventh Arc (4,000 km), and what you see near Zenith is all that was there. (There were many vessels farther north near Java Island, but they aren’t shown. I’m more than happy to share that data pull with anyone who wants to examine it.)



Separately, I am trying to obtain high resolution images of the area Hai Xun 01 reported “a lot” of debris. There was some cloud cover that day, but I do not yet know how much.

The Big Picture

MH370 will be found somewhere between Batavia Seamount and Zenith Plateau. Water depth is more reasonable than it is at the base of Zenith where it is close to -8,000 or even -9,000 meters in places. I’m hoping satellite images from March 8, 2014 will be found. It is important to know if the debris field found by Hai Xun 01 on April 2 was there on March 8. Debris disperses rapidly in the open ocean. Hai Xun 01 and Ocean Shield didn’t arrive on the scene for nearly a month after the plane was lost. Within that time frame, at least some debris would have drifted (mostly west, north, and south) between 300 and 500 km, depending on winds and currents. For Hai Xun to report “a lot” of debris one month and one cyclone later means there was no attempt of any kind to minimize the resulting debris field by whomever was at the plane’s controls. It was an enormous debris field, and very visible on March 8. But did any of the world’s many satellites capture and preserve the moment?

 
Chocfrog & a packet of TimTams MC...

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 16.10.16: The trouble with correcting the record.

Reference O&O thread:

Sandy dubs it the 'Canberra disease' and Ventus reckons it is a syndrome i.e. "acquired institutionalised ostrichitis syndrome" (AIOS).

AIOS reaches epidemic proportions in Can'tberra -  

Earlier in the week 'that man' from the Oz kept reporting on a something-nothing (possible) tailskid occurrence of a Singapore Airlines on departure out of Melbourne: 

Tail strike suspected
12:00amEAN HIGGINS

A Singapore Airlines plane flew on from Melbourne to Singapore despite being told it had struck its tail on takeoff..

  
Now along with Ben Sandilands from PlaneTalking, I was a bit bemused where 'that man' was going with what appears to be on the surface a non-event?? 

Probe into ‘tail strike’ flight
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The air crash watchdog has launched an investigation into a now confirmed ‘tail strike’ at Melbourne airport...

But then after the 2nd Higgins report (above) the penny dropped...

This was not so much about the Singapore tail-strike occurrence but more about goading the ATSB into action by making reference to a) it being an immediately reportable incident that automatically must be investigated; and b) referring twice to the last high profile tail-strike incident that also occurred out of YMML:

..In 2009 at Melbourne airport, an Emirates Airbus A340-500 struck its tail three times, and sustained $100 million damage as it barely cleared the airport boundary fence before returning to make an emergency landing...

   
As a passing strange coincidence - - I too had recently referred to that accident in a Mount NCN post: Safety loops, trends & disconnections?...

..Perhaps the ATSB is being bloody-minded about this because it is 'that man' making a song and dance about this reasonably innocuous event.

But it also could be that they're otherwise distracted and have gone into a 'bunker' mode because apparently that man Higgins has been doing some more digging on the MH370 front... :

ATSB jumped gun on MH370
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was wrong to say it had consensus on a “death dive” theory for flight MH370.

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/0573acb566bb47c45e64e4c55a998aba/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued a bulletin falsely claiming it had “consensus” from a team of international experts for its “death dive” theory that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down fast in a pilotless crash, before two overseas agencies had a chance to express a view.

The ATSB made the claim as its chief commissioner Greg Hood joined the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines in a media campaign to hose down an alternative “rogue pilot” ­theory that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his aircraft and flew it to the end outside the search area chosen by the ATSB.

Internal ATSB documents obtained by The Australian show that while a senior investigator drew the incorrect “consensus” statement to the attention of colleagues only minutes after the bulletin was released, the organisation never issued a correction and instead secretly deleted the claim from its website the next day, after it had been widely ­reported internationally.

