Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Printable Version

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Gobbledock - 06-01-2018

An inquiry, although needed, will never occur because the ATsB under Beaker Dolan and then Hi-vis Hood arrogantly stuck to their script, blew $200m, and will never be held to account. Conscienceless Bureaucrats without a moral or ethical bone in their body..

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Bumaye - 06-01-2018

From post #658 (abc/Reuters news story)
Groups representing relatives of those on board say that's a good thing
Voice 370 called on the new government to review all matters related to MH370.
"We urge the new government to include as part of its agenda in the next 100 days … a further investigation and inquiry into any act or omission across the entire spectrum of operations that may have impaired tracking, search, rescue and recovery," a statement released by the group said.
Ganesan Nethi, a lawyer who had represented the families of victims from MH370, said the approach the new Malaysian Government was taking was a "heartening and refreshing change".



Really hope that the above request from the Voice 370 Group on further investigation and inquiry into acts or omissions that may have impaired tracking, search, rescue and recovery is actioned by authorities because there are aspects of the Malaysian investigation which seem incomplete. For instance there is the ATC transcript from K.L Centre including both the air/ground communications and the co-ordination communications, but there is no such transcript of the Vietnamese ATC air/ground Comms or co-ordination.

There seemed to be some kind of confusion between the K.L side and the Vietnam side on whose job it was to raise the alert.In the context of “possible search areas” this is of enormous consequence. In the ordinary course of ATC operations communications checks with an aircraft are commenced 3 minutes after a scheduled missed call and a SAR phase is declared immediately the safety of an aircraft is in doubt according to 3 levels of apprehension with distress phase being the highest.

The K.L transcript shows communications checks did not commence until 20 odd minutes after the missed scheduled call, and the Distress Phase wasn’t declared until some 5+ hours after the missed call. Search and rescue action cannot be commenced until a distress phase is declared.

When a flight is not in normal communications and is also lost on radar then unless there is solid evidence to the contrary in 99% of cases the comm checks and sar phase are declared very quickly. So a 5hr gap in SAR phase declaration when talking about jet ground speeds of 1000km/hr impacts on the likely success of search and rescue action.

Always struck me as rather odd that apart from a few newspaper stories quoting some of the transcript back at the time (supervisors asleep etc) of it’s release, nothing more was ever made of the SAR Alerting function ATC is responsible for.

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Gobbledock - 06-02-2018

The good Captain said;

“Byron Bailey has challenged the Chinese government to take up the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.”

I concur with Byron. However if the Chinese and Americans worked together and shared their respective military satellite data you would probably find the missing plane in under 2 hours!

P.S
Don’t you love how the Australian Government is so concerned about wars from 100 years ago, finding unknown soldiers, bringing their remains home, celebrating them every year, also giving away billions every year in foreign aid to corrupt countries yet they pull the pin on the MH370 search and don’t give a flying f#ck about OuR people still sitting in a sunken fuesalage at the bottom of the ocean.

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 06-04-2018

OI search update - 

By Marnie O'Neill, via news.com.au:

Quote:MH370 search ship Seabed Constructor not ready to stop yet

AS TWO nations turn their backs on the search for MH370, the ship tasked with finding the plane is continuing the hunt on its own steam.

Marnie O’Neill @marnieoneill7


Seabed Constructor is still in the southern Indian Ocean hunting for MH370, a week after Malaysia called off the search. Picture: FacebookSource:Supplied
THEY’VE lost out on the MH370 finder’s fee of more than $90 million, but underwater exploration company Ocean Infinity is showing no sign of giving up on the lost plane.

Since the official search ended last Tuesday, Norwegian research vessel Seabed Constructor has continued the hunt on its own steam — now looking in previously uncharted areas.

Over the past few days, the ship has been searching an area of the southern Indian Ocean where Chinese navy ship Haixun 01 detected a suspected black box “ping” less than a month after the plane vanished on March 8, 2014.

Seabed Constructor headed north to that spot after the search had already ended on May 29, and their contract with Malaysia was over, after MH370 watchers, including Ireland-based engineer Viv McMahon, suggested they check it out.


An Australian official points to the patch of ocean near the 7th arc where Chinese navy ship Haixun picked up ‘pings’ believed to have come from MH370 in 2014. Picture: GettySource:Supplied

On April 5, 2014, the Haixun 01 picked up two separate pulse signals at a latitude of 25 degrees South and 101 degrees East.

There is no definitive proof that the signals came from the missing Boeing 777 but they had the same frequency — 37.5 kilohertz — as those emitted by an aircraft black box.

Around that time, several white objects were also sighted on the ocean surface about 90km away from Haixun 01. Australian authorities were never able to confirm that the signals or the white objects were from MH370.

“What we are trying to do is to use the last two days that we have in the north area, at the time they thought it (the ping) was a black box,” Ocean Infinity spokesman Mark Antelme told reporters on Friday.

“If we find something, there will be an announcement. I imagine the protocol is to alert the Malaysian authorities, and families will be notified in a sensitive way.”

But those “last two days” have passed and Seabed Constructor has shown no sign of preparing to leave the area.
[/url]

Quote:
Richard Cole@richard_e_cole





Last few hours activities in the MH370 search. Two AUV missions started today, after a 29h gap in launches. The end of the search still at least two days away, the length of an AUV mission.
12:53 AM - Jun 4, 2018

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Quote:
Richard Cole@richard_e_cole

Seabed Constructor activities for 24h to 07GMT. 3 AUVs launched in the north (shown in purple) and another launched further north at 10.30GMT.  If area of acoustic pings reported by Chinese ship Haixun in 2014 was the target, AUVs launched to date would seem to cover it.
9:56 PM - Jun 1, 2018

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Two sources close to the search have told news.com.au that there is talk of Ocean Infinity resuming the search after the treacherous winter months were over.

It is understood that the company will head to Dampier in Western Australia for a commercial job but may return to the southern Indian Ocean to search for the plane towards the end of this year or the beginning 2019.

“I don’t think Ocean Infinity is done here,” one source told news.com.au.

“They really want to put their name on it (finding MH370).”

Despite not receiving a single cent in payment, the whole operation had been a “big PR win for them”, the source said.

Scientists and aviation specialists from around the world have been tracking Seabed Constructor’s progress via satellite since it started scouring the 7th arc on January 21.

The 7th arc is the imaginary line that plots possible locations of the plane at the moment it sent a seventh and last signal to the Inmarsat satellite on the day it disappeared and is located about 2500km from Perth.

And they continue to monitor the ship, a week after Ocean Infinity’s 90-day contract with the Malaysian Government ended with no plane and no multimillion-dollar reward for the company.

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Quote:
Kevin Rupp@LabratSR

#MH370 My morning update. Seabed Constructor moved further north and deployed a couple AUVs meaning they are not going anywhere anytime soon. The northernmost AUV was deployed about 42 NM up arc from the Haixon site. Current position is 25° 27' 37" S 102° 03' 27" E
10:55 PM - Jun 3, 2018

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Kevin Rupp@LabratSR

#MH370 My afternoon update. Seabed Constructor has been chasing AUVs and updating them. They continue to make great progress moving up the arc. The weather is crappy out there with 3.3 meter wave heights and 9.3 KM visibility. Current position is 25° 41' 58" S 101° 50' 59" E
6:52 AM - Jun 4, 2018

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Quote:
Kevin Rupp@LabratSR

#MH370 My night time update. After my last update Seabed Constructor continued up arc and deployed again, about 20 NM north of the Haixon area and then headed south. Perhaps the press will finally figure out that Ocean Infinity isn't ready to stop yet.
11:32 AM - Jun 1, 2018

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Observers such as US-based precision machinist Kevin Rupp, London University space scientist Richard Cole and Frankfurt-based British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey have been faithfully tweeting satellite maps of the vessel’s movements and underwater drone deployments.

Mr Rupp told news.com.au that he believed the ship would stay in the area until at least Friday.

“They’re still actively scanning and covering a lot of area,” he said.

“They may not find the wreck but they are going to eliminate an awful lot of theories and sea floor.”


Chinese ship Nan Hai Jiu searches in the southern Indian Ocean on March 29, 2014. Picture: Jason Reed/AFPSource:Supplied

Able seaman clearance divers Matthew Johnston and Michael Arnold search the water for MH370 debris in the days after it vanished with 239 people on board.Source:Supplied

Mr Cole also said it was likely the vessel would remain in the area for several more days, tweeting that autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) had been deployed as recently as yesterday.

“Two AUV missions started today, after a 29h gap in launches,” he tweeted overnight. “The end of the search still at least two days away, the length of an AUV mission”.

Ocean Infinity has searched more than 125,000sq km of ocean between about 35 degrees South and 26 degrees South, without finding any sign of the plane’s fuselage or debris.

It stood to earn between $A25 million and $A93 million if it had found the missing plane, but without such a discovery it receives nothing.

The Malaysian Government confirmed it would not extend the search again unless there was credible new evidence of the plane’s location.
Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook said a final report on MH370 would “hopefully” be published in July.

An Ocean Infinity spokesman confirmed to news.com.au the search would likely wrap up on Friday.[/size]

Reference: MH370 - time to think of it as a criminal act: Did corrupt Najib government doom the MH370 search?

Message to Seabed Constructor: "Go you good thing!" 

MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Kharon - 06-10-2018

FWIW – some rainy day reading from Popular Mechanics. - HERE.

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 07-02-2018

MH370 & Senator Rex - A Vance or a Cox?  

Going through the listed Senate QON for Budget estimates and I came across a curious written MH370 question from sic of/'em Senator Rex ---   : 

References:
Australian Transport Safety Bureau
Senator PATRICK
Mr Hornby
Senator CHISHOLM
Mr Hood
Mr Kefford
Senator McCARTHY
CHAIR
Mr Foley
Senator Scullion

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_Estimates/rrat

Quote:Question on notice no. 184


Portfolio question number: 366
2018-19 Budget estimates
Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee, Infrastructure, Regional
Development and Cities Portfolio

Senator Rex Patrick: asked the Australian Transport Safety Bureau on 22 May 2018
—
The ATSB has repeatedly said the satellite data shows MH370 was in a rapid and
increasing rate of descent at the end. Larry Vance points out that in such cases, such
as Swissair 111, the aircraft gets pulverised into two million smallish parts. How does
the ATSB explain the fact that the flaperon and the flap were largely intact; there was
nothing big or intact enough to be even recognisable as a flap or flaperon on Swissair
111? Does the ATSB think the flap and flaperon fell off due to "flutter" in a high
speed dive?If so, why was there no flutter damage to the leading edges?Captain John
Cox, a leading air crash investigator, says this of the satellite data when it comes to
the speed of descent:The ATSB takes BFO data and derives a vertical profile between
the 6th and 7th arc. This is very high (almost too high) indicating a extremely steep
descent. However the 7th exchange is a "Power Up" exchange and the vertical
information is not as accurate. Looking at the 1st Arc exchange, which was also a
"Power Up" exchange the vertical date was determined to be spurious or so inaccurate
it was not considered valid. If during a "Power Up" exchange the vertical data is less
accurate then the 7th Arc exchange must be viewed with the same concern. Therefore,
the vertical BFO derived data is less credible than other data points. This would
support Larry's theory and weaken the ATSB position. Is Captain Cox wrong, and if
so, why?

