[Peetwo]

Despite the Chillit comment,..

"..But I have the distinct impression David and his work have been heavily influenced by the internal national politics of this search: possibly by the Abbott administration early on, but certainly now by the Turnbull administration. Mr. Turnbull seems determined to prove ATSB has been right about something all along, even if it has been mostly wrong about everything..."

..I would argue this 'passing strange' disparity with popular opinion & empirical evidence is nothing new for the Infrastructure & Transport Ministry and it's agencies.
You only need look at the Civil Aviation Act regulatory reform program, where the bureaucracy has been lording the 'mystique of aviation safety' over governments (of both persuasions) and industry for 30+ years and at a cost of $300 + million (& counting) for little to no benefit, except possibly the decimation of a vital industry..
Perhaps post #56 from the NX thread will help explain... 
 
...It could be that the Turnbull government and it's agencies are privy to some vital cog of information that reinforces their belief that the ATSB SIO search priority area, is indeed correct; or it could be that they are passed the PNR, where to withdraw now is no longer an acceptable alternative - who knows? Still it will be fascinating to see how the government directs the narrative and extricates itself between now and the SIO search conclusion...  

The DOI - Part III

From Jeff Wise blog piece - The Rodrigues Debris Puzzle

Brock McEwen

Posted April 6, 2016 at 12:43 PM

@Bobby: your argument is perfectly valid – it just still seems highly unlikely: yet another instance in which the true path is on one heading, but some deviant flight dynamic (in this case, a material altitude change at the moment of the ping, despite no evidence supporting material altitude change in the hour before, or the 4.5 hours after) happens to be present, which embeds into the data the impression of a very different path. Occam’s razor says we should search for more rational explanations – such as that the plane suffered a fate some government wants to hush up. Or that it hit at the still unsearched 84°S, like you used to recommend with high confidence (and with my support – though always conditioned on ISAT data authenticity, and before Oz shores came up empty).

To which Paul Smithson replied:

Paul Smithson

Posted April 6, 2016 at 1:19 PM

@Brock. I agree that the fragments point towards a high energy impact – in which case there should also have been plenty of debris. If the BTO data “might” be wrong (for reasons unclear) then it seems to me that we have a much better candidate end point. Namely the ONLY place where not one, but 6 separate satellites picked detected a debris field – including multiple objects >10m in size. This locations matches with considerable precision the end point of a ghost flight arising from immediate turnback from IGARI towards KL. IMHO this is by far the best candidate for flight end point and its only major problem is mismatch with the BTO range. If we are going to question BTO, then go to 44S, 84E. For those who haven’t read the paper describing the flight path modelling, the pdf can be downloaded at http://www.findMH370.com

And before you mention drift feasibility, I think its worth pointing out that CSIRO reverse drift from Reunion does indeed point to more N locations as most likely origin. It also indicates DSTG/IG area as a low probability origin. But you will also see that there are 6 “virtual tracks” that originated at the area that I am proposing. In other words, there is another route to Reunion “around the outside” (drifts closer to W coast of Oz before going west across the SIO gyre.

Having said this, a crash at 44-45S would likely produce debris finds in S Australia (not West coast), which nobody appears to be looking for…

&..

Paul Smithson

Posted April 6, 2016 at 1:30 PM


edit – should have checked before hitting “post”…

Estimated *origin* of the 100s of objects detected by satellite is 44S, 88E (not 84, as mis-typed above).

By the time they were detected, 8 – 16 days after disappearance, these objects were spread over an area of ocean 44-46S, 89-91E.

Further work that I have been doing on BTO error patterns indicates a very high correlation (but with altered coefficient for reasons that I cannot fathom) for a path that ends about 60NM to the SE of my estimate of debris origin, at position 45S, 89.5E.

This end point corresponds with a diversion to KL initiated immediately at IGARI waypoint

Before we go onto the response from Brock to Paul's posts here is a Youtube re-hash on the ATSB/CSIRO propaganda (from 8 months ago) that they say proved that it was possible that the MH370 flaperon came from their defined SIO priority search area :

Hmm..did anyone else notice how none of that drift model depiction, from the ATSB SIO search priority area, went anywhere near the Mozambique Channel and also the chances of debris hitting the shore in Mossel Beach in South Africa seemed improbably remote??

Anyway here is the self-appointed auditor ( ) of the MH370 search effort Brock McEwan with his excellent and IMO most common-sense response to the possible implications of the possible Rodrigues debris findings:  

Brock McEwen
Posted April 6, 2016 at 5:55 PM


@Paul: I appreciate that the satellite imagery at 44S has a strong following. I don’t dismiss it: my thesis for well over a year has been that the evidence points to a search that has not been conducted in good faith. The March 28, 2014 decision to utterly abandon (“sprint away from” might describe it better) that region would seem consistent with this thesis.

But I’m not a satellite imagery expert – and have yet to see one weigh in on this topic – so I rely on corroborating evidence.

Like the BTOs. And now the drift studies.

It is not just the BTO data/interpretation with which a 44S debris zone conflicts: the drift studies suggest debris generated that far south is an extremely poor fit to the observed surface debris results – not least of which being the seemingly empty Oz (western, southern, Tasmanian) shorelines. Unless someone scrubbed the sea surface clean, Oz should have seen LOTS of the shrapnel from such a debris field by long before now. -

So the list of conflicts is enough to keep me firmly on the fence, I’m afraid.