The ATSB repeatedly refused to say why it had deleted the “consensus” claim, and falsely denied doing so in a subsequent post.

Internal ATSB emails ­obtained under Freedom of Information statutes by The Australian reveal the truth behind the organisation’s media manoeuvres.

The revelations come amid doubts expressed by independent experts about the reliability of the Inmarsat satellite data the ATSB uses for its rapid descent assumption, and claims the agency has, to avoid embarrassing Malaysia, steered away from the “rogue pilot” theory.

MH370 vanished on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. Its radar transponder was turned off and radio contact was broken.

Radar and automatic satellite tracking data indicate the Boeing 777 reversed course early in the flight, and flew along the ­Malaysia-Thailand border and out over the Andaman Sea before making a sharp turn south to end up in the southern Indian Ocean.

The ATSB designed the search zone based on its “ghost flight” theory that the pilots were incapacitated, and that after flying on autopilot, the aircraft came down quickly after running out of fuel.

In July, two developments led to international debate about the ATSB’s strategy.
Reuters reported the project director of the underwater search, Paul Kennedy of Dutch survey group Fugro, said the rogue pilot theory might be right after all.

“You could glide it for further than our search area is, so I believe the logical conclusion will be, well, maybe, that is the other scenario,” Mr Kennedy told Reuters.

The same weekend, New York magazine revealed a Malaysian police report indicated the FBI had determined Zaharie had charted a similar route on his home flight simulator.

Days later, the ATSB issued a bulletin in the name of the federal government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre for the MH370 search, downplaying the rogue pilot theory.

The ATSB claimed in its July 27 bulletin the satellite data showed MH370 came down “most likely in a high rate of descent”. As originally released, the bulletin said: “This is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group,” referring to experts including from the US and British air crash investigation.

The documents obtained under FOI show that just a few minutes after the bulletin was ­issued, an ATSB senior investi­gator warned colleagues by email this was an “error” and that the sentence should be taken down.

“It is certainly not yet the consensus position of the SSWG … 2 parties are yet to make a formal response on the subject,” the investigator said.

The email chain shows another ATSB senior investigator agreed and gave instructions for the sentence with the “consensus” line to be removed from the ATSB’s and the JACC’s websites.

But the ATSB did not retract the sentence until the next day, by which time it had been reported internationally, including in Mal­aysian and Chinese publications.

As earlier revealed by The Australian, the deletion of the “consensus” line was discovered by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, a member of the independent group of aviation experts who on their own initi­ative have been reviewing the MH370 scientific data.

When, at the time, The Australian rang the ATSB spokesman who had issued the July 27 bulletin to ask why the deletion had been made, the spokesman hung up and JACC director Annette Clark declined to respond.

Subsequently, ATSB MH370 spokesman Daniel O’Malley and JACC chief co-ordinator Judith Zielke would also not say why the “consensus” line had been secretly disappeared.

When The Australian reported the deletion of the sentence, the ATSB issued a denial on its website, saying the report “falsely ­accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information”.

In a statement after it had been made aware of the FOI material, the JACC said: “The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.”

Now I know it is just feeding more of the same 'he said, she said' MH370 bollocks, but given the Oz has obviously gone to some bother chasing FOIs etc. I kind of wonder where 'that man' will go next with chucking rocks on the ATSB chook-house shed -

So out of curiosity I visited the comments section of that Higgins article and I was quite surprised by the dampening effect the article has had on the usual Oz/Bailey/Higgins critics/ATSBsexual trolls like Mick & Andrew.

Mick (1 comment only??) - Since there's mention of the Independent Group of aviation experts who on their own initi­ative have been reviewing the MH370 scientific data, it's also worth pointing out that based on the Inmarsat satellite data, the Independent Group also came to the conclusion that MH370 ended its flight in a rapid descent, a "death dive".   They reached that conclusion nearly two years ago.