So was it Vance / Cox / or both; that was briefing Sen Rex for this written QON? 


MTF...P2 

ps. While on the Aussie Parliamentary scrutiny (or lack thereof) of the ATSB MH370 cock-up/cover-up; I note that Sen O'Obfuscation's COI is officially now on the Parliamentary record : 

Quote:Senator failed to declare firm's MH370 link [Newspaper Clippings]

Date: 29/05/2018 - Collection: Media - ID: media/pressclp/5993593 - Source: Australian - Author: HIGGINS, Ean

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 07-14-2018

One good thing to come out of MH370 cover-up/cock-up  - 

Via AINonline:

Quote:FARNBOROUGH AIR SHOW 2018NEWS(active tab)


JUL 12, 2018 - 7:00 AM
Reaction Engines Preps For Proof-of-Concept Testing
It’s a long development cycle but UK company founded by Alan Bond, of HOTOL fame, believes the Sabre concept will work.
More Top Stories

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JUL 13, 2018 - 6:00 AM

Flight Tracking Industry Set To Evolve Rapidly
More than four years since MH370 disappeared, ICAO’s 15-minute normal tracking interval mandate goes into effect on November 8.

The flight-tracking industry is set not only to allow operators to meet ICAO’s deadlines for normal and distress tracking (the former is November 8 this year), but also to evolve rapidly to provide powerful new capabilities. The industry's commercial prospects have been boosted by requirements mandated for aircraft operators by ICAO’s Global Aeronautical Distress & Safety System (GADSS) following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in March 2014. 

A number of factors are combining to allow providers of flight-tracking services to offer new predictive flight-tracking capabilities that will give aircraft operators a range of commercially important benefits, according to Daniel Baker, CEO of FlightAware, a provider of flight-tracking data. Those benefits range from alerting operators automatically when aircraft behave unexpectedly in flight to improving flight efficiency and boosting operators’ resource-scheduling, gate-allocation, and flight-connection capabilities Additional new benefits will emerge over the next decade as operators’ flight- and resource-planning and flight-tracking automation platforms become increasingly integrated, Baker told AIN.

“We’re at a really interesting time in computer technology and computer science,” said Baker. “Until one or two years ago, the vast majority of the decision-making in HyperFeed [FlightAware’s flight-tracking data-analysis engine] was algorithmic,” he added. At that point, HyperFeed used approximately 1,000 separate software algorithms to process raw flight-plan and radar data from air traffic control systems in 55 countries. It also tapped FlightAware’s network of terrestrial ADS-B ground stations in 175 countries and more recently, space-based global ADS-B data feeds provided by Aireon. All these resources enabled the company to track aircraft in flight all over the world. However, virtually all of the processed data reflected the history of each flight: it provided little in the way of predictive capability.

“But now the state of technology has changed; we’re moving into machine learning, using artificial intelligence to leverage big data to predict the future world,” said Baker. “We’re fortunate that we’re at this point where a lot more data is out there and a lot more technology is available to process and analyze it. So two things are converging.”

These two trends are dramatically changing FlightAware’s ability to predict the future behavior of a flight, particularly its ability to predict the elapsed time that key phases of the flight will require. These include the time it will take for an aircraft to negotiate the last 150 to 200 nm of a flight through congested terminal-area airspace. Further, because FlightAware can also now predict the pathway a given flight will take on an airport’s taxiways, it can predict the taxiing and ground holding time after landing, or—after it departs the gate—before takeoff.

“Five years ago, we could only predict to within five to 10 minutes the time it would take a given flight to travel through the terminal airspace surrounding a busy airport because variables such as ATC instructions and runway availability couldn’t be predicted accurately,” said Baker. “If, say, an airline had three flights due to arrive at the airport within a 15-minute period, it couldn’t make an informed decision to allocate specific gates for each flight, because it couldn’t know exactly when each would arrive.”

Now, however, he said FlightAware “can predict touchdown time to within 30 seconds” for an aircraft 200 nm from its destination and about to enter terminal airspace. The company is already offering the capability for about 100 airport terminal areas as an extra option through its Firehose programming API for customers. The software can process high-volume streams of aircraft positional data entering their automation systems. Through Firehose, FlightAware is also offering the optional ability for customers to track their aircraft while they are moving on the airfield surface.

Arming an airline with this knowledge—and the knowledge of how long the aircraft will take to taxi to the gate once it has landed—might not let the flight arrive any more quickly, but it will help the airline decide which gate to allocate and efficiently schedule vehicle drivers, aircraft-servicing crews, and ground agents meeting the flight, as well as flight crews positioning to operate the aircraft’s next mission. “It’s not always about changing the flightpath; it’s about having the information and what you can do about it,” said Baker.

SPACE-BASED ADS-B

FlightAware is partnering with Aireon to offer customers flight-tracking data from Aireon’s space-based ADS-B data feeds at least once a minute for any aircraft anywhere in the world, via a number of products, one of which is Firehose. Another is GlobalBeacon, the two companies’ joint turnkey web offering for smaller carriers—and also for bigger carriers that don’t have time to integrate a space-based ADS-B data feed into their existing automation platforms before the ICAO GADSS 15-minute normal tracking mandate goes into effect on November 8.

Airlines are now beta-testing GlobalBeacon, and it will enter commercial service by November, according to Baker. The one-minute updating frequency GlobalBeacon provides means that as of November the service will offer operators the tracking-message frequency that the GADSS one-minute autonomous distress tracking mandate will require them to have as of Jan. 1, 2021. However, by November, GlobalBeacon won’t necessarily meet all of the 2021 mandate’s autonomous-alerting requirements.

FlightAware has also long partnered with SITA on joint data products and, together with Aireon, FlightAware now is offering Aireon’s space-based ADS-B feed through SITA’s Flight Tracker service (for an extra fee over and above the basic Flight Tracker product). Many airlines use it as part of an integrated suite of operations-management capabilities built into SITA’s automation platform.
Baker predicts that, as operators increasingly choose to integrate data from flight-tracking specialists such as FlightAware into the suites of operations-management data tools provided by automation-platform providers such as Rockwell Collins and IBM (FlightAware also provides data for both of these companies’ flight-tracking products), flight-tracking services not only will become more available, but they will also offer operators powerful new decision-making capabilities. They will be able to do so when used in concert with other data tools managing functions such as crew rest, fueling, flight-planning, MRO planning, and passenger and cargo information.

“The way it’s going to work is that the platforms are going to bring FlightAware and its counterparts in the fueling and crew spaces [as well as others] all together,” said Baker. “In the next 10 years, there will be integrated decision-making tools across everything the airline does. Airlines are going to make decisions about the platform and integration, which will be a whole rising tide for the platform.”

For those perhaps monitoring the answer to Senator Patrick's (above) QON, despite all AQON apparently being due by 6th July 2018, to this date none of the QON have been answered by any of the aviation safety agencies or the Department. 

Quote:Questions on Notice Index

 Download the index (PDF 957KB)

I also note that the Dept for infrastructure and obfuscation has yet to follow through with Lachie's promise to make available the ICAO 2017 Australian audit report on the Dept's website: Dear Lachie - Part II

Quote:Dear P2,
 
Thank you for your correspondence.  In response to the first of your two questions, Australia has received the final report from ICAO regarding our assessment in October 2017.  It is not our understanding that the previous ICAO audit report was made public, however we are happy to share the current report.  The Department is currently identifying the appropriate part of our website and should have it online shortly, and we will let you know when it is live.
 
Regarding the issue of a possible audit by the FAA, I cannot speak for the Acting Chair, but I can confirm that there has not been a recent FAA International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) of CASA in recent years.  By way of background, while the FAA publishes IASA category ratings on their website, they do not publish or provide copies of assessment findings to third parties.  
 
Regards,

Makes you wonder why it is we pay these Mandarins and their minions exorbitant amounts of money for next to no outcome or safety benefit, other than schmooing over the ICAO and the United Nations -     

Oh well good to see (NOT) that in the true tradition of National leaders/DPMs/& Ministers - overseeing aviation safety - that miniscule McDo'nothing 4G continues to uphold a culture of cover-ups, cock-ups and obfuscations on matters aeronautical...
Reference: Oz aviation, safety compromised by political and bureaucratic subterfuge ?

MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - aussie500 - 07-21-2018

(06-01-2018, 01:02 PM)Gobbledock Wrote:  An inquiry, although needed, will never occur because the ATSB under Beaker Dolan and then Hi-vis Hood arrogantly stuck to their script, blew $200m, and will never be held to account. Conscienceless Bureaucrats without a moral or ethical bone in their body..

Well I hope one day the ATSB are held to account for their actions, because they stuffed things up from the moment they got involved with the search, and did their best to ensure no one would ever look in the right place for MH370. Not to mention bits of MH370 would have been washing up on our southern shoreline for several years after MH370 was lost, yet apparently the ATSB failed to properly look into that, preferring to say debris would be washing up on West Sumatra, or that it would all sink. Did not change their tune till the flaperon washed up on the other side of the SIO, yet they knew that GEMS drift study was wrong soon after getting it, why give misleading information? And why constantly ignore half of the drift study that did correctly predict where debris would wash up. I would not trust the ATSB to identify anything from MH370, pity Australians were not as good at posting on-line their possible MH370 debris finds as those on the other side of the SIO. Might have saved a fair bit of time and money, and actually got an underwater search done in the right place.

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Gobbledock - 07-21-2018

aussie500;

“Well I hope one day the ATSB are held to account for their actions”

How nice would that be???? But it will never happen. We live in an undemocratic Westminster crafted system designed to protect bureaucrats from accountability. The MH370 debacle can be laid at the feet of that fool Dolan, an accountant. Then Hood, a recreational pilot. Along with Mrdak, Truss and the rest of the alphabet soup agency asswipes who know nothing about aviation, let alone accident analysis and risk. Footstool Foley was the only ATsB muppet with an ounce of potential but he was stymied by politics.

Bring back Allan Stray and “Make the ATsB great again”.

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - P7_TOM - 07-21-2018

GD -a 10 second banishment for mentioning the unspeakable muppet and the yellow vested canary in the same post. Bad GD: there I was enjoying a first pint and everything. But the tale of the ATSB masters of spin is easy told:-


'If You do as you've been told, 'likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood -
A present from the Gentlemen, along 'o being good !

Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark -
Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie -
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by !

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 07-30-2018

MH370 Final Report - 

This afternoon the MH370 ICAO Annex 13 JIT team, after firstly briefing the NOK, will release their final report. 

