[Peetwo]

NewsCorp v ATSB war ratchet's up a notch. 

Today the war devolves to the lighter weight NewsCorp tabloid publications. 

Extract from off my post on the 'Tick flick & publish' thread:

MH370 - The dangers of desktop journalism?

The following article by Robyn Ironside (courtesy the Sunday Mail) on the MH370 SIO search developments (or not ), seems to be somewhat disjointed and quotes from 'exclusive' news filed almost a year ago & then jumps to recent news from just days ago:

ATSB boss admits MH370 search vessels may have missed plane

January 30, 20165:08pm

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/news/content/v1/origin:video_integrator.9ta2NlMDE6PiIh2w9k3hNa2yiTozW-Xg?t_product=video&t_template=../video/player[/img]

Fugro Discovery heading out to the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: ATSB

Robyn Ironside News Corp Australia Network

  
That strange, disjointed, tabloid article has elicited this highly critical & sometimes sarcastic, word lashing from Ben Sandilands : 

News goes ga-ga over year old MH370 news

Ben Sandilands | Jan 31, 2016 8:36AM
The cruel sea beneath which the durable wreckage of MH370 lies

The News organisation definition of ‘exclusive’ when it comes to MH370 appears to be reporting news that is more than a year old. - Luv it Ben

In defence of RI, I do get the impression that she is just a small pawn in a much bigger game that has seen a national newspaper in recent weeks regurgitating essentially old news files & theories related to MH370. Where that game is headed who knows, I just hope that respect will be shown for the MH370 NOK while the NewsCorp v ATSB battle continues. Keep the JACC head Judith Zielke's comment (in regard to the wind up of the search) in mind before publishing some of this rubbish.

“No matter what we do that’s an extremely difficult thing for the families to come to terms with and we will continue to hope that we’re successful (in the search),”

 Remember false hope is sometimes a lot more soul destroying than no hope..   

And on the Mick v BB front well unfortunately it now seems to be turning into a slanging match..

Byron



At last some common sense The truth has a way of eventually surfacing.

Mick

@Byron Says the man who took a heading from a diagram and a sentence that appeared 550 words later from an ATSB report, stitched them together with a "The" and an "and" and hoodwinked readers into believing it was a direct "quotation" from the ATSB for the sole purpose of ridiculing them.  

Spare us any pontifications on the truth, please.

However there is still some good common-sense debate & analytical reasoning coming through, examples:

David

This is nothing new. The ATSB has never said it rejected the rogue pilot theory, or endorsed it. That is the business of the Malaysian investigation. The ATSB's task is to establish where to search for the lost aircraft and to do that it does not need to establish the cause of the loss, merely what the situation is at the end of the flight. That includes the aircraft's last known likely position and what is likely to have happened after that. Because the last signals to and from the satellite are consistent with fuel exhaustion and no-one has offered a sensible alternative interpretation, the ATSB has said it is unlikely the aircraft ditched. This was Captain Bailey's assertion and would require fuel. The above is on the ATSB's web site. 

While Captain Bailey has been asserting there was pilot control early on, he has created a straw man in asserting the ATSB opposed this. It is not its business to argue for or against. Many others have held the opinion that someone was flying the aircraft early on when its radar transponder and other things stopped operating; and still do. He is not and has not been, a lone voice in the wilderness.

It makes no difference as to whether that is so or who that might have been flying the aircraft early on as to where to look for the wreckage.

 
&..

Brendan

One thing which stands out in the ATSB December 2015 Definition of Search Areas document compared to the corresponding part of the June 2014 document, is the shift in emphasis about the end of flight scenario.

In the earlier report, they supposedly review previous accidents and end up deciding that this case best fits what they call the “unresponsive crew/hypoxia event”, but only relating to the cruise phase, and also they emphasise only for the purposes of deciding a search strategy. They even say that “a maximum glide distance of 100+ NM would result in an impractically large search area, the search team considered that it was reasonable to assume that there were no control inputs following the flame out of second engine”

This is what Captain Bailey and others (I hope I'm not misquoting anyone) have always been unhappy about, and as always acknowledged by ATSB themselves, it would have consequences for the search area.

But the latest report simply says that there are no comparable B777 accidents. And on page 13 the report says that “the evidence is therefore inconsistent with a controlled ditching scenario” However their definition of that term is probably different to what most people would understand. The report states that a “controlled ditching scenario” (also p. 13) must include having engine thrust available. So the ditching on the Hudson was not a “controlled ditching scenario.” Also in stating that MH370 is not a “controlled ditching scenario”, they are not ruling out a pilot sitting in the plane operating the controls. They just avoid the question.

Not to say that they are wrong.

David

@Brendan Captain Bailey in the 9/10 Jan Weekend Australian said it was "commonsense" that a rogue pilot had, "performed a controlled ditching under engine power." This would entail fuel. He has not explained how having fuel could be consistent with reasonable interpretation of the satellite communication data, which indicates the aircraft ran out of fuel before ditching. The Hudson ditching was not "controlled" in this sense and was at the end of a glide, albeit flaps had been lowered under the emergency power of the APU to get ditching speed down. It is not what Captain Bailey had in mind or, Simon Hardy, another pilot and bookwriter, who he quoted earlier.

A controlled glide has not been discounted but it would lead to a much larger search area if included. More to the point it is thought to be unlikely for several reasons I have encountered, some of which the ATSB advances. One is that a pilot, if wanting to minimise flotsam, would elect to do a ditching under engine power, which, on the evidence this one didn't. (This raises whether a ditching from a glide in other than calm waters would be other than a crash, and predicting and finding smooth waters down south would be chancy. And in any case, because there is little debris does not mean that this was accomplished. As pointed out elsewhere, delays, distance and search site selection would account for this, when supplemented by some items being dragged down by barnacles and sinking)

Secondly the pilot would have to be aware that after engine fuel exhaustion there would be some still available, because of a different fuel outlet position, to start the APU. He would need the APU to get flaps down. Even if aware of this, he would be unaware whether it would run for long enough since that is very dependent on aircraft nose up or down, the exact relationship remaining unknown even now. Third he would have to switch off the IFE (it was on earlier in the flight) or shut down/disconnect the APU shortly after it started to cause the satellite communications which actually occurred. There is no obvious reason why he would want to do any of these things, almost certainly being unaware of these satellite communications.

So yes the definition of the controlled ditching scenario is in the middle of this. Glad that you too have read the ATSB reports. 

As to John's comment above, I have no present nor past affiliation with the ATSB. I do think they are doing a fine job, utilising all sorts of skills, national and international, and I see them and the searchers as a team we should support. It is through quite some skill from them, the satellite people and analysts that a rational search area has been identified at all, giving at least a shot at finding the wreckage. I daresay there is a deal of skill and perseverance being applied by the searchers also. Scepticism is fair, but cynicism and denigration are out of place. 
Hrmmph.

&..

Andrew

I have no skin in the game of protecting the ATSB, just an aviation professional who gets annoyed at the frequent misreporting of aviation matters in the media. Here we have Byron Bailey, a former airline captain, pushing his theory of what happened to MH370. That's fine, we all have our theories and there is some logic to Byron's conclusions. What is not fine is that he selectively misquotes the ATSB in a bid to promote his theory. I have no problem with anyone criticising the ATSB's analysis, but please be honest.

IMO if nothing else the BB Oz articles have led to some seriously good thought provoking commentary. The Oz has also managed to bring the MH370 SIO search back in the spotlight, which from experience is the last place that Dolan, Mrdak & the Minister really want it to be - unless of course they do actually find MH370...


MTF..P2