---

Andrew (1 comment only) - An 800 word article, the essence of which is contained in the last two sentences:

“The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.”

Big deal...

---

Which was excellently countered IMO by Rodger...

---

Rodger - [email=-@Andrew]@Andrew[/email] It is a big deal!

Australian has already spent millions of dollars on the search of MH370 aircraft without any tangible result or benefit.

The ATSB has apparently chosen not to consider or evaluate other experts’ views and theories. If it has, I do not remember The Australian reporting such. Now we read in the above article that when:   “When The Australian reported the deletion of the sentence, the ATSB issued a denial on its website, saying the report “falsely ­accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information”."

The ATSB’s failure to find the wreckage (after many months and millions of dollars), apparent disregard in listening to experts, and the apparent covering up of its inaccurate bulletin, is not a good look.

I think it is time for a Special Board of Inquiry be proclaimed and investigate the apparent “group think” in the ATSB and JACC, the erroneous bulletin release, and other matters of public interest (viz actual receipt of monies from Malaysia and China to cover some of the search costs as well as China’s actual search effort by its dispatched ship).

 
And then to general comments of interest:

Neville - Does feel like the sensitivities of the Malaysian government are warping the outcome here.

---

Ann - They don't know and they don't know they don't know, how sad.

---

Eric - If nothing else , the secrecy of the deletion shows the continuation of the culture of duplicity and obfuscation within the ATSB.

David - @Eric For those bent on finding it. You missed conspiracy.

Will continue to monitor where Higgins and the Oz are going with this latest line of attack...

MTF...P2

[ventus45]

It's late - OK ?

Once upon a time...

The king called on the royal weather forecaster and inquired as to the weather forecast for the next few hours. The royal weatherman assured him that there was no chance of rain for at least 4 days.

So the king went fishing with his wife, the queen. On the way he met a farmer on his donkey. Upon seeing the king the farmer said, "Your Majesty, you should return to the palace! In just a short time I expect a huge amount of rain to fall in this area."

The king was polite and considerate, he replied: "Thanks for your concern, but don't worry. It's not going to rain today. I hold the palace meteorologist in high regard. He is an extensively educated and experienced professional. And besides, I pay him very high wages. He gave me a very different forecast. I trust him."

So the king continued on his way.

However, a short time later a torrential rain fell from the sky. The King and Queen were totally soaked and their entourage chuckled upon seeing them in such a shameful condition.

Furious, the king returned to the palace and gave the order to fire the professional. Then he summoned the farmer and offered him the prestigious and high paying role of royal forecaster.

The farmer said, "Your Majesty, I do not know anything about forecasting. I obtained the information about rain today from my donkey. If I see my donkey's ears drooping, it means with certainty that it will rain very soon." So the king hired the donkey instead.

And thus began the practice of hiring dumb asses to work in the government and occupy its highest and most influential positions.

The practice is unbroken to this day...

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 19.10.16: MC & the MH370 'testable hypothesis' -

ATSB’s Testable Hypothesis for MH370

Posted on October 18, 2016 by Mike Chillit

The title is a bit tongue-in-cheek. ATSB does not have a testable hypothesis for its MH370 search effort. May not have known how to do it; may not have even thought about it.

A Testable Hypothesis? It’s simply a way of quantifying or measuring how we are going to measure success and failure in predicting where the plane is located. For example, a crude testable hypothesis could be “not where ATSB is looking”. So far, that is correct, but it is open ended and doesn’t help us that much. Nor will that approach help us know when to move on.

The only MH370-related Testable Hypothesis suggestion I’ve found so far is one proposed by Duncan Steel on April 6, 2014, four days after China’s Hai Xun 01 reported a large debris field at -25S, 101E near Batavia Seamount, roughly 500 km south of Zenith Plateau. Duncan did not actually come up with a testable hypothesis, unfortunately. The closest he got was a proposal to employ a surrogate: i.e., a flight simulator. That isn’t really testable at all because we have no data that would help us set up a simulator to replicate any part of MH370’s flight; but Duncan gets an A+ from me for being the only one since the plane vanished to grasp the need for a Testable Hypothesis.