News coverage, 1st from Channel News Asia:

Quote:Malaysia to release report on missing flight MH370 on Jul 30



[color=rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)]A man looks at a message board for passengers, onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, during its fourth annual remembrance event in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 3, 2018. REUTERS/Lai Seng Sin/Files[/color]
20 Jul 2018 01:45PM (Updated: 20 Jul 2018 02:01PM)

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia will release on Jul 30 a long-awaited report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the transport minister said on Friday (Jul 20).

In May, Malaysia called off a privately-funded underwater search for the aircraft, which became one of the world's greatest aviation mysteries when it vanished with 239 aboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on Mar 8, 2014.

The investigation team would brief families of those aboard on the report at the transport ministry on July 30, said the minister, Anthony Loke.

"Every word recorded by the investigation team will be tabled in this report," he told reporters, adding that a news conference would follow the closed-door briefing.

"We are committed to the transparency of this report," Loke added. "It will be tabled fully, without any editing, additions, or redactions."

The report will be put online, with hard copies distributed to families and accredited media, among others, Loke said, adding, "The whole international community will have access to the report."

Voice 370, a group representing the relatives, has previously urged the Malaysian government for a review of the flight, including "any possible falsification or elimination of records related to MH370 and its maintenance".

The only confirmed traces of the Boeing 777 aircraft have been three wing fragments washed up on Indian Ocean coasts.

The search Malaysia called off on May 29, by US-based firm Ocean Infinity, covered 112,000 sq km in the southern Indian Ocean within three months, ending with no significant new findings.

It was the second major search after Australia, China and Malaysia ended a fruitless AUS$200-million (US$147.06 million) search across an area of 120,000 sq km last year.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said Malaysia would consider resuming the search if new clues came to light.

Source: Reuters/aa
Read more at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/malaysia-to-release-report-on-missing-flight-mh370-on-jul-30-10547524

And from the ABC:

Quote:MH370 report: Queensland woman furious at 48-hour notice to attend briefing in Malaysia
ABC Sunshine Coast
By Kathy Sundstrom and Sarah Howells
Posted 43 minutes ago Mon 30 Jul 2018, 12:24pm



Photo: Danica Weeks still does not know what happened to her husband Paul, who was onboard MH370 when it disappeared in March 2014. (Supplied: Danica Weeks)
Related Story: How the MH370 tragedy unfolded without a solution
Related Story: Unofficial search for MH370 continues as vessel scans a whole new area
Related Story: MH370 families win bid to have Perth memorial plans shelved

A Queensland woman has been left fuming after being given only 48 hours notice to attend a government briefing in Kuala Lumpur on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Danica Weeks's husband Paul was among the 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 when it vanished between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in March 2014.

The Malaysian Government is today releasing its final report on its investigation into the missing plane, but with two days' notice to travel 6000 kilometres, the Sunshine Coast mum said it was impossible for her to attend.

"I couldn't turn myself around in 48 hours to get there," Ms Weeks said.

"I wanted to be there, to be briefed on the report, I've been waiting to see what is in it."
Ms Weeks said if she had been given more notice of the briefing and that the flights would be paid for, she would have made sure she was there.

She is angry she will miss out on her opportunity to ask questions of the government as to what happened.

Quote:"We miss out on the one-to-one question time," she said.

Travel confusion 'a slap in the face'

A representative from a Malaysian support group phoned Ms Weeks early last week and advised there would be a briefing today, but that the families would need to get there at their own expense.

Ms Weeks ruled that out, but was then advised on Thursday that "they were going to pay for our flights."

She was also concerned whether any of the Australian families would make the briefing in time.

"They would be in the same boat as me, with not enough time to organise getting there," she said.



Photo: Graphic of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that last had contact with air traffic controllers on March 8, 2014. (ABC News)

"I'm very angry, that this offer came with only 48 hours to get over there.

Quote:"I would have jumped at the chance to ask questions about where my husband is, what happened.

"It is a slap in the face again that we couldn't be there to get the briefing."
Ms Weeks said her children desperately needed answers she was unable to give.
"We need to know, we can't just lose a Boeing," she said.

Quote:"This is ludicrous that this can be unsolved.

"I hoped to have answers."

Last goodbye



Photo: Danica Weeks was hoping to hear first-hand from today's Malaysian Government report into what happened to flight MH370 on which her husband Paul was a passenger. (Facebook: Danica Weeks)

Ms Weeks waved goodbye to husband Paul as he boarded the flight from Perth to Beijing via Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014.

It has become the biggest aviation mystery involving a Boeing 777.

A privately funded search for the missing plane was called off in May.

Ms Weeks and the other families had been waiting for this Malaysian Government report which they hope will shed light on what happened.

But Ms Weeks is not getting her hopes up.

"Once bitten, twice shy, I'm worried they are not going to give much information," she said.

She will have to wait until the media briefing from the Malaysian Government to find out what happened.

"My next step is speaking with the Deputy Prime Minister [Michael McCormack] to ask, 'now that this report is out, where do we go from here?'

Quote:"Our loved ones are on that plane, we want answers. Something happened."

Ms Weeks's theory remains something happened to the plane and it had nothing to do with the pilot.

"I believe something happened with the plane and the pilot tried to turn around.
"The plane might have been on autopilot for seven hours before it dropped in the ocean.
"That's my theory, but it is still just such a mystery. I hope one day we will have the answers."

 
MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 07-31-2018

MH370 final report wash-up - 

From off the MH370 Criminal Act thread - 'MH370 findings inconclusive?' - Well no shit Shirlock - the following extract perked my interest: 

...He also appeared to handball responsibility for the final answer to the mystery of MH370 to the Australian government, which took responsibility for the search and rescue operations:

“The answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found ... as far as our team is concerned, we have done our job ... We do not deal with search. Search is not our area. You have to ask the people responsible for the search. I can only answer your question relating to the investigation,” he said...

Why do I get the impression that Chief investigator Kok is trying to duck shove liability for the failure of the Malaysian led investigation back onto their Australian counterparts. Although it is all academic now, it would still be worth reminding the Malaysian spin-doctor CI Kok that the MH370 SAR ( AMSA & Annex 12) phase was inexplicably and deliberately transferred to a search & recovery phase under the auspices of Annex 13 (Beaker & the ATSB) just over a month after MH370 disappeared: References -  What now for the JIT Annex13 MH370 investigation? & #237  

Quote:...In an effort to explain it is worth referring again to the abruptly ended, interactive, AMSA MH370 timeline where it stated...

"...As the search for MH370 transitions from a search and rescue operation to an investigation phase the Joint Agency Coordination Centre takes over the day to day communications..."

The JACC became operational on the 31st of March 2014 and the transition from a SAR phase (Annex 12) to an investigation phase (Annex 13) was already occurring?? This was despite the fact that the surface SAR would not cease operations for yet another month.

IMO the reason the Malaysians wanted to go to the investigation phase is that they desperately needed to wrest back control of the search & more importantly the narrative of the search, Annex 13 enabled the Malaysians to do that by being the State of registry for MH370.

However the transition from Annex 12 to 13 is dependent on (balance of probabilities) there being no survivors - hence going from SAR to 'search & recovery'.

How this decision could be justified, in the case of an aircraft disappearing without a trace, is beyond me but quite obviously legally this was somehow established?? 

It is interesting to note that in the AMSA/JRCC presentation to ICAO - MH370 SEARCH AND RESCUE RESPONSE – JRCC AUSTRALIA - under heading Search Challenges (para 2.2) at subpara q)) it states..

Quote: Wrote:
q) Clearly defined division of responsibilities between the search and rescue function (Annex 12) and the air accident investigation search and recovery function (Annex 13).

...which signifies that the JRCC found this 'transition' from Annex 12 to 13 as an impediment to their effective control & management of the SAR phase.

The irony of all this is that it is the Malaysians who were responsible for putting Beaker in charge of the greatest aviation mystery of all time. The question is did they do this by design or was there political/bureaucratic influence from our end??...

Talking of spin-n-bollocks the following is what our aviation safety bureaucracy scripted for our miniscule 4G McNorman-Ram to regurgitate after the release of yesterday's bollocks (not-)final report...  

Quote: @M_McCormackMPo


STATEMENT | Malaysia releases investigation report into #MH370

---

 

Notice the presser is really..really short, a sure sign that HVH & co really..really want to stay below the radar on this one...  

Next it is interesting to note, one of the primary members of the IG, Victor Ianello's take on the (not-)final report...  

Quote:[/url]
As expected, the Safety Investigation Report on MH370 offered no explanation on the cause of the disappearance. “The answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found,” Kok Soo Chon, head of the MH370 safety investigation team, told reporters. However, Malaysian investigators did surmise the plane was intentionally diverted, likely due to unlawful interference by a third party.

The Malaysia investigators also believe the disappearance could not have been a deliberate act by the pilots based on their background, training, and mental health.

As all the passengers and crew were cleared,  who was this third party that diverted the plane?

How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane? How does the compressed timeline of the diversion fit any other possibility if the diversion was intentional? It is understandable that the Safety Report did not apportion blame to the captain. However, it is not understandable that the report deflected blame to an unnamed third party.

The report, including the appendices, is 1,423 pages, and it will take some number of days for independent investigators to thoroughly pore over the entire contents and provide thoughtful comments and analysis. However, based on an initial review, there are some technical questions and inconsistencies that are apparent:

Radar data
The report provides more details about the radar data, but Malaysia fails to provide the raw military data that would allow an independent review. (The civilian radar data was previously made available through an unsanctioned release, and published in a [url=http://mh370.radiantphysics.com/2018/04/11/the-civilian-radar-data-for-mh370/]previous blog post.) The military radar includes speed and altitude data, in addition to latitude and longitude at each capture.

However,  some of the variations in speed and altitude are beyond the capabilities of the plane.

For instance, the measured speed and altitude at 18:01:59 UTC are 589 knots and 58,200 ft. One minute later, the speed and altitude are  recorded as 492 knots and 4,800 ft. The investigative team was warned that the altitude and speed extracted from the data are subjected to inherent error. The only useful information obtained from the Military radar was the latitude and longitude position of the aircraft as this data is reasonably accurate. How the military radar data can be so far out of calibration is unexplained.

After all this time, we still can’t be sure what radar data is available as MH370 passed over the Malacca Strait. According to the main body of this report, the radar target disappeared at 18:01:59 near Pulau Perak, and re-appeared at 18:15:25 along airway N571 between waypoints VAMPI and MEKAR, disappearing at 18:22:12 about 10 NM past MEKAR. However, in an Appendix 1.6E, Boeing reports that after 18:01:59, there was only one capture at 18:22:12. It appears that the radar data provided to Boeing is consistent with the data provided to the ATSB, but Malaysia claims there were additional captures along airway N571 between 18:15:25 and 18:22:12.

We also can’t be sure when the unidentified radar targets captured over the Malay peninsula were first recognized as MH370. According the Safety Report, On the day of the disappearance of MH370, the Military radar system recognised the ‘blip’ that appeared west after the left turn over IGARI was that of MH370. Even with the loss of SSR data, the Military long range air defence radar with Primary Surveillance Radar (PSR) capabilities affirmed that it was MH370 based on its track behaviour, characteristics and constant/continuous track pattern/trend. Therefore, the Military did not pursue to intercept the aircraft since it was ‘friendly’ and did not pose any threat to national airspace security, integrity and sovereignty. In light of the claim that the military was fully aware of the path of MH370, it is not explained why the initial Search and Rescue operations were coordinated in the South China Sea to the east of Malaysia, and proceeded for some number of days before they were moved west of Malaysia to the Indian Ocean.

