[Peetwo]

Let the games begin - Part II

Courtesy IBT:

Flight MH370 Update: Air Safety Investigators Eliminate Rogue Pilot Theory After Malaysian Plane Debris Found

By Jess McHugh @McHughJess On 01/10/16 AT 5:02PM      French maritime authorities look at a map indicating measures being undertaken in the search for wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 while at the Saint-Marie marina in the French territory of Reunion Island in August 2015. Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Authorities involved in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have mostly dismissed the theory its pilot went rogue and crashed the plane in the Indian Ocean, the Australian newspaper reported Sunday. The flight disappeared from radar en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014, and an international search team has been looking for evidence about what happened to it ever since.

“The limited evidence available for MH370 was compared with three accident classes: an in-flight upset, an unresponsive crew/hypoxia event, and a glide event [generally characterized by a pilot-controlled glide],” according to Dan O’Malley, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau representative cited by the Australian. The leading theory held by investigators is that a dip in oxygen in the cabin caused the crew to lose both consciousness and control of the plane in a so-called hypoxia event.

The first clue as to what may have happened to the Malaysia Airlines craft surfaced more than a year after its disappearance. A flaperon later confirmed as a piece of Flight 370 washed up on Reunion Island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, evidence supporting the theory the plane crashed.

Since the flaperon was found, probers have not been able to put together exactly what happened to the plane. And most authorities agree they will not fully understand what happened to it until the black box, or flight data recorder, is recovered from the cockpit, a possibility that becomes increasingly unlikely as time goes by.

Friends and relatives of the missing passengers and crew members have grown desperate about finding out what occurred as nearly two years have passed since the plane disappeared from radar. “The pilot suicide theory for Flight MH370 gained traction because, throughout the last year, there’s been no evidence of an outside plot,” aviation writer Sylvia Spruck Wrigley told BBC News last spring.

And today from TMA ('that man again') courtesy the Oz :

Pilot ‘hijacked and crashed’ MH370: expert

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• January 12, 2016 12:00AM
  

A leading international aviation expert has added his voice to the growing opinion that Captain ­Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his aircraft and flew the 238 passengers and crew on Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 to a watery grave.

Captain John Cox, a veteran US airline pilot who now runs an aviation safety consultancy, also warned against abandoning the search for the aircraft as is scheduled to occur in June.

“Aviation does not do well with mysteries; MH370 remains a ­mystery,” Captain Cox told The Australian.

Captain Cox’s intervention comes as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau continues to resist the publicly expressed views of other senior airline pilots, including Australian Byron Bailey in The Weekend Australian, that the facts indicate the aircraft was flown by Captain Zaharie the full seven hours until it ditched or ran out of fuel.

While the investigation is ­officially the responsibility of Malaysia, the ATSB, which is guiding the underwater hunt for MH370 in the Southern Ocean, has had to make assumptions about the flight’s final hours to work out the most fruitful area to search.

Its preferred theory is that the pilots became unconscious from hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, due to aircraft decompression, or that they were otherwise rendered “unresponsive”.

The ATSB bases its theory on data from electronic satellite “handshakes” with the aircraft which suggest it flew in a straight line without apparent pilot intervention in the last five hours.

Airline pilots say this could be simply explained by Captain Zaharie deliberately programming the aircraft’s flight management system to fly that route, while he remained in ultimate control.

“There is insufficient evidence to conclude or exclude the pilot hypoxia theory,” Captain Cox said.

“There is more evidence to support the intentional act by the captain but whether there was hypoxia is undetermined. The most likely theory, in my opinion, is the MH370 (disappearance) was an intentional act by the captain.”

The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with radio contact lost early on and the radar transponder apparently turned off or disabled.

Malaysian military radar shows the aircraft turned back to Malaysia and flew along the border with Thailand, and over Captain Zaharie’s home island of Penang, before turning south.

Captain Cox, who has served on six major US National Transportation Safety Board investigations, said the pattern showed during the early phases of the flight the aircraft was being flown to avoid attention.

He said MH370 flew right along the boundary of flight information regions, the borders between countries’ airspace.

“MH370 flew precisely over three waypoints that are on the FIR boundary,” Captain Cox said. - or was that what the Malaysians etc. want us to believe?

“This is significant because it means that each country assumes the airplane is under the other country’s control.

“The fact that the transponder was switched off, the FMS was reprogrammed and the flight path was precisely along the FIR boundary all indicate to me an ­intentional act.” - doesn't mean it was either pilot, could be anyone with the knowledge of programming FMC. The point should be made that if it could be proven the aircraft actually flew that route, then pilot/third party/human intervention would be conclusive.

One unexplained aberration (ACARS off reasonable probability of human intervention but could be other explanation) might be acceptable but not three, transponders off then FIR boundary waypoint input on FMC scratchpad designed to skim FIR boundary.

It should also be pointed out that it is possible to programme the FMC to fly a radial off a waypoint and the aircraft in LNAV would continue to fly that radial like it was flying that great circle track until it ran out of fuel. This means it would not be necessary for the FMC programmer to place a designated SIO WP into the FMC  - just saying.  

The federal government has said the search by three vessels with sonar would not go beyond June, when the last 40,000sq km of the 120,000sq km “high potential” search zone is complete.

MTF...P2