[Peetwo]

Ben Sandilands comment on the Bailey latest:

Ben Sandilands

Posted January 16, 2016 at 8:54 pm | Permalink
As I noted at the time, the original BB article may have been edited, and the explainer today restores what I suspected might have been cut out, and concedes the point about the climb to FL450 being rubbish.

Mr Bailey also retracts the comments he attributed to John Cox. What are we left with? I think it’s a good article, as I said at the outset, and some of the conclusions may well be correct. But it’s not a definitive explanation of the mystery, and Mr Bailey has ignored the technical sequence of events preferred by the defence and science study commissioned by the ATSB, parts of which need to be refuted if his version of events is correct.

The critical part concerns the two stage flame out, the deployment of the ram air turbine, and the doppler analysis of the final signal from jet to satellite. This isn’t about the data contained, but the actual sending of the data, consistent with a satellite position of about 44 degrees above the horizon at the seventh arc.

I notice also that the second article today shifts somewhat toward ambiguity as to whether the pilot deliberately flew the jet to its end (deprived of all engine power, which would be odd to say the least) or had been previously incapacitated.

Nowhere has the ATSB definitely said other than through an apparent second hand conversation between Mr Bailey and its spokesperson, that the pilot was unconscious. It says it favours as an explanation, the pilot being unconscious.

I would be the last person in the room to go to bat for the ATSB on many, many issues, but it has been verballed, unintentionally I’m sure, into taking a rigid position that suits the premises of the article, but not the facts.

This is wrong, even if some of Mr Bailey’s suspicions, which are perfectly reasonable ones, are eventually deemed correct.

Let’s go back to the early stages of the narrative from official sources. It was that the aircraft was intentionally diverted from its filed flight path. That has actually been one of the few things consistently said by the authorities in KL throughout this saga. It remains their position, even though it is unclear when or if that intentional diversion was further diverted to a flight to oblivion in the SIO.

The authorities in KL have never said the captain did it. They may think he did it, but they haven’t said he did, and it remains possible someone else did it.

This doesn’t prevent the unconscious pilot scenario coming into effect after whatever the original plot was, came unstuck.

I hope this very untidy comment helps people understand that popular media efforts to simplify the disappearance of MH370 are fraught with the risks of misrepresentation of contrary evidence and uncertainty as to what the known facts actually mean.