Pilot Simulator Data
Citing the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) report from May 2014, the Safety Report says It was also discovered that there were seven ‘manually programmed’ waypoint4 coordinates … that when connected together, will create a flight path from KLIA to an area south of the Indian Ocean through the Andaman Sea. These coordinates were stored in the Volume Shadow Information (VSI) file dated 03 February 2014. The function of this file was to save information when a computer is left idle for more than 15 minutes. Hence, the RMP Forensic Report could not determine if the waypoints came from one or more files.

What is not mentioned is that certain values that were common to the data sets indicate that these files were likely from the same simulation. This was first documented in a technical paper I co-authored with Yves Guillaume, and summarized in a previous blog post. Also included in the previous blog post were statements from the ATSB indicating that the chronological order of the data sets matches a flight departing KLIA, flying over the Malacca Strait, continuing past the Andaman Islands, turning to the south, and exhausting fuel in the SIO, in the same order that the progressively depleting fuel levels suggest. The time values also indicate that the flight session lasted for about one hour, suggesting the position of the aircraft in the simulation was manually advanced and the fuel levels manually depleted.

There are other strange facts surrounding the simulator data. For instance, Malaysia does not explain why only fragments of the data files were recovered, as the reconstruction of the entire contents of the data files should have been possible using the data in the Shadow Volume. The missing portions of the data files include important information that would be stored in the flight management computers (FMCs), including flight plans. Also, the time stamp data that was included in the data files that were made available to the ATSB by the Australian Federal Police was not included in the RMP report.

The RMP conclusion that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations is odd considering the extraordinary coincidence that a simulated flight including a departure from KLIA and ending in fuel exhaustion in the SIO was recovered after the disappearance.

Investigation of the Flaperon
After the flaperon was recovered from Reunion Island, which is sovereign territory of France, French scientists performed tests to determine the flaperon’s provenance, to analyze the attached marine biology, to determine its buoyancy and other hydrodynamic characteristics, and to investigate the damage to determine how the flaperon separated from the aircraft. To the French team, it appeared that the flaperon impacted the water while still attached to the aeroplane and that at the time of the impact it was deflected. The implication is that water forces from an attempted ditching caused the flaperon to separate rather than in-flight during a high speed descent. The French were careful to advise that this is only an hypothesis because of the limited data made available to them by Boeing, and because of the complicated dynamics of the impact mechanics.

Nonetheless, if it can be proven that the aircraft was in a controlled descent at the time it impacted the ocean, the distance from the 7th arc could be greater than 120 NM, as there could have been a long glide after fuel exhaustion. A controlled descent after fuel exhaustion would also leave open the possibility of pilot navigational inputs after 19:41, and possible paths would include crossing the 7th arc over a large range of latitudes. These unknowns would make it very difficult to define a new search area of a manageable size. For this reason, it is critical that mechanism that led to separation of the flaperon be determined with a higher level of certainty.

First Officer’s Cell Phone Connect
The First Officer’s cell phone registered on a cell tower as MH370 passed to the south of Penang Island. Although it would be unlikely that a cell phone connection would persist long enough to complete a call, a cell phone registration of short duration and at cruise altitude is not that uncommon.

Considering the large number of Malaysian passengers and crew that were likely carrying cell phones compatible with the Malaysian cell network, and with some fraction of those phones likely in an operational configuration during the flight, it is odd that other cell phone registrations did not occur. It is unexplained whether or not a systematic review of the cell phone numbers of all passengers and crew was ever performed.

Final Comments
It is unlikely that another search for MH370 will occur unless a case can be made that there is a reasonable probability of success. Unfortunately, the Safety Report raises more questions than it answers, and it will be difficult to use the information in the report to define a search area of a manageable size. The answers to some questions will not be known until the flight data recorder is recovered. However, the answers to other questions are known to Malaysian authorities today. Any remaining chance to find MH370 squarely rests on the willingness of the new Malaysian administration to cooperatively work with official and independent investigators.

 
"..However, it is not understandable that the report deflected blame to an unnamed third party..." - In that one line Victor nails why the veracity and credibility of both the Malaysian (not-)final report and the initial ATSB led Southern Indian ocean undersea search are totally shot down in flames...  

Finally, amongst all the to-ing & fro-ing and diplomatic duck shoving, there is at least one positive example of proper Annex 13 AAI procedure and investigatory analysis that is truly independent of the shifty manipulations of CI Kok and the Malaysians. This is of course the French DGA's examination report on the MH370 flaperon, which IMO is definitely worth the read: Reference - Appendix-1.12A-2-Item1Flaperon(Main).pdf   

MTF? - No doubt...P2   

Ps Yes "K" I believe I've found a Muppet that fits the bill for our NFI DPM & miniscule 4G...  

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 08-01-2018

MH370 final report wash-up cont/- 

Via Ironsider in the Oz yesterday:

Quote:Search harder, relatives demand
ROBYN IRONSIDE
Relatives of Australians on board MH370 have called again for the search to be resumed following an inconclusive report.

---

Relatives of the Australian passengers on board MH370 have called again for the search to be resumed following an inconclusive report delivered by Malaysia’s ­Office of Transport.

Danica Weeks, whose husband, Paul, was on a work trip when he boarded the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight, said the 495-page report had left her feeling “deflated and frustrated”.

“I feel like a mouse in a wheel, going around in circles,” Ms Weeks told The Australian.

“I had been hopeful the report would shed some new light on everything and give us some ­answers but it hasn’t really told us anything new.”

Some 4½ years after ­receiving the almost implausible news her husband’s plane was “missing”, Ms Weeks said it was up to the Malaysian government as the airline’s owner to find the aircraft.

“You can’t just put your hands up in the air and go ‘Oh well, so sad’,” she said. “I don’t get to walk away from it, so how can they? There’s still 239 people missing and a Boeing 777. They still have to do something, they still have to be accountable.”

Jeanette Maguire’s sister and brother-in-law, Cathy and Bob Lawton, were also on board MH370, heading off on a holiday to Beijing with friends Rodney and Mary Burrows.

Ms Maguire said the report was not the last chapter in the unsolved mystery, and families would accept nothing less than the plane’s recovery.

“That’s why we have to keep looking. It’s the only evidence they have,” she said.

“It would be nice if all countries invested something into the search. It’s up to everybody to keep aviation safe.

“If we know what happened here, we will learn something and make the necessary changes.”

Since losing her husband, Ms Weeks has moved across the country from Perth to the Sunshine Coast, with her two sons, aged five and seven.

She has returned to fulltime work out of necessity after being unable to sell the family’s Perth home without a death certificate.

“It’s surreal,” Ms Weeks said. “It still feels like yesterday that Pauley walked out the door. I had high hopes for this report. Since the change of government in Mal­aysia, we’ve actually had some communication and it’s felt like they are making more of an effort.”

Australian next of kin were extended an invitation from Malaysia Airlines’ family support centre to travel to Kuala Lumpur to ­attend yesterday’s briefing on the report.

But the carrier agreed to cover their fares only 48 hours before the report’s release, which left Ms Weeks no time to make arrangements for her sons and pets.

Members of the Burrows family confirmed they had also received that invitation “at short notice” but declined.

Ms Weeks said yesterday’s report would not be the end of the nightmare.

“This can’t be the end of it. It can’t be the final report,” she said.

“Some things have been clarified but it doesn’t tell us what ­happened and that’s what we most want to know.”

MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 08-02-2018

MH370 final report wash-up - Part III

Via Business Insider:

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The new MH370 report quashed a wild theory that the plane's cargo of fruit and batteries turned it into a giant, flying bomb

SINÉAD BAKER
AUG 2, 2018, 6:15 AM

• FACEBOOKTWITTERREDDITLINKEDINEMAIL

• Flight MH370 disappeared four years ago with 239 people on board.
  
• A new report on Monday was meant to be the final word, but essentially admitted that nobody knows what really happened.
  
• It did dismiss some of the more outlandish theories, however.
  
• One had seen people fixate on the plane’s cargo – a shipment of batteries and mangosteen fruit which some believed could have mixed and combusted.
  
• Malaysian government investigators dismissed this as “highly improbable” – not least because the products were wrapped and stored apart from each other.
  

---

A new report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went out of its way to dismiss a wild theory that a combustible cocktail of lithium ion batteries and several tons of fruit could have brought down the plane.

MH370 had in its cargo hold 5 tons of mangosteens – a sweet tropical fruit about as big as a tangerine – along with 221kg of lithium-ion batteries.

The items were being carried from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, another source of revenue for the flight along with the 239 people it was carrying.

Some experts believed these two items could have mixed together during flight and caught fire, eventually leading to the plane crashing into the sea.

Aviation expert Clive Irving theorised to The Daily Beast in 2015 that batteries on board could have caused a fire in the hold that overwhelmed the plane’s fire suppression system.

US pilot and aviation engineer Bruce Robertson outlined a similar theory to Australian news website News.com.au, suggesting that such a fire would send deadly carbon monoxide into the cabin.

Another theory was that the batteries and mangosteen fruits could have mixed on the flight, creating a reaction that could cause an explosion or fire in the plane, causing it to lose oxygen or crash.

The new report notes: “There were concerns that the mangosteen extracts could have got into contact with the batteries and produced hazardous fumes or in a worst-case scenario caused a short circuit and/or fire.”

The report said that the notion that the two products got into contact is “highly improbable.” The report said the items were in a hold compartment together, but said both the batteries and fruit were wrapped up and in separate containers.

After carrying out tests, Malaysia’s Science & Technology Research Institute for Defence was “convinced that the two items tested could not be the cause in the disappearance of MH370,” the report claims.

The batteries were not registered as dangerous goods as their packaging adhered to guidelines. They went through customs inspection and clearance before the truck was sealed and left the factory, but were not given any additional security screening before loaded onto the plane.


The report said that this kind of cargo is realtively ordinary. Between January 2014 and May 2014, it said, there were 99 shipments of lithium-ion batteries on Malaysia Airlines flights to Beijing.

The report also disputed speculation that the mangosteen fruits were out of season during the shipment, which led some to suggest their inclusion in the cargo was suspicious. The report states that they were in season in neighbouring countries, where they were harvested.

The fruit was inspected by the Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority of Malaysia before it was loaded onto the aircraft.

Between January and May 2014 there were 85 shipments of mangosteens to Beijing. The two were carried together on 26 of these flights. At the time of writing, the same company is still exporting the fruits to China, according to the report.

Everyone who handled the cargo was interviewed by the police, as were the suppliers of the fruit and the battery creators.

Monday’s report is the culmination of a search led by the Malaysian government, which covered 112,000 square kilometers (43,243 square miles) in the southern Indian Ocean since January.

