[Peetwo]

The current myth doing the rounds is that because the ATSB have not found MH370 yet, they must be getting close to finding it.

Flight MH370 Search Update: Amid Indian Ocean Floor Scan, Bad Weather, Appendicitis Complicate Efforts, But 'They Must Be Getting Close'

By Julia Glum @superjulia j.glum@ibtimes.com on November 06 2015 10:28 AM EST



French investigators look at a map indicating actions in the search for wreckage from the missing MH370 airliner on Réunion Island, Aug. 14, 2015. Getty Images

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, nicknamed MH370, has officially swept 70,000 of the 120,000 square kilometers of the Indian Ocean floor it intends to check for evidence. According to an operational search update from the Australian Joint Agency Coordination Centre posted this week, investigators have been struggling with "unfavorable" conditions that have complicated their efforts to find the mysterious aircraft. But they could soon move past them.

"Weather continues to impact ... search operations, but conditions are expected to be improved over the coming months," the update read. "The safety of the search crews, as always, remains a priority, and the vessels and equipment utilized will vary to reflect operational needs."

MH370 vanished March 8, 2014, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The 239 people on board are presumed dead, and the plane -- a Boeing 777 -- is presumed to have crashed, but little debris has turned up to support that theory. The only discovery came this past July, when a flaperon wing fragment was found on Réunion Island.

Two survey vessels, the Fugro Discovery and Fugro Equator, were scanning the ocean floor for debris. The Equator was scheduled to return to the Australian port city of Fremantle to resupply while the Discovery used a towed sonar system to search, but the Discovery hit a snag Thursday. A crew member was diagnosed with likely appendicitis, forcing the ship also to return to Fremantle, according to the agency.

Meanwhile, aviation expert David Learmount wrote on his blog that he expected the next phase of the search to get "interesting" because "logic says they must be getting close," based on the large area swept without results. Also, Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy calculated where he thought the flight went down, and "the search sector that Fugro Discovery has just begun to trawl encompasses Hardy’s predicted position for MH370," Learmount wrote. He added: "By 3 December Fugro Discovery expects to have completed the search of the area containing, according to Hardy’s calculations, the wreck of MH370 and the remains of those who went down with it."

If the plane is found, Australia will work with Malaysia and China to recover it.

If it was not so serious, that would be a joke.

Thanks for that aussie, was close to updating this thread with the Learmount blog piece but the irony of the above article IMO is all in that long winded headline - if you can call it that..

Anyway here is the Learmount blog with a recent update:

Latest phase of MH370 search gets interesting

05/11/201506/11/2015 David Learmount

On 3 November the Australian Transport Safety Bureau resumed the deep sea search for the lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Refuelled, replenished and ready to go, the ATSB’s survey ship Fugro Discovery has arrived on station once more in the southern Indian Ocean.

For those seeking a reason to be optimistic following a discouraging 20 months of searching the ocean without a result, there is definite cause for renewed hope this time.
Since it began the search the ATSB has been scrupulously methodical, scanning the ocean floor within a long, slender curved rectangle that encompassed what became known as the “7th arc”. This is a long line on the earth’s surface established by vestigial radio responses from the fatal aircraft to Inmarsat satellites just as it was running out of fuel.

Theoretically the Boeing 777 could have come down anywhere close to it, but working with the aircraft’s last radar position the ATSB identified the arc sector where the aircraft could realistically have come down, and has searched almost all of the identified curve and its close vicinity.

Since it has now trawled almost all the 7th arc’s viable sector and not found the wreckage of MH370, there is not much more to search. Logic says they must be getting close.
But not only logic.

For those who doubted MH370 came down in the sea at all, the fact it did so was established in July when one of its flaperons was washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of La Reunion. This fact was forensically confirmed more recently by the French air accident investigation agency BEA.

But there’s another reason for optimism: on 22 December last year Flightglobal published a mathematical/geometric calculation by Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy, also a mathematician, which indicates precisely where, according to his calculations, MH370 came down.

The search sector that Fugro Discovery has just begun to trawl encompasses Hardy’s predicted position for MH370. His recent refinements to the aircraft’s final descent profile put it at S39 22′ 46″ E087 06′ 20″.

This could be said to be the last chance for the search under present estimated criteria, because 777 performance dictates that the aircraft could not have flown further than this extreme southern end of the 7th-arc-defined potential ditching area.

Anyone who has published material on the web knows that it may receive praise, but it will certainly receive criticism. The impressive fact about Hardy’s mathematics is that, despite hundreds of thousands of hits on the article containing his calculations, nobody has been able to blow a hole in them.

By 3 December Fugro Discovery expects to have completed the search of the area containing, according to Hardy’s calculations, the wreck of MH370 and the remains of those who went down with it.

Hardy says he says he is excited about the next month’s search, having invested more than a year of mental and emotional energy into working out where MH370 flew, and why. He wants it found.

He’s not alone.

Watch this space for more on MH370.

LATE NEWS: On 5 November Fugro Discovery had to suspend the search and return to Fremantle, Western Australia, according to Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, because one of the crew developed suspected appendicitis. The journey to Fremantle takes six days.

From latest reports Fugro Discovery is back in Port Fremantle, hopefully all is well with the crew member...


MTF..P2