Instead of fighting with other theorists for your scenario, I hope you join me in my demand for accountability and transparency from search leaders who’ve thus far failed miserably to explain the many glaring gaps between search decisions they’ve taken, and what their own data can support. Through fuller disclosure, we may vindicate your faith in those images.

  
(bold above) - Here, here to that, bring it on Brock, there is way too much bullshit, spin & obfuscation from the powers to be.

The signs are ominous even the newly appointed spin-meister minister Chester is starting to show signs of withdrawing from past stated response to possible debris findings:     

24 March 2016 - ...“The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370,” Mr Chester said.

“That such debris has been found on the east coast of Africa is consistent with drift modelling performed by CSIRO and further affirms our search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean..."

&..

03 April 2016 - Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester today confirmed another piece of debris, found in Mauritius, will be examined in connection to the disappearance of MH370.

“The Malaysian Government is working with officials from Mauritius to seek to take custody of the debris and arrange for its examination,” Mr Chester said.

“This debris is an item of interest however until the debris has been examined by experts it is not possible to ascertain its origin.”

More than 95,000 square kilometres of the 120,000 square kilometre search zone have been completed.

“As we continue the search in the days and months ahead, we remain hopeful the aircraft will be found,” Mr Chester said.

 
Standby for the next round of DOI (Debris Of Inconvenience) findings..


MTF...P2

Ps

Clive Irving courtesy 'The Daily Beast'...

Olivia Harris/Reuters
[/url]
Clive Irving

THIS AIN’T CLUB MED
04.12.16 3:00 PM ET

[url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/12/why-is-the-search-for-mh370-debris-being-left-to-amateurs.html?via=desktop&source=twitter]Why Is the Search for MH370 Debris Being Left to Amateurs?

The only bits of the missing airliner have been found by tourists and part-time sleuths on beaches. Meanwhile, the $180 million underwater search is running out of time.

A little fragment of paradise named Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean has become part of an unfolding controversy about how vital clues to the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could have been discovered much sooner than they were—and whether many more are waiting to be found.

Even on the largest and most detailed maps of the Indian Ocean, Rodrigues barely shows up. It is only 41.6 square miles in area—literally the tip of an extinct volcano, part of a ridge that extends for hundreds of miles, mostly underwater.
Like many other volcanic islands, Rodrigues is encircled by a coral reef that works as a natural breakwater, creating broad and shallow lagoons between it and land, and protecting many golden beaches.

Two weeks ago two guests at a budget hotel on the southeastern coast were enjoying one of those beaches when they spotted a piece of gray metal among some flotsam. When they examined it more closely they realized that they might have found a piece of debris from Flight 370.

Although the coral reef would naturally inhibit flotsam reaching the island’s inner coast, there is a gap in the reef close to the Mourouk Ebony Hotel where the guests were staying, resulting in a small channel allowing tidal movement to the beaches.
That piece of debris is now on its way to Australia, where it will be examined by experts who have already confirmed that other pieces of debris found on beaches in the western Indian Ocean were from the Malaysian Boeing 777.

If the debris from Rodrigues does turn out to be from Flight 370 the location of the island is particularly significant. It is part of the Republic of Mauritius but lies some 450 miles east of the main island of Mauritius—and around 550 miles east of the island of La Reunion, where the first piece of Flight 370 debris, a part of the wing called a flaperon, was discovered last July.


Any debris from the airplane will have drifted on currents across the Indian Ocean from east to west, originating in the area some 1,700 miles west of the Australian coast where searchers are looking for main parts of the wreckage presumed to be laying at great depths. Rodrigues would therefore have been, in all probability, the first landmass to intercept any debris.

Computer models run to estimate the time and course taken for wreckage to cross the Indian Ocean toward Africa have allowed 500 days as a rule-of-thumb number for the duration of the crossing. The flaperon was found 509 days from the date of Flight 370’s disappearance, March 8, 2014. By that measure, debris could first have reached Rodrigues in markedly less than 500 days.

Australian experts noted that wreckage found early this year in the Mozambique Channel (a broad sea passage between the Mozambique coast and Madagascar) was found 716 days after the disaster. But, they pointed out, “it had taken possibly much less time to get there.” And it had “probably spent a significant length of time either weathering in the sun and, or, washing back and forth in the sand at this or some other location.”


In saying this, the Australians explained what seemed to be an anomaly: the metal surface of the debris from Mozambique was scrubbed clean (clean enough to read the words “NO STEP” on its edge) whereas the much larger flaperon found on La Reunion was encrusted with barnacles, gathered during its passage. This seems to confirm that the flaperon was discovered within days of washing ashore, before it could be subjected to weathering and scrubbing on a beach.

Even if the wreckage found on Rodrigues proves not to be from Flight 370 the random nature of the confirmed discoveries and the fact that many miles of shoreline in the western Indian Ocean are unpopulated suggests, as one expert told The Daily Beast: “Useful pieces of wreckage for analysis could very well be laying somewhere on a beach, undiscovered and untouched.”

David Griffin of the Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, CSIRO, based in Australia, who worked on the computer modeling of debris drift patterns, told The Daily Beast, somewhat cryptically: “One way to think of it is this: If there were just three pieces to have landed on beaches, it’s pretty amazing that all three have been found.”

In fact, the total found so far could be five: the flaperon, two pieces in the Mozambique Channel, all confirmed as being from the Boeing 777, a fragment of a Rolls Royce engine casing found on a South African beach and the piece found on Rodrigues, both of these awaiting expert inspection in Australia.