This was the second large-scale search for the plane, and followed an earlier, 2-1/2-year search by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The report found little new evidence as to what might have happened to the plane, but it did reject the pervasive theory that also rejected the theory thata suicidal pilot may have crashed the jet on purpose.

The one new and significant piece of information in the report was that the turn made by MH370, which saw it deviate from its route, was made manually.

---

Next from the West Oz 2 days ago:

Quote:MH370: Grieving mother says passengers were victims of ‘biggest cover up in aviation history’
Shannon HamptonThe West Australian

Tuesday, 31 July 2018 12:54PM

The mother of Perth man Paul Weeks believes her son was a victim of the “biggest cover up in aviation history”.

Prue Tomblin — whose son was among the 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 when it vanished between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in 2014 — yesterday said she was not surprised a final investigation report failed to explain the disappearance.

Ms Tomblin, who lives in Mount Pleasant, said Malaysian authorities were simply “saying what they need to say”.

“I think they do know (what happened) and all the counties involved do know,” she said

“When you think you can track a balloon on radar, we can certainly track a 777.

“Malaysia is just playing very cautious. “It’s the biggest cover up in aviation history, for what ever reason I don’t know, but I suspect it is something pretty big.”

Ms Tomblin said she agreed that only the discovery of the plane would lead to the truth but said “we are not going to find the plane because they are not wanting to find the plane”.

“That plane is not where they say it is and they are not going to tell us where it is,” she said.

Ms Tomblin said her life was ruined the day her son vanished. She said she will never give up hope that he will be found.

“I have never got over it and I never will either,” she said.

“I am just waiting for him to be found or for him to come home — it has to happen one day or another.

Prue Tomblin’s son Paul Weeks was lost on MH370.Picture:Sharon Smith

Mr Weeks’ wife Danica said she felt “deflated” by the failure of the report to reveal anything new.

“Where does that leave us? We are in the wheel again going around and around. It just keeps on going and it just sucks. You have all these hopes that one day someone is going to tell you where your husband is, but it doesn’t happen,” Ms Weeks said.

A last-minute offer to fly foreign families to Malaysia was slammed by families, including Ms Weeks, who now lives in Queensland.

Ms Weeks was offered a free trip to Malaysia on Friday, far too late for her to make arrangements for her two young sons, now aged five and seven.

“I am infuriated. I would have liked to go,” Ms Weeks said. “I would have liked to have a one-on-one conversation with the investigators and find out what they have been doing for the last four and a half years.”

And from the Oz Larry Vance is at it again - 

Quote:‘Fresh eyes needed’ on MH370
EAN HIGGINS
One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for an independent investigation into the loss of MH370.

---

One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for the international aviation watchdog to commission a fresh and independent investi­gation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying the Malaysian government’s inquiry failed to properly assess the evidence.

Canadian Larry Vance, who led some of the biggest inter­national air accident investi­gations over three decades, also said a “comprehensive criminal investigation” was required into the loss of the aircraft, in which 239 people perished in an event a Malaysian government report this week acknowledged involved human intervention.

“An organisation such as the International Civil Aviation ­Organisation should do a thorough inquiry into the circumstances of this occurrence and the investigation that followed,” Mr Vance told The Australian.

“If there is no such inquiry, then aviation safety has taken a step backwards.”

The Malaysian investigation found the aircraft, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was ­deliberately flown off course just as it disappeared from secondary radar with its transponder turned off on March 8, 2014.

Primary radar and automatic satellite “handshakes” determined it flew back over the Thai-Malaysian border and up the Strait of Malacca, before another turn on a long track south to end in the southern Indian Ocean.

The Malaysian report said investigators could not conclude why the aircraft disappeared, but effectively excluded mechanical failure and accidents such as suggestions a cargo of tropical fruit and lithium batteries combined to cause a fire. Mr Vance described these ­aspects as “positive”, saying the report “helps put to rest many of the speculative and far-out-there theories that have circulated about what might have happened”.

“The report also makes it clear that this was the result of human intervention, and not some sort of mechanical event or an intervention from outside the aeroplane.”

Mr Vance disagreed with the statement of chief Malaysian investigator Kok Soo Chon when he in effect excluded the two ­pilots, particularly the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, from the widely held suspicion that one of them hijacked the plane.

Instead, Mr Kok said, it was possible an unknown “third party” had intervened.

Mr Vance and other aviation experts have rejected the “third party” possibility as fanciful, and claim Mr Kok emphasised it to cast doubt on the dominant view that a pilot from the Malaysian government-owned airline had taken 238 other people to their deaths.

Mr Vance said the Malaysian report failed to properly assess the implications of parts of the aircraft found washed up and recovered on the other side of the Indian Ocean, which he said conclusively proved a pilot flew MH370 to the end and ditched it.

Finally from the NYT...

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No Plane. No Remains. And Now, No Real Answers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.


Kok Soo Chon, second from right, described a panel’s findings on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 during a news conference on Monday in Putrajaya, Malaysia.CreditFazry Ismail/EPA, via Shutterstock
By Austin Ramzy

• July 30, 2018
  

HONG KONG — One of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time deepened on Monday when the official government inquiry into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 released a 495-page report that gave no definitive answers as to the fate of the airliner.

The plane was heading north from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it deviated from its scheduled path, turning west across the Malay Peninsula. It is believed to have turned south after radar contact was lost and crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean after running out of fuel.

No significant pieces of the wreckage of the jetliner, a Boeing 777, have ever been found. Nor have any remains of the 239 people on board.

The absence of definitive answers in the report, which was released at a news conference, devastated families of the victims, who have waited more than four years for the searches and investigations to be concluded.

Intan Maizura Othaman, whose husband, Mohd Hazrin Mohamed Hasnan, was a steward on the flight, told reporters after a briefing for family members that she was angered by the absence of answers.

“It is so frustrating, as nobody during the briefing can answer our questions,” Bernama, the Malaysian state news agency, quoted her as saying.

The long-awaited report offered no conclusion on what caused the plane with 239 people aboard to veer off course, cease radio communications and vanish.

The head of the safety investigation team, Kok Soo Chon, said the available evidence — including the plane’s deviation from its flight course, which tests showed was done manually rather than by autopilot, and the switching off of a transponder — “irresistibly point” to “unlawful interference,” which could mean that the plane was hijacked.

But he added that the panel found no indication of who might have interfered or why, and that any criminal inquiry would be the responsibility of law enforcement authorities, not safety investigators.

While Mr. Kok did not directly address theories that the disappearance was the result of pilot suicide, he said investigators were “not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”

Background checks on the passengers by local law enforcement agencies also revealed “a clean bill of health for everybody,” he added.

The disappearance of Flight 370 led to numerous conspiracy theories. And the report, by offering no final conclusion, will do little to settle the matter.

But the investigators did dampen some of the most provocative theories. The possibility that a member of the flight crew intentionally downed the plane, as with Germanwings Flight 9525, which investigators say the co-pilot intentionally crashed in 2015, has been pushed by some experts.

The report detailed an extensive examination of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, including their financial status, health, tone of voice on radio communications and even their gait as they walked to work on the day the plane disappeared. The investigators “could not detect any abnormality,” Mr. Kok said.

Investigators also considered data saved on a flight simulator at Mr. Zaharie’s home, which showed seven coordinates that would create a flight path from Kuala Lumpur to the southern Indian Ocean. The manner in which those points were saved made it impossible to draw any conclusions, Mr. Kok said.

A police investigation “concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations,” the report said.

While Mr. Kok suggested the possibility of “unlawful interference by a third party,” investigators could not establish that anyone except the pilot had flown the plane.

Mr. Kok said there had been no threats or credible claims of responsibility for the plane’s disappearance, which might have been expected as part of a plan to take it down intentionally.

Technology that would allow someone to pilot the aircraft remotely had not been installed on this plane, the report said. No mechanical issues that would affect the plane’s airworthiness were identified either.

“The aircraft was well-maintained,” Mr. Kok said.

Other possible factors — like lithium-ion batteries that could have caught fire and the presence of mangosteen fruit in the plane’s cargo, which was considered unusual — were considered. But such materials had been carried dozens of times before on the same route without incident, the report said.

The panel said it would disband, but declined to call the report final.

“It is too presumptuous of us to say this is the final report,” said Mr. Kok, a former director general of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Department. “No wreckage has been found. The victims have not been found. How could this be final?”

Families of the 239 people who disappeared with the plane had expected clearer answers in the report, and were left disappointed.

“1,605 days of roller coaster, families still have no closure with the release of the latest 495 pages safety investigation report,” Voice370, a group of family members, said on its Facebook page. “The team concluded that they were unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of #mh370. Simply unacceptable as a ‘final’ report. How can we prevent another MH370 incident in future?”

Most of the passengers were from China, followed by Malaysian citizens.

After the aircraft disappeared, an air search of nearly two months was carried out, followed by an underwater search, primarily by private contractors.

Investigators tried to determine where the plane went down by overlapping its fuel estimates with a 400-mile arc along which its final satellite communication was made. Ships scoured a zone of more than 46,000 square miles before calling off an official search last year that cost a total of $150 million.

Another search carried out by an American company with support from the Malaysian government ended in May after covering an additional 43,000 square miles, also without finding the plane.

The Malaysian safety investigators said on Monday that they had waited to release their report until after the search was concluded.

A small amount of debris from the plane has been found, including what was thought to be a part of its wing, discovered on the French island of Réunion, east of Madagascar, in 2015. An American lawyer found another piece, a gray triangle of fiberglass composite and aluminum with the words “No Step” stenciled on one side, in Mozambique in February 2016.

The discovery of those objects supports the theory that the plane broke apart upon entering the southern Indian Ocean, and that pieces that stayed afloat then traveled west on currents that run from Australia to Africa.

The investigators said on Monday that they had found several shortcomings in procedure among various bodies responsible for the flight’s safety.

The handover of responsibility for the flight from air traffic control in Malaysia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was premature by three minutes, and the Vietnamese authorities were late in recognizing that the plane had vanished, the report said.

But Mr. Kok said none of these factors were responsible for the plane’s disappearance.

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MTF...P2  

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Gobbledock - 08-02-2018

Larry Vance;

“An organisation such as the International Civil Aviation ­Organisation should do a thorough inquiry into the circumstances of this occurrence and the investigation that followed,” Mr Vance told The Australian

Vance’s intentions and thoughts are admirable, however there is one thing he is forgetting; ICAO are an arm of the UN. The UN is funded by over 160 countries and that money goes towards funding lavish lifestyles for PHD touting wordsmiths, bureaucrats, those with political aspirations and societies upper echelon. Why do you think maggots like Carr, Rudd and Stick Insect Bishop get hardons and wet patches over the organisation? In reality ICAO is another ‘bought’ organisation whose true mandate is to fill selected employees pockets with money. They, and the UN are nothing more than the legal face of an underlying crime syndicate.

MH370 has been buried because powerful people want it buried. The truth will prevail because eventually the ocean will give up its secret forever.