The first thing we need for a Testable Hypothesis is a hypothesis with limits. ATSB did some of that when it proposed that MH370 came down at -38S, 88.5E. But it did not take the next step, which is: “How will we know it is NOT at -38S, 88.5E? Consequently, the agency has been wallowing in a quagmire it has no idea how to get out of except to say, “we came, we looked, and we didn’t find anything”. A testable hypothesis has to be able to measure success AND failure. It can’t be open ended.



So let’s turn ATSB’s “guess” into a testable hypothesis. The agency states it expects the plane to turn up on the seafloor at -38S, 88.5E. Is that realistic? Of course. When we don’t know anything at all, almost everything is realistic. But, we need to set some pass or fail parameters. Fortunately, we can use those coordinates to test the correctness of that location as the search progresses (starting back in September 2014).

There are a number of ways of doing this, but the way I prefer is to use ATSB’s flightpath assumptions. Let’s face it, if anyone makes incorrect assumptions about where the plane was at any given moment prior to the crash, all of it’s assumptions from that point forward will almost certainly be wrong. And we don’t have to test every single possibility. In fact, we can just take the last in a sequence of assumptions and test it. (Because if anything prior to the last is wrong, this one is wrong, too.)

How do we do that? One way, and the way I prefer, is to simply work back from ATSB’s terminal location expectation. To do that, we need a bit of additional information. For example, we need to know the plane was assumed to be flying at 829 kph. At that flight speed, the plane crossed each ping ring at known times: we have the “exact” time each ping was recorded.

For this simple yet robust metric, all we need is the 6th ping, which was recorded at 00:11 UTC March 8, 2014, and the 7th ping, which was recorded at 00:19 UTC. Those two values tell us how long the plane was in the air at measurable points just before it hit the water. And its speed tells us how far it flew, about 111 km.

Since ATSB has given us the coordinates for the plane’s final location (they hope), it is easy to calculate where it had to have been at 00:11 UTC. That turns out to be -36.99S, 88.5E, or about 111 km due north of ATSB’s terminal guess.

Next, the question becomes, How far might the plane have deviated from ATSB’s terminal location due to normal variation during that 111 km final leg of its journey? In order to determine that, we need to find the standard deviation for the headings ATSB believed the plane was on during its final 3 or 4 hours of flight. That metric is available and it turns out to be almost exactly 180 degrees south, with a standard deviation of 0.9798 degrees.

How does that help us? Nicely. Simply find the end location for 180 degrees, plus or minus the standard deviation. It turns out to be a true heading of anywhere between 179.02 degrees and 180.98 degrees, or about +/- 3.8 kilometers. That is also known as an error of the estimate, or a 1-Sigma event. It is not very robust yet, but we can make it so.

Now let’s make that potential error of the estimate testable with a simple normal distribution, or anything else that works in this particular instance. I tend to use a normal distribution because most people understand a little about it, and it is as important to communicate with those who are following this as it is to be reasonably accurate.

To make it testable, we simply have to decide if ATSB should search what is known as a 3-Sigma area or a 6-Sigma area. The first is a pretty small area (~11.4 km, plus or minus from ATSB’s endpoint). The second is twice its size in terms of radius. From a probability point of view, we chose the 6-Sigma metric criterion because it eliminates almost all chance we will miss the plane if it is really there.

And that’s all there is to it. So, in terms of radius around ATSB’s terminal location estimate, a 6-Sigma search requirement means it needs to thoroughly search (3.8 km * 6 =) 22.9 kilometers, a diameter of 45.74 km around -38.5S, 88.5E. It has done that in spades.



