[Peetwo]

ATSB & MH370 - Public interest disclosure?

{P2 comment: Thought it was worth dragging the continuing theme of interactive commentary & debate, emanating from the Australian's MH370 articles - which appear designed to probe the depths of the ATSB MH370 induced information vacuum - to this thread and for obvious reasons.. }

Extract off Australia, ATSB and MH 370 thread - Post #222:

[quote pid='3293' dateline='1453470880']

Questions over MH370 search funding shortfall

- Okay tin hat donned:

Not sure how many people have a subscription to the Oz but some of the commentary, comment numbers must now have surpassed 1000 across all MH370 blogged articles, associated with the Higgins articles (above) & the Bailey articles is really very good.

Now although I don't totally agree with some of the finer points (opinions/theories), the best for today's Higgins article so far has to be from Mervyn, who IMO pretty much nails it: 

Mervyn 5ptsFeatured
1 hour ago

It would seem to me that the real story here is the sheer incompetence and bloody-mindedness of the ATSB, whose investigative members do not have the experience or knowledge of the airline pilots who have commented on this matter.

Consider for one moment the implications globally of the aircraft being found, and the recovery of the black box clearly shows that the pilot was in command right until the very end. Not only will that contravene all the rubbish that has been touted by the various authorities to-date, but will give the ATSB a resounding slapping which they so richly deserve.

There is no doubt that a very serious game of cover-up is being played by all the governments embroiled in this fiasco, no the least our own Australian government, but mostly the Malaysian government. Please do not think that for one moment because Australia commissioned Fugro to conduct the search, and that Australia guaranteed the fees for such search, that Australia is not part of the cover-up. When one controls the search, and more importantly the information dissemination, then one controls what is being reported!

And what is being reported is what the ATSB is dribbling, because this is what our Government, in collusion with Malaysia and others, has decided is the best strategy to cover up the obvious - that the pilot may well have committed this atrocity as a extremist Islamist in the name of Islamic State!

If that is the case, and it does appear to be a logical albeit unproven possibility, then it is not unreasonable to assume that Malaysia, as a secular Muslim state, would seek to distance itself from such atrocity - and the easiest way to do this is to cosy up to Australia and quite easily convincing our relevant Minister that it is best served to sweep this matter under the rug than for the truth to prevail.

Consider for one moment the implications of a pilot with an Islamist bent behind the controls of a commercial airliner - there would be mass panic in air travel circles, with aircraft from secular Muslim countries banned from entering our airspace. Think Etihad, think Malaysia Airlines,  think Air Singapore. Think chaos.

Truss is a National, who are socialist agrarians, who believe in state protection of primary industries, and like every other farmer has a sense of entitlement to mass government handouts to maintain the status quo. He is the Minister for Transport because of his political position, not because of his competency or knowledge of matters transportation.

The theory submitted by the ATSB will over time be shredded, as more and more B777-200 pilots voice their knowledge and experience in this regard. However, for now, the ATSB is the "official" voice on this matter, and clearly it is doing the bidding of a subversive agenda, and not fulfilling the mandate for which it was empowered under law.

As I said, the real story here is about lies and deceit, not about air safety. Root out who is telling the lies and who is being deceitful, expose them publicly, and air safety will have meaning and precedence once again.

Now although Bailey comes across as somewhat arrogant & opinionated I have to admire the fact that he is prepared to face down any of his critics. One way he is doing that is by being interactive on the blog comments, where one dude called 'Mick' is repeatedly & comprehensively dishing it out.

Here is an example:

Mick 17 hours ago

I know that Captain Bailey is not a bona fide journalist but he would be well served by having a journalist proof his work prior to publication. That way he might avoid misrepresenting the Air Transport Safety Bureau. The ATSB have not postulated on the cause of the loss of MH370, that is not their job. Their job is to find the crash site and then hand over to Malaysian and US investigators whose job it is to determine the cause.

In order to determine the search zone the ATSB are working with limited data
- the known performance characteristics of the Boeing 777-200 ER in general (Boeing are assisting here)
- the specific performance characteristics of the actual aircraft that operated as MH370, rego 9M-MRO (Malaysian Airlines have assisted here)
- the projected flight path of the aircraft based on the analysis of satellite data (INMARSAT and The University of London have assisted here).

What the ATSB have said is "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 characterised by a pilot-controlled glide). The final stages of the ‘unresponsive crew/hypoxia’ event-type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction."

Note - "best fit", "available evidence", "final period", emphasis on "final period".

Captain Bailey's theory is that the captain, for reasons unknown, took control of the aircraft by securing himself in the cockpit, made the aircraft "dark" (difficult to track) by disabling all communications including the transponders, depressurised the aircraft so as to incapacitate and kill everybody on board, reprogrammed the flight management system (FMS), what most of us know as the "auto-pilot", to fly back across the Malaysian Peninsula and then down between Malaysia and Indonesia before turning south into the Indian ocean, repressurised the aircraft so that he would not freeze to death and then stayed at the controls for the remainder of the flight so that he could ditch in the Southern Indian Ocean whereupon he flooded the aircraft to sink it so as to avoid leaving any debris and he then died by either drowning or exposure.