Tick Tock

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 08-06-2018

MH370 final report wash-up - Clive's view...  

From the Daily Beast; via MSN:  

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Flight MH370 Becomes the Cold Case That Nobody Wants to Solve




© Provided by The Daily Beast Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast
Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

Could this disaster happen again?

In the case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 the answer is we don’t know. And that is a dangerous answer because it’s a religion with air crash investigators never to quit until they have the answer.

And yet, as we saw this week, the Malaysians have peremptorily shuttered their investigation into the disappearance of their Boeing 777 with 239 aboard without being able to explain what happened.

That is contrary to the diligence expected of every investigation. There is an obligation to discover whether a crash revealed a flaw, either human or mechanical (or a combination of both) that could recur.

Why is this so important? Because flying has only become as remarkably safe as it is because over many decades this question has been successfully answered in an unforgiving process. One crash after another has been relentlessly scrutinized until its cause could be explained beyond any reasonable doubt. 

This is what makes the case of MH370 so disturbing.

Nearly five years after the flight disappeared without trace it has now joined a gallery of ghosts. It has assumed a new cultural dimension, moving from the tangible to the invisible under the marquee title of The World’s Greatest Aviation Mysteries. In the future this will attract numerous narratives, from the rational to the insane

Obviously, this is not a happy place to be. Nobody wants to be part of this kind of enduring mystery story. The list of victims stretches back into the earliest days of flight and includes many names long since forgotten and one that is never forgotten, Amelia Earhart.

Most of these are all the ghosts of a time when aviation safety was on a steep and sometimes wobbly learning curve. The machines were relatively primitive. The risks taken were often reckless. Many parts of the process of flying were fallible. The science was slow in evolving – and matured only by learning from many deaths.


© AP FILE - In this March 6, 2016, file photo, a Malaysian child has his face painted with MH370 during a remembrance event for the ill fated Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An independent investigation report released Monday, July 30, 2018, more than four years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared highlighted shortcomings in the government response that exacerbated the mystery. (AP Photo/Joshua Paul, File)

No other form of transportation produced such spectacularly shocking ways of dying in the course of its growth. The sudden, apparently arbitrary and violent nature of air crashes gave them an impact on public awareness that made air travel seem a greater peril than it actually was – road accident death rates were always much higher in aggregate but nobody ever coined the phrase “fear of driving.”

It is a mark of how much has changed since then that the level of risk acceptable in commercial aviation during its first five decades would be unthinkable now. Every year more than four billion passengers board a scheduled commercial flight across the world with an almost complete certainty that no risk is involved.

Indeed, 2017 was the first year on record when nobody died on a commercial jet worldwide. Statistically the chance of a fatal accident is one in every 16 million flights.

Survivability in a crash has become a big factor in this improvement of safety. A few days ago this was demonstrated when an Aeromexico jet crashed just after takeoff from Durango, Mexico. The Embraer 190 was loaded with fuel and the impact was violent yet all 103 people aboard survived. Everybody was evacuated before the cabin was consumed in fire. Evacuation was made easier because the Embraer cabin has only two seats each side of the aisle, not three, and also because the cabin crew were exemplary in how they handled the emergency.


© Reuters A family member reads an MH370 briefing report before a closed door meeting in Putrajaya, Malaysia July 30, 2018. REUTERS/Sadiq Asyraf

Set against this background of a vastly improved safety record, MH370 is an anomaly – and, as a mystery, intolerable. In some way the highly sophisticated system that has given us an all but impeccable safety culture has failed. And we still have no idea which part or parts of that system, either singly or in combination, failed.

In every air crash there is a rush to assign blame. In the course of covering this story from the beginning I have seen the urge to assign blame surface, as it always does, from a variety of motives, from those anxious to escape responsibility to the anguished families who lost loved ones.

There seemed plenty of blame to go around when confronted with the serial incompetence of the Malaysian authorities. And, understandably, deep in their own irremediable grief, the families of the victims, frequently treated by the Malaysians as an unwanted nuisance, were handed a good target to blame.

But blame without information is a blunt instrument. And that applies particularly to the pilots involved. When I began covering air crashes 20 years ago, a veteran air-crash investigator cautioned: “Always remember, blame has no place in an investigation. Pilot error, for example, is a symptom of other problems and not a cause of accidents. Errors happen all the time.

“It is absolutely vital to get behind the error and ask what contributed to that person making the mistake. Was it the design? The training? The procedures? Most errors are part of being human.”

Related: MH370: new revelation in the case of the airplane that was never found! (StarInsider)

MH370: new revelation in the case of the airplane that was never found!

As it happens, that wisdom was later to be borne out by the disaster that, in some ways, is a direct precursor to the loss of Flight MH370.

In 2009 Air France Flight 447 from Rio to Paris disappeared in the south Atlantic, taking 228 souls with it. This was the first loss of a modern jet over an ocean where its final resting place was elusive: it took two years to locate the wreckage.

Once the wreckage was examined and the flight data recorders disclosed the final fatal minutes of the flight, an alarming picture emerged that combined a flawed technology with a poor response from the pilots. An instrument that recorded the air speed had fed wildly erratic data into the computers that directed the airplane’s autopilot system (the system normally flying the Airbus A330 at cruise as this was).

The computers, confused, began to shut down. The two pilots were unprepared to recover control from the computers and, because of the false air speed readings, were just as confused as their instruments. If they had correctly recognized the problem they could – and should – have flown themselves out of trouble. Instead, their handling errors magnified the jet’s instability and it fell rapidly into the ocean.

The original fault with the air speed instrument had been caused by icing in unusual climatic conditions. The decisively lethal fault was human. As a result, pilots now get regular training in simulators for the specific skill required, “upset recovery.” And the instrument was redesigned so that icing would not take it out.


© Getty PUBLIKA, KUALA LUMPUR, KL, MALAYSIA - 2018/03/03: A MH370 poster seen at the 4th Annual MH370 Remembrance event. Hundreds of people had gathered at the Remember MH370? Its Not History, Its Our Future is the 4th Annual MH370 Remembrance event organised by VOICE370 the MH370 Family Support Group held at Publika, Kuala Lumpur on 3rd March 2018. The purpose of the event is to gather the people to stand in solidarity and commemorate 4 years since tragedy of MH370 disappeared from the blue sky with the loss of 239 lives on 8th March 2014. (Photo by Faris Hadziq/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

So the case of Air France Flight 447 began as a preventable disaster but concluded as a classic exercise in how to learn from a crash and make flying safer.

But one vital lesson of that disaster remained unheeded: it should not take two years to find the remains of a jet lying at the bottom of the ocean. Most people were shocked to discover that in many parts of the world there was no effective way of keeping track of an airliner over oceans. French investigators vigorously demanded a remedy, but were ignored – until Flight MH 370 vanished over water.

In truth, this reveals a scandalous example of recidivism on the part of those charged with overseeing airline safety, both the regulators and the airlines themselves.

To prevent an airliner disappearing when beyond radar range over water, and to know in an emergency what had gone wrong, needed two measures to be taken, both readily available. The first was flight tracking, a secure automatic system that kept constant track via satellites of where the airplane was at all times. The second was a data streaming system that could be triggered in an emergency to describe what was happening to the airplane’s systems.

The failure to take these steps after such a clear red flag was raised by Air France 447 was partly psychological and partly venal. The airlines simply believed that this had been a one-off combination of errors that would never happen again. (The errors of piloting were, in any case, being remedied.) And, because of that, they decided that it wasn’t worth spending the money to provide dependable tracking and monitoring.

That same complacent mindset is, incredibly, apparent in the response to the loss of the Malaysian 777. But it’s even worse.


© Getty A woman walks past a banner bearing solidarity messages for passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, during a memorial event in Kuala Lumpur on March 3, 2018 ahead of the fourth anniversary of at the ill-fated planes disappearance. / AFP PHOTO / Manan VATSYAYANA (Photo credit should read MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images)

Flight MH370 has now become, uniquely in the history of modern air travel, a cold case that nobody wants to solve. They just can’t be bothered. That is, I believe, because once more the aviation industry’s attitude is that this was a freak event with its own peculiarcauses that cannot possibly bother us again. Not worth spending any more money to pursue.

Some of this attitude is based on a belief widely held among airline chiefs that the Malaysian pilots were involved. But even the Malaysian officials who were the first to have promoted this theory have now had to conclude that there is no evidence to support it, and never was. In the absence of that theory there is no other credible evidence of deliberate human involvement: no terrorist claim, no evidence of a hijacking and no sinister takeover of the controls by remote means.

At least, steps have finally been taken to equip airline fleets with new flight tracking systems. By November this year all jets carrying 19 or more passengers must be capable of reporting their position every 15 minutes. By 2021 they must be able in an emergency to report every minute.

The cost of not having such a system in place when Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur on the red-eye run to Beijing that night is enormous – both in money and in human suffering.

The insurance costs and liabilities are in contention because, without knowing the cause, responsibility for the crash cannot be assigned. Soon after the disaster experts at Credit Suisse estimated that the loss of the airplane itself would amount to a cost of $100 million. They also estimated the total liability costs to the relatives of passengers would be around $500 million, but that has turned out to be impossible to calculate. Liability varies according the nationality of the victims and the national laws governing settlements.

According to the Malaysian government, within two years of the disaster 42 families who lost members on the flight had settled for payments of $175,000 for each close relative, as was required by the airline’s legal obligations. But many other claims and lawsuits will drag on. Initially French insurers paid out $750 million to relatives of those lost on Air France 447, but numerous law suits have since been settled without disclosing the amount.

All along, one nation involved in the consequences of the crash has been strangely silent: China. There were 152 Chinese passengers on the flight, by far the largest of any nationality. The Chinese have never publicly voiced any criticism of the way the Malaysians dealt with the aftermath or the lengthy deep sea searches.

China made the smallest contribution to the search costs, $20 million in search equipment and financial contribution. Australia, which had only six passengers aboard, committed $60 million and Malaysia, with 50 passengers aboard, contributed at least $100 million.

Quite clearly, nobody wants to spend another penny with the formal investigation wound up. It’s like a murder mystery without a body to explain it. Or, rather, without 239 bodies that lie somewhere in the dark depths of a distant ocean unable to tell their story, possibly forever. 

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Also via the Senate Estimates thread:

Senate Estimates -  ATSB MH370 related AQON: 

Quote: Wrote:Overdue No
Asked Of Australian Transport Safety Bureau
Proof Hansard Page/Written 58
Portfolio Question Number 246
Question

Mr Hood: There was also a program management board that oversaw the expenditure of the funds, and we had the processes and funds audited by KPMG. In terms of all the audit reports and the moneys in and out, that's certainly available if you'd like that. 
Senator PATRICK: Maybe it's worth tabling the KPMG report. 
Mr Hood: I'll take that on notice to provide that.

