[Peetwo]

The Miniscule grows a set & overrules the Muppet -

It might be that Truss is under Prime Ministerial direction, combined with the return of the Chinese to the SIO search area; but the Oz thru the dynamic duo of 'that man' Higgins & newbie (to aviation) Mitch (give-em-hell) Bingemann write today that the DPM actually has an opinion:

Warren Truss concedes MH370 rogue pilot theory possible

• Ean Higgins, Mitchell Bingemann
  
• The Australian
  
• January 30, 2016 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney

The federal government has moved closer to accepting that Malaysia Airlines captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and brought down Flight MH370, after widespread criticism of Australian air safety investigators’ decision to exclude that scenario in deciding where to search.

The concession by Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss follows a series of articles published in The Australian and The Weekend Australian in which professional airline pilots and air safety investigators have said the “rogue pilot” theory was the most credible, and that to ignore this theory risked looking in the wrong area.

In correspondence with The Weekend Australian, Mr Truss said “it is difficult to conceive any scenario that does not include some element of human intervention” in the loss of MH370, which disappeared with 239 ­people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which operates under Mr Truss’s transport ­portfolio, has fought a rearguard ­action over its decision to work on the “type” of scenario in which the pilots became unconscious because of loss of oxygen through decompression or became otherwise “unresponsive”, and considered only the last leg of the flight from Malaysia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Pilots and aviation experts say given the deliberate flying evident in the first part of the flight back over Malaysia and the turning off of the radar transponder and cut in communications, the most likely scenario is that Captain Zaharie deliberately took the aircraft to its end, possibly as a political statement.

In a recent ABC radio interview, ATSB chief Martin Dolan said the responsibility of working out what happened rested with Malaysian investigators, and the ATSB, which is merely guiding the search, did not need to change its strategy to base it on the scenario of the pilot flying the aircraft to the end.

“All the evidence we have at the moment says that is very ­unlikely,” he told the ABC.
But in correspondence, Mr Truss appeared to open the door to accepting the possibility.

“The Australian government has not adopted a position on the cause of the crash, but … I have always acknowledged that it is difficult to conceive any scenario that does not include some ­element of human intervention,” he wrote. He also revealed Malaysia had paid $80 million towards the cost of the search. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has announced it will ­finally rejoin the hunt for MH370, saying it will send a search vessel by the end of next month.

Who'd of thought...

{Coincidence?? Malcolm's new head Mandarin 'Parko' has had his feet under the desk a week now and he is not known for letting moss grow between his toes. So is this the 1st sign of a new paradigm within the Australian bureaucratic politics associated with oversight of the MH370 SIO search?? One can only hope so, for Murky Mandarin's mob (except for AMSA) are definitely on the nose; & we all know that the PM&C rules supreme in any turf war - }

Who is Mick? Could be sin-binned Watto perhaps, being side-lined to pushing a desk he certainly would have the time? Could even be a Joe Hattley, certainly JH would be privy to all the details etc & would have the necessary experience & knowledge to provide such a comprehensive (theoretical) overview?? Anyway here is the latest instalment from tinkicker Mick :  

Mick

10 hours ago

Various commentators assume that MH370 must have been ditched largely intact because there was no wreckage found.   However, the fact that no floating wreckage was found in the initial search is hardly proof that there was no floating wreckage.   It would do well to remember that 10 days elapsed from when MH370 went missing to when the search was moved to the Southern Indian Ocean.  Further, the new search area itself was somewhat loosely defined at that stage as a complete analysis and interpretation of the INMARSAT data had not yet been completed.

A lot can happen to floating wreckage in 10 days; some of it will sink, all of it will drift.  Even if the precise location of the impact site were known, after 10 days, with a rate of drift of just 3 knots and an unknown or uncertain direction of drift, the search area would be well over 4.2 million square kilometres - that is a bit over half the area of Australia; with up to 5 knots of drift the search area increases exponentially to be more than one and a half times the area of Australia.

If the general direction of drift was known (a combination of currents and surface wind) you can reduce the areas stated above by one half to one third.   But remember, those areas apply to the first day of the search (day 10 in elapsed time), because the drift is continual, by day 2 they have expanded by 20%, the next day a further 20%.

By any standard, that is a lot of ocean to search and it gets a whole lot bigger each day! 
I really struggle to understand how anyone can argue that we would have found floating wreckage if it was there.   Frankly, with a 10 day handicap and an uncertain starting point I would have been surprised if we found anything (needless to say, I wasn't surprised). 
It does well to remember that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Mick
9 hours ago

@Brendan  You might recall a paucity of satellite imagery from the day of the crash was available 10 days later; it was all "time of request" stuff.   That said, you may also recall that an Orion and a ship were tasked with investigating an item that appeared on one satellite image but neither of them could locate it.
 
Unlike the movies, satellites capable of reading the numbers on your credit card from 200 miles up aren't recording happenings all over the world.   And that bit of the Southern Indian Ocean is a relatively un-trafficked, unremarkable stretch of water. 

John
9 hours ago

@Mick @Brendan  Exactly - And that bit of the Southern Indian Ocean is a relatively untrafficked, unremarkable stretch of water. - Only say variation is the Remakably bad weather propensities for that location: ie often  very strong winds/seas - all able to break up and disperse any ?? debris that may remain afloat - John H


John
9 hours ago

@Mick  Quite agreed - Mick - as I have posted a lot this Absence of Debris  is in itself  Neither a proof that the aircraft either landed ( ie controlled ditching ) or Crashed ( ie uncontrolled as per Capt Bailey ). With much seagoing experience I totally agree with your  scenario esp with the time factor and imprecise starting location for search efforts.

John H

Mick
8 hours ago

@John  John, good to hear from you.  What level of certainty (as in ±x°) regarding direction of drift do you reckon would have been possible 10 days after the event?  Any ideas what an average rate of drift might be in those parts?

Mick
6 hours ago

In the interests of clarity and accuracy I should point out that the rate at which the potential search area increases each day is not a flat 20% per day.   From day 1 (elapsed day 10) to day 2 (11) the search area increases by 21%, day 2 (11) to day 3 (12) the rate of increase is 19%, day 3 (12) to 4 (13) is 17%.

Perhaps a simpler way of describing the rate of increase is to say that after 4 days the area has doubled and after 8 days it has tripled in size. 

 
Gobbles not sure whether Mick (aka ???) will come and play but will put the invite out there & see if he will bite..



MTF...P2