Now someone might say that is a pretty small area. True. It is small compared to what has already been searched. But this metric tells us if it isn’t within our 6-Sigma search area, it almost certainly isn’t anywhere near where we are searching because our hypothesis about its flight path is WRONG. And the way we fix our estimate is to stop searching in an empty hole long enough to take another look at our math.

So, obviously, there are some very clear advantages to having a “Testable Hypothesis” that includes an unambiguous “Exit Plan”. For example, it would have taken a month or two to determine there was nothing at all related to MH370 in the far Southern Indian Ocean if ATSB and others had simply followed Duncan Steel’s suggestion and adopted a testable hypothesis before heading off to a remote part of the planet where the plane certainly never flew.

Other pluses? Yes. The total area in that 6-Sigma search zone is only 1,647 square kilometers: 1.4% of the 120,000 square kilometers Australia has nearly completed to find nothing. Assuming proportional costs, that means instead of a $180 million tab for the search, Australian tax payers would have had to shell out just $2.5 million to get exactly the same results they now have.

MTF...P2

Ps In addition to above MC tweeted:

#MH370 Have added cost-benefit to the earlier article. Would save Australia $175 million. Any use for it? http://www.seventharc.net/2016/10/18/atsbs-testable-hypothesis-for-mh370/ …

Hmm...that would be an excellent question to ask Hoody at Estimates -

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 25.10.16: DOI & HSSS archive entry 161025.

Hoody's Annual (bollocks) Report

Unofficially (officially), the HMAS CC Hood has released an ATSBollocks report some 2 weeks before the normal due date, completely without any fanfare, tweeps, pressers or public announcements... :

Moving on, I see that Hoody took the opportunity of being dismissed early from Estimates on Monday to catch up with a bit of paperwork and in the process actually filed an ATSB report that was not overdue... :

Download complete document
[ Download PDF: 3.78MB]
 

Still reviewing to see if it was 'obfuscated' but couldn't simply go past Hoody's review without a) LMAO and; b) suddenly feeling violently ill...
Here is the first paragraph from Hoody (Warning: Bucket maybe required) :

Chief Commissioner’s review 2015–16

This was the ATSB’s seventh year as a fully independent body within the Infrastructure and Regional Development portfolio. 2015–16 also marked the final year of Martin Dolan’s tenure as the ATSB’s Chief Commissioner. While Martin’s real and significant contributions to improving transport safety have been widely acknowledged, it was his passion, energy and commitment to maintaining the ATSB’s reputation as a world-leading safety investigation body that will be remembered as his most enduring qualities...

On reviewing the 216 page ATSB glossy AR, Ventus ( ) noted the following from the summary of MH370 search events that occurred in the last financial year:

Drift analysis

Another method to determine the origin of recovered aircraft parts is the drift analysis of the parts through the ocean. This work is being conducted by specialists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and utilises the work of the Global Drifter Program, which has been monitoring drifting buoys deployed in the Indian Ocean over the last 30 years, as well as global ocean modelling based on satellite measurements. Results to date indicate that the drift patterns of the recovered parts are not inconsistent with the current search area for the aircraft. Details of the drift analysis work is available on the CSIRO website at www.marine.csiro.au/~griffin/MH370/

The CSIRO is undertaking further drift analysis using physical replicas of the flaperon built by ATSB. This will help measure the difference between their windage factors (drift speed and direction in relation to wind velocity) and that of Global Drifter Program drifters. The results of this work will enhance the accuracy and reliability of the drift analysis, in order to refine the understanding of the likely behaviour and paths of drifting aircraft parts.

Failure analysis

Where considered of value, the recovered aircraft parts were subjected to failure analysis to determine how they failed and separated from the aircraft. The results of this work may provide indications, such as flight control positions—whether the aircraft flaps were extended or retracted at the time of failure—which may inform the end-of-flight scenarios being considered. This work is ongoing.

   
QONs for Folly?? 