Answer
The ATSB’s financial statements are audited annually by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO). For the financial years 2014–15, 2015–16 and 2016–17 the ANAO gave the MH370 program particular attention. The audit closing letters for each of these financial years is at Attachment A. In the 2016–17 closing letter ANAO specifically references MH370 advising:

We have concluded that ATSB’s revenues and expenses incurred for the search of flight MH370 are materially stated and have been disclosed appropriately in the financial statements.

KPMG, the ATSB’s internal auditor, also completed a ‘Health Check’ of the MH370 program in early 2016. This report is at Attachment B. The report acknowledged the governance structures in place including a Program Board with a representative from the Department of Finance. The report included some business improvement recommendations which were addressed.

Attachments

 Attachment A – ANAO Financial Audit Closing Letters

 Attachment B – MH370 Health-Check Report, KPMG, February 2016
Download question with answer 

Answer Attachment 
183 Attachment.pdf

Answered Date 
06/08/2018

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Overdue No
Asked Of Australian Transport Safety Bureau
Proof Hansard Page/Written Written
Portfolio Question Number 366
Question

1. The ATSB has repeatedly said the satellite data shows MH370 was in a rapid and increasing rate of descent at the end. Larry Vance points out that in such cases, such as Swissair 111, the aircraft gets pulverised into two million smallish parts. How does the ATSB explain the fact that the flaperon and the flap were largely intact; there was nothing big or intact enough to be even recognisable as a flap or flaperon on Swissair 111?
2. Does the ATSB think the flap and flaperon fell off due to "flutter" in a high speed dive?

  1. If so, why was there no flutter damage to the leading edges?

4. Captain John Cox, a leading air crash investigator, says this of the satellite data when it comes to the speed of descent:The ATSB takes BFO data and derives a vertical profile between the 6th and 7th arc. This is very high (almost too high) indicating a extremely steep descent. However the 7th exchange is a "Power Up" exchange and the vertical information is not as accurate. Looking at the 1st Arc exchange, which was also a "Power Up" exchange the vertical date was determined to be spurious or so inaccurate it was not considered valid. If during a "Power Up" exchange the vertical data is less accurate then the 7th Arc exchange must be viewed with the same concern. Therefore, the vertical BFO derived data is less credible than other data points. This would support Larry's theory and weaken the ATSB position.

1. 1. Is Captain Cox wrong, and if so, why?
      

Answer
1. The ATSB has never performed analysis nor published any information in relation to the speed that the aircraft may have impacted the ocean surface. The analysis performed by scientists from the Defence Science Technology Group (DST Group) of the metadata associated with the final two satellite communications between the aircraft and the Inmarsat ground station concluded that the aircraft was in a high and increasing rate of descent over the eight second time period between the two transmissions.

The analysis by the ATSB and other members of the MH370 Search Strategy Working Group, which includes Inmarsat, Thales, Boeing the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of UK and National Transportation Safety Board of the USA, concluded it is most likely these final two transmissions were triggered by fuel exhaustion of the engines and a restart of the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit and would have occurred when the aircraft was still at an altitude of between 20,000 and 30,000 ft.

Boeing simulations (documented in MH370 – Search and debris examination update available at: http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5771773/ae-2014-054_debris-update_2nov2016.pdf) of the aircraft’s unpiloted glide behaviour after fuel exhaustion indicated that it is likely that the aircraft performed a series of phugoid motions, with periods of descent at differing rates and periods where the aircraft also gained altitude in the final minutes of the flight. Given the uncertainties associated with the final minutes of the flight it is not possible to conclude a speed at which it is likely the aircraft impacted the ocean surface.

The ATSB has studied many accidents where aircraft have impacted water. The damage to the aircraft and debris resulting from the impact is dependent on many factors including the aircraft’s speed both horizontal and vertical, the attitude of the aircraft at the point of impact and the type, size and construction of the aircraft. Some accidents where there was a high rate of descent led to aircraft debris which was in large sections, including Air France flight 447 which crashed off the coast of Brazil in 2009.

2. The ATSB has never published any analysis suggesting that the flap or flaperon separated from the aircraft due to aerodynamic flutter.

3. The analysis to which Captain Cox refers in this quote was performed by scientists from DST Group and is referred to in the answer to Question 1. A summary of this analysis was included in the ATSB report MH370 – Search and debris examination update (2 November 2016) (http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5771773/ae-2014-054_debris-update_2nov2016.pdf). A more detailed analysis was published by the DST Group in MH370 Burst Frequency Offset Analysis and Implications on Decent Rate at End-of-Flight (15 January 2018) (Attachment A). The summary in the ATSB report explains that the DST Group analysis accounts for all possible errors in the satellite communication metadata due to system oscillator “warm up” transients and all possible speeds and headings of the aircraft.

The ATSB made contact with Captain Cox at the time his original assessment (quoted in the question) of DST Group’s descent analysis was used in an article in the Australian newspaper and provided him with a copy of DST Group’s full published analysis. He subsequently agreed that his original assessment, used in the newspaper article, was incorrect and the ATSB understands that Captain Cox has asked the Australian newspaper to print a correction.

Attachments

 Attachment A – MH370 Burst Frequency Offset Analysis and Implications on Decent Rate at End-of-Flight, 15 January 2018

Download question with answer 

Answer Attachment 

184 Attachment.pdf

Answered Date 
06/08/2018

MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 08-13-2018

The Frog's have gone all 'rogatory' on MH370 -   

Now this could get interesting?? After the release of the 'bollocks' Malaysian led JIT Annex 13 final report, the French GTA have decided to reopen their criminal investigation into MH370...  

Via Le Parisien:

Quote:France relaunches investigation into MH 370
> Miscellaneous facts | Jean-Marc Ducos | August 05, 2018, 18h11 | Update: August 07, 2018, 8:45 am



If debris from the plane failed, in July 2015, on the island of Reunion, the plane was never found. His crash remains a mystery. Sipa / China News

All countries concerned by the disappearance of the Malaysian aircraft in 2014 with 239 people aboard have given up. In France, the gendarmerie of air transport continues its investigations.

To date, France remains the only country to try to understand how the Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 was able to disappear on March 8, 2014. There were four Frenchmen aboard : Laurence Wattrelos, her 14-year-old daughter Amber, his 17-year-old son Hadrien, and Yan the French-Chinese girlfriend of the latter. They were coming back from spring break in Malaysia. The presence of French victims allows our country to conduct its own investigations. All other countries concerned have now renounced.

Today, it is the research section of the Gendarmerie Air Transport (SR-GTA) that continues the investigation at the request of justice. And at an angle that will allow to put everything flat, according to our information.

The aircraft, a Boeing 777, rallying Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to Beijing (China) with 239 people on board was never found . And investigations of all kinds from the many countries involved in this tragedy, often incomplete or fragmented, have not given anything so far, fueling all kinds of conspiracy theories without any certified element.

Verifications of the technical data transmitted

Malaysia has recently issued a 449-page report dismissing, without any evidence, the "damage" or "act of madness" of the captain. This report very imprecise and ambiguous also says "do not exclude the intervention of a third party", without specifying its real nature. Because nothing says that the captain did not schedule this flight to a very sophisticated suicidal operation. Which had already been one of the assumptions the first US FBI investigation.

The gendarmerie of air transport (GTA) intends to verify the veracity and especially the authenticity of all the technical data transmitted. Notably provided by the British company Inmarsat, which has received the positions transmitted by the 777. These data are reliable? Certified? The gendarmes want the source of this data to understand the trajectory of this device. It is not excluded that an international rogatory commission authorizes them to recover the raw data transmitted at the beginning of the year.


-
One certainty in the case of the MH 370: the first turn made by the aircraft is voluntary, while it is off the coast of Malaysia and Vietnam, between two air traffic controls. A left turn that deflects the aircraft towards the sensitive border between Thailand and Malaysia.

The aircraft then passes to the right of Kota Bahru International Airport where it could have landed in case of damage. Then drive to the Indian Ocean and also pass over Penang Island International Airport. Here again the MH 370 does not arise.

Undetected depressurization?

The 777 seems to have suffered a major power failure that generated in the jargon "a log off" preventing transmission for forty minutes. No doubt a breakdown with smoke on board.

The ventilation system has been activated, but an incident may have damaged the pressurization system. "A typical symptom of a slow depressurization of the aircraft may have gone unnoticed or undetected by the pilots as it may be a secondary problem," said Xavier Tytelman, a former Army veteran. air and reputed aeronautical consultant.

The slow depressurization leads to the loss of oxygenation in the cabin and crew and passengers sink into coma as the plane continues to fly towards a fatal crash. Such an incident occurred in Greece on August 14, 2005. Following an undetected depressurization of the cockpit, the pilots had fainted and the plane ran out of fuel, killing 121 people.

Meanwhile the IG now suspect cover-up by the Malaysians...

Via the West Oz :

Quote:Malaysia’s MH370 report a ‘cover-up’

EXCLUSIVE, Geoffrey ThomasThe West Australian
Saturday, 11 August 2018 4:00AM

A final report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is a cover-up of the captain’s actions, according to industry sources in Malaysia.

One source said the “seven flight waypoints” recovered from Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s flight simulator program — flown just weeks before the plane’s disappearance and which replicated MH370’s final flight — were all from one session.

But Malaysian authorities, in the final report, found the waypoints were from separate sessions and therefore of no significance.

“There is no question the waypoints were from one flight into the southern Indian Ocean,” the industry source said.

“This is a cover-up.”

Another source, who works as a contractor to Malaysia Airlines, told The Weekend West that “very early on” after MH370 disappeared the airline’s operational management said “Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was responsible”.

The final report released on July 30 exonerated both pilots, a finding that has been met by disbelief.

Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon said “we are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot”.

The Australian Transport Safety Authority report on the search for MH370 issued in October said: “In the six weeks before the accident flight, the pilot in command had used his simulator to fly a route similar to part of the route flown by MH370 up the Strait of Malacca, with a left-hand turn and track into the southern Indian Ocean.”

But the Malaysian report dismisses this and says that “the Royal Malaysian Police forensic report concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations”.

The flight simulator is not a game. It is a recognised and endorsed flight-training tool used by many airlines and the US military.

One of the most respected analysts of the MH370 disappearance, Independent Group member Victor Iannello, has also criticised the report.

“How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane?” he said.

“How does the compressed time line of the diversion fit any other possibility?

“It is understandable that the safety report did not apportion blame to the captain. However, it is not understandable that the report deflected blame to an unnamed third party.”

Mr Iannello said it was odd that the Royal Malaysian Police concluded there were no unusual activities given the “extraordinary coincidence” that a simulated flight — which included a departure from Kuala Lumpur — ending in the southern Indian Ocean was recovered.

MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 08-16-2018

MH370 FR wash-up cont/- : Part IV

Via the Courier Mail/newscorp:

Quote:MH370 missing report French response better than Australia: Mike O ...
https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiQtc24mPDcAhXHgrwKHUAsCDEQjhx6BAgBEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.couriermail.com.au%2Frendezview%2Ffrance-has-shown-up-our-woeful-response-to-mh370-report%2Fnews-story%2F00831a0d38f54fe62157d116609ba01e&psig=AOvVaw1safnb1X-1ZxuI2D49UOwX&ust=1534461432036510
Courier Mail
MH370 missing report French response better than Australia: Mike O'Connor | The Courier-Mail




A relative carries copies of the official report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 

 

Via JW's blog:

Quote:About That MH370 Inmarsat Data…
– AUGUST 15, 2018



Earlier this month France announced that it will reopen its investigation into the disappearance of MH370:

Quote:French newspaper Le Parisien reports that investigators are keen to verify data from Inmarsat — the British operator of a global satellite network — which tracked the aircraft’s pings to the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia, where it is believed to have crashed.

I was happy to hear that, because for the last four years I’ve been making the case that there is one known way by which the Inmarsat data could have been falsified as it was being transmitted from the plane. This falsification would make the plane look like it was heading south when it was really heading north, and would explain why an exhaustive quarter-billion-dollar search of the southern seabed found no trace of the plane.

Of course, there are other reasons to suspect that the plane went north. One of the less probative but more elegant is the simple fact that when it was last spotted, that’s where the plane was turning. The above image comes from page 4 of Appendix 1.6E of the latest Malaysian report, entitled “Aircraft Performance Analysis,” prepared by Boeing. I think this appendix is one of the most important sections of the whole report, as the authority of the source is unimpeachable and its assertions are laid out with such clarity. In this image we see a summary view of what is known about the first two hours of the plane’s flight, based on a combination of secondary and primary radar as well as the first ping from the Inmarsat data. It shows, as I and others have pointed out, that after an aggressive turnback at IGARI, and a high-speed flight over peninsular Malaysia and up the Malacca Strait, the plane disappeared from primary radar and then turned to the north.

Some have proposed that this is best explained by the assumption that whoever was in charge of the plane wanted to avoid conflicting traffic on the airway, but that is absurd–there was no conflicting traffic, and anyway it would be very simple to avoid any such hypothetical traffic by flying at a nonstandard altitude. A simpler explanation is that they turned to the north because they were heading north.

The report has another similiarly compelling illustration that combines fuel-burn data with ping-ring distances to illustrate the various routes the plane might have flown, assuming a constant altitude and turns only at ping arcs:



This picture neatly illustrates a point that the DSTG arrived at more conclusively through the heavily application of mathematics: namely, the only straight-ish flight paths that wind up at the 7th arc at the correct time and distance for fuel exhaustion are ones that fly around 450 to 475 knots, and at relatively high altitude. This is where the Australians originally looked for the plane, and really it was always the only rational place to look.

The absence of the plane in this area could have told the authorities two years ago that something was up–and that would have been the right time to start being suspicious about the Inmarsat data.

 
And Australian Coroners balk at investigating MH370:

Quote:Coronial doors close on MH370
ROBYN IRONSIDE
Authorities have all but ruled out a coronial inquest into the disappearance of flight MH370.

---

Australian families’ pleas for ­answers in the MH370 mystery appear set to remain unheeded with authorities all but ruling out a coronial inquest.

With only France continuing to investigate the 4½-year-old mystery, a coronial inquest has been suggested as the best option for bereaved Australian families to get answers.

Former Boeing 777 captain Byron Bailey, who has campaigned tirelessly for more transparency around the MH370 search and investigation, said a coronial inquest was needed to examine the deaths of Australian passengers.

Danica Weeks, whose New Zealand-born husband Paul was among the passengers, said she would very much like to see an inquest held, given Malaysia’s final report on the plane’s dis­appearance “gave us nothing”.

“I think it would be a good course of action,” said Ms Weeks, who moved to Queensland from Western Australia with her two sons following the loss of her husband on MH370.

“It would give us another ­avenue and provide a new set of eyes to review the evidence available. We’ve had the report and that gave us nothing so a ­coronial inquest could be a step forward.”

Jeanette Maguire, whose sister and brother-in-law Cathy and Bob Lawton were travelling with Brisbane friends, Mary and Rodney Burrows, said the MH370 mystery needed to be solved, as much for the families as for the future of aviation.

“I don’t know where to go with all of this anymore,” said Ms Maguire. “All I do know is that we need answers, we need to keep searching, we need to find MH370. We need facts and we can’t give up.”

Restrictions on coronial inquiries to the victim’s state of ­residence virtually rule out an inquest anywhere but Queensland.

Four of the six Australians on board the Boeing 777 were from Brisbane. The other Australians on board, Gu Naijun and Li Yuan of Sydney, were on their way to Beijing to be reunited with their young daughters and are not believed to have had any family in Australia.

A spokesman for the Coroners Court of Queensland said the MH370 matter was investigated in 2015 and death certificates were issued for the four Brisbane residents on board.

“As the suspected deaths occurred overseas, the state coroner sought a direction from the Attorney-General to enable him to investigate the deaths and to determine whether the Queensland passengers were deceased,” said the spokesman.

“Having regard to the circumstances associated with the disappearance of MH370, the state coroner did not consider that an inquest was in the public interest.”

He said the only way for an inquest to be reconsidered would be in the event of considerable new evidence emerging.

Coronial inquests conducted on behalf of six NSW families bereaved by MH17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine, found the deaths were part of a gross mass murder.

 
MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Peetwo - 10-23-2018

 Higgins & Bailey exposé on ATSB attempted MH370 cover-up - 

Via the Oz today: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/atsb-coy-about-efforts-to-silence-this-newpaper-over-mh370s-end/news-story/d8d0ffa62ce525ed530812b1295297e6

Quote:ATSB ‘paid lawyers’ to quiet media
EAN HIGGINS

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has refused to release correspondence about its failed ­attempt through big-end-of-town lawyers to restrict The Australian’s coverage of claims it used the wrong theory to search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The ATSB will not say how much taxpayer money it paid law firm Minter Ellison to prepare and send a letter asking this newspaper to “refrain” from its style of coverage of veteran Canadian air crash investigator Larry Vance’s new book revealing a detailed analysis of wing parts from the Boeing 777 found washed up on ­islands off Africa.

Mr Vance, supported by two other experts in the field, claims his examination conclusively shows the aircraft was flown by a pilot to the end and deliberately ditched in a controlled fashion, because the flaps were extended.

This runs contrary to the ­theory the bureau used in the strategy for its failed $200 million search for the aircraft, which holds that MH370 was a “ghost flight” at the end with “unresponsive” pilots, and crashed down in an uncontrolled fashion after fuel exhaustion.

If the ATSB’s theory is wrong and Mr Vance and experienced airline captains including Briton Simon Hardy, New Zealander Mike Keane and Australian Byron Bailey are right, it means the ATSB looked in the wrong place in its two-year hunt for MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, with its last radio and secondary radar contact recorded 40 minutes into the flight, after which it took a zig-zag route back over Malaysia before a long track south, automatic satellite tracking data showed.

Days after The Australian ran a series of reports in May on Mr Vance’s findings and their implications, the newspaper received an extensive letter from Minter Ellison partner Andrew Gill, warning of various implied possible adverse actions if the newspaper continued with this coverage.

Mr Gill particularly objected to The Australian naming the leader of the ATSB’s failed search for MH370, Peter Foley, and its spokesman, Paul Sadler, as not responding to emails from The Australian seeking comment.

“Our client requests that you refrain from publishing any further articles regarding this incident or our client without first considering the concerns raised in this letter, particularly with ­respect to naming individual ­employees,” Mr Gill wrote.

The Australian made a Freedom of Information request seeking correspondence between ATSB officers and Minter Ellison, including material showing how much the bureau paid the law firm. In a decision received by The Australian last week, the ATSB’s acting chief operating officer for corporate services, Chris Fitzpatrick, rejected the FOI request, releasing only an email from The Australian to ATSB spokesman Daniel O’Malley seeking confirmation of background. Mr Fitzpatrick refused to release 15 other documents, including invoices.

He rejected most of the FOI request so as to look after the interest of “third parties”.

ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood and legal and governance officer Patrick Hornby would not say who instructed Minter Ellison or how much the ATSB paid the law firm.

And from Byron Bailey: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/mh370-inquest-the-answer-to-atsbs-shameful-actof-secrecy/news-story/0dc14820e965c93b5d2cb2c11a912cc8

Quote:Inquest answer to MH370 secrecy
BYRON BAILEY
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s attempts to suppress media coverage of their search for MH370 is a disgrace.

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MH370: Inquest the answer to ATSB’s shameful act of secrecy

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s attempts at using high-priced lawyers to suppress coverage of its failures in its search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 are a disgrace, and a threat to the democratic principles of free speech and press freedom.

Transport Minister Michael McCormack should hold the ATSB to account. With the ATSB hiding details about its failed search, only a coronial inquiry can get justice for the six Australians who disappeared with the aircraft and 233 other souls on March 8, 2014, on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The MH370 hunt may be on hold but eventually details about the failed search will come out and the ATSB, protected by legislation from producing documents requested by The Australian under several Freedom of Information applications, will have to reveal all.

The ATSB’s FOI officers last week decided the disclosure of documents could have an adverse effect on a “third party’s” business and declined to release the sought-after material. I wonder how much taxpayers’ money is being wasted on the legal attempts to suppress evidential material. Former transport minister Warren Truss needs to be asked whether he directed the ATSB, so as not to annoy the Malaysians, to plan the MH370 search on the basis of a ghost flight of dead pilots — even though the ATSB appeared to have little evidence to support such a scenario. This despite the Malaysian prime minister initially stating it was a case of deliberate human intervention, and aviation professionals pointing out that MH370 was obviously flown under control for the final seven hours. To base the search on a controlled flight would suggest the captain of MH370 was the culprit.

We also need an answer as to why the ATSB steadfastly refused to entertain the calculated search area proposed by British Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy a few months after the event. This target zone centred on a position about 40km outside the ATSB search area and could have been completely covered in a matter of days. Much of the evidence supports Hardy’s theory and little supports the ATSB.

Only a coronial inquest, which the Queensland government could order given that four of the lost on MH370 were from that state, will suffice to explain the deaths of the Australians on that flight.

Never in the history of aviation have authorities, to this extent, attempted to avoid revealing evidence in answer to airline crashes. The safety of the airline industry is still on trial until this likely cold-case homicide is resolved. The small-area search for the wreckage of MH370 should be restarted based on the analysis of evidence from aviation experts, and not from bureaucrats.

Hmm...not a good look Hoody - not a good look indeed!!...  


MTF...P2 

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RE: Australia, ATSB and MH 370 - Gobbledock - 10-23-2018

Beware of the sheep in hi-vis clothing..

I think Byron is a tad naieve appealing to McDo’naught to hold the ATsB to account. The game is rigged and McDo’naught is part of the game. Hi-vis Hood is just a pawn in a large web of deceit, coverups and obsfucation by several countries who are protecting Malaysia.

As for the cost of legals for the ATsB, that’s not an issue. The Guvmint likes to strip the alphabet soup agencies operational budgets each year but when it comes to spending on lawyers and hiding the truth the pot of Guvmint money has no bottom.....

Tick tock

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