One question immediately arises - why would the pilot risk a ditching in the Southern Indian Ocean, a manoeuvre fraught with the risk of an aircraft break-up (one only needs to look at video of the last moments of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 to understand the risk) in order to leave no debris in an area that no one would be looking at (there is absolutely no doubt that the captain was not aware that the INMARSAT satellite handshakes were even occuring leave alone that the data could be used to plot the course of the aircraft he had so painstakingly disappeared).

If you accept the first premise of Captain Bailey's theory - that the Captain was responsible for disappearing the aircraft as part of an elaborate suicide - once the FMS was reprogrammed, the Captain's efforts to disappear were effectively complete; he did not have to stay at the controls for the aircraft to fly the elaborate evasive track it subsequently flew. He could have completed the reprogramming very shortly after securing the cockpit and if the ultimate end he had in mind for himself was suicide, what method would he choose?

- hypoxia, achieved by taking his oxygen mask off, painless and certain, he would have lost consciousness and then died from lack of oxygen; or
- drowning, only after he had executed an extremely hazardous ocean landing that may have left him badly injured or killed him anyway.

If you opt for hypoxia (who wouldn't?) then the ATSB's unresponsive crew/hypoxia event accurately describes the terminal phase of the flight.

I fear Captain Bailey is simply and persistently looking for a very public fight where there's none to be had.

To which BB replied:

Byron 16 hours ago

@Chris @Mick The Australian did proof my article and left out a lot of the damning criticism of the ATSB and my challenge to the head of CASA to debate live on the ABC, why the ATSB report of 04 Dec 2015, so proudly presented by Warren Truss, was, to put it mildly a confection that did not agree at all with what I and a senior Emirates B777 Instructor experienced 3 weeks ago, in a Dubai B777 simulator when we tried their various Flame Out theories.

[/quote]

In reply to Mervyn, Bots absolutely nails it for my QOTM nomination... :

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Botswana O'Hooligan
22 hours ago

@Mervyn  Pretty good Mervyn, I was reminded about incompetence the other day when visiting a pilot "convenience" way out in the bush. Someone had posted a sticker on the door and it read, "CASA is not happy until all pilots are unhappy" and that about sums it all up for the ATSB too.

Fugro is a very competent outfit but they are looking where they were told to look and that aeroplane could be anywhere from where the last supposedly "ping" was transmitted.

No one seems to know, or if they do they are not saying, how much fuel was on board at departure, what level and what power settings were used after that last "ping" was heard for that would be vital in figuring the search area dimensions. Once that set of data is known it is not hard to figure out how far the aeroplane could have travelled for if we assume it was at forty thousand it could possible glide 120 nautical miles in just about any direction so the search area or circle of probability would be (to be on the safe side) 140 nautical miles across and that alone covers sixty one and a half thousand square miles. That is assuming nil wind conditions and about normal jet aeroplane operating procedures.

There is absolutely no doubt in the minds of many of we old aviators that the aeroplane was under the control of a pilot or someone who knew how to operate the systems, and there is also no doubt in our minds that the ATSB and CASA are incompetent to a certain degree, but always remember that it is a big ocean out there and that there are a couple of crashed aeroplanes on the eastern seaboard that have never been found either.

 
Also a very insightful post from Gary helps join the dots of the ATSB & CASA trail of ineptitude, obfuscation & malfeasance..   

Gary 5ptsFeatured
2 days ago

This won't be the first time a previously highly respected worldwide and experienced investigator, the ATSB has excelled in practising incompetence or has bowed to a political agenda.

They drove the legislative requirement for ALL aircraft private or airline with a maximum take off weight over 5700kg to carry both FDR and CVR. A laudable result putting Australia in the forefront of this arena. This is at considerable expense for private non fare paying passenger aircraft who mostly elsewhere are only required to carry a simple CVR.

The obvious rationale being that should there be an accident they, the ATSB,  would have a superior means of investigation and resolution.  Fair enough.

So when we have an aeromedical aircraft (the industry insists that technically patients are non fare paying passengers and are therefore not entitled to the considerably more expensive safety requirements mandated for fare paying passengers) in the case of an air ambulance Westwind over 5700 kg and presumably carrying serviceable FDR and CV as required, "ditching" off Norfolk at night and by some miracle without loss of life. Do they recover the recorders which should have contained a blow by blow description of the events prior.  Inexplicably no, and they were and probably still are in around 30, yes, thirty meters of water. A Senate investigation was not kind to the investigators. 

There are still many unanswered questions and unresolved issues concerning this accident many of the answers to which which would be provided by the recorders, but the clairvoyants in the ATSB have decided they know better, and that the recorders would have nothing to offer.  Really, you couldn't make it up.

And that's just for a start.

Those of us with the same breadth and depth of experience as Captain Bailey in other areas of the industry in Australia, both agree with his hypothesis and remain astounded at what passes in the ATSB for "logic" in this instance, but are not the least but surprised.

As with the Norfolk accident, there is another agenda most likely political at work.

Australia where 'Ineptocracy' rules OK -

Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc'-ra-cy) - a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers. syn- socialism.

MTF...P2