Q1/ Does this mean the FFFF Tassie test run ended up OK??
Q2/ Does this mean we will be getting debris replicas for all of the recovered and identified pieces of debris discovered so far? 

M(QON)TF....P2

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 01.11.16: ATSB with cap in hand?

Via ABC PM radio program:

Plans to extend hunt for MH370, at potential cost of $30 million
        
 
| MP3 download
Just when it seemed the search for missing Malaysia MH370 was drawing to a frustrating close with no result, PM can reveal that a plan is taking shape to extend the hunt.

The focus may shift north, to an area around the 34th parallel.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reckons it needs another $30 million to mount the search.

It'll host a three day 'back to first principles' meeting of experts in Canberra from tomorrow.

The aim is to shape a proposal for the Transport Minister to take to his Malaysian and Chinese counterparts.

Today, Malaysia Airlines also agreed to give lawyers for the victims access to a huge cache of potentially sensational company records - so far released only to the still secret Malaysian police report.

It includes maintenance log books of the Boeing 777, and medical and personnel records of the captain and co-pilot.

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 01.11.16: ATSB with cap in hand?

Via ABC PM radio program:

Plans to extend hunt for MH370, at potential cost of $30 million
        
 
| MP3 download
Just when it seemed the search for missing Malaysia MH370 was drawing to a frustrating close with no result, PM can reveal that a plan is taking shape to extend the hunt.

The focus may shift north, to an area around the 34th parallel.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reckons it needs another $30 million to mount the search.

It'll host a three day 'back to first principles' meeting of experts in Canberra from tomorrow.

The aim is to shape a proposal for the Transport Minister to take to his Malaysian and Chinese counterparts.

Today, Malaysia Airlines also agreed to give lawyers for the victims access to a huge cache of potentially sensational company records - so far released only to the still secret Malaysian police report.

It includes maintenance log books of the Boeing 777, and medical and personnel records of the captain and co-pilot.

Update 02/11/16: Courtesy ATSB

[ Download PDF: 2.68MB]
 
MH370 – Search and debris examination update
Published: 2 November 2016

Executive summary

This report provides an update to the MH370 search area definition described in previous ATSB reports. It comprises further analysis of satellite data, additional end of flight simulations, a summary of the analysis of the right outboard wing flap, and preliminary results from the enhanced debris drift modelling.

For background information, please refer to the ATSB publications available online at www.atsb.gov.au/mh370:

• Definition of underwater search areas, 18 August 2014
  
• Flight Path Analysis Update, 8 October 2014
  
• Definition of Underwater Search Area Update, 3 December 2015.
  

The Australian Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group[1] conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Inmarsat satellite communications (SATCOM) data and a model of aircraft dynamics. The output of the DST Group analysis was a probability density function (PDF) defining the probable location of the aircraft’s crossing of the 7th arc.

Details of this analysis and the validation experiments are available in the open source published book here: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-0379-0.

Additional analysis of the burst frequency offsets associated with the final satellite communications to and from the aircraft is consistent with the aircraft being in a high and increasing rate of descent at that time. Additionally, the wing flap debris analysis reduced the likelihood of end-of-flight scenarios involving flap deployment.

Preliminary results of the CSIRO’s drift analysis indicated it was unlikely that debris originated from south of the current search area. The northernmost simulated regions were also found to be less likely. Drift analysis work is ongoing and is expected to refine these results.

 
MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 01.11.16: ATSB with cap in hand?

Via ABC PM radio program:

Plans to extend hunt for MH370, at potential cost of $30 million
        
 
| MP3 download
Just when it seemed the search for missing Malaysia MH370 was drawing to a frustrating close with no result, PM can reveal that a plan is taking shape to extend the hunt.

The focus may shift north, to an area around the 34th parallel.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau reckons it needs another $30 million to mount the search.

It'll host a three day 'back to first principles' meeting of experts in Canberra from tomorrow.

The aim is to shape a proposal for the Transport Minister to take to his Malaysian and Chinese counterparts.

Today, Malaysia Airlines also agreed to give lawyers for the victims access to a huge cache of potentially sensational company records - so far released only to the still secret Malaysian police report.

It includes maintenance log books of the Boeing 777, and medical and personnel records of the captain and co-pilot.

Update 02/11/16: Courtesy ATSB

[ Download PDF: 2.68MB]
 
MH370 – Search and debris examination update
Published: 2 November 2016

Executive summary

This report provides an update to the MH370 search area definition described in previous ATSB reports. It comprises further analysis of satellite data, additional end of flight simulations, a summary of the analysis of the right outboard wing flap, and preliminary results from the enhanced debris drift modelling.

For background information, please refer to the ATSB publications available online at www.atsb.gov.au/mh370:

• Definition of underwater search areas, 18 August 2014
  
• Flight Path Analysis Update, 8 October 2014
  
• Definition of Underwater Search Area Update, 3 December 2015.
  

The Australian Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group[1] conducted a comprehensive analysis of the Inmarsat satellite communications (SATCOM) data and a model of aircraft dynamics. The output of the DST Group analysis was a probability density function (PDF) defining the probable location of the aircraft’s crossing of the 7th arc.

Details of this analysis and the validation experiments are available in the open source published book here: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-0379-0.

Additional analysis of the burst frequency offsets associated with the final satellite communications to and from the aircraft is consistent with the aircraft being in a high and increasing rate of descent at that time. Additionally, the wing flap debris analysis reduced the likelihood of end-of-flight scenarios involving flap deployment.

Preliminary results of the CSIRO’s drift analysis indicated it was unlikely that debris originated from south of the current search area. The northernmost simulated regions were also found to be less likely. Drift analysis work is ongoing and is expected to refine these results.

 
Further update: Via the Oz

MH370 ’not landing, ditching’
BRENDAN NICHOLSON
Examination of wreckage from the missing MH370 jet indicates that its flaps were in a “cruise” position.

Examination of wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 indicates that its flaps were in a “cruise” position and not lowered for a controlled landing when it hit the ocean 2600km off the coast of WA.

MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew vanished on March 8 soon after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a flight to Beijing.

The latest report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau includes the results of an examination of a wing flap believed to have been torn from the jet as it hit the ocean surface.

It says the flap is unlikely to have been deployed for landing as it would have been had there been a pilot at the controls.

The flap appears to have drifted for over a year and eventually washed up on the coast of Tanzania in East Africa.

It was part of the right wing positioned next to another control surface known as a “flaperon” which washed up on Reunion Island.

The report also includes detailed analysis by local and international aviation and communications specialists of the last brief signals received from the aircraft which support the view that it fell very fast after it ran out of fuel and that it is likely to have hit the water within the area being searched.

The report says the signals data indicated that the aircraft was “in a high and increasing rate of decent at that time”.

Transport Minister Darren Chester said the search of 120,000 square km of sea floor, up to 6km deep in places, is likely to end early next year.

There is still 10,000 square kms of sea floor to be searched.

Mr Chester described the search as both “historic” and “heroic” and said it was hampered at times by very rough weather with waves seven to nine metres high.

He said the report contained important new information about what was believed to have happened at the end of MH370’s flight.

The members of an international advisory team of aviation and communications specialists are in Canberra to carry out a “first principles review” all of the evidence accumulated to identify the likely search area.

“The First Principles Review Summit brings together the extraordinary team of Australian and international experts, who have been involved in the search for MH370, to review all the available data and analysis associated with the search to date,” Mr Chester said.

“The experts will also inform the remainder of the search effort, and develop guidance for any future search operations.”

The latest report also details sophisticated drift analysis carried out by the CSIRO to narrow down the area from where about 20 pieces of likely MH370 wreckage were carried by ocean currents.

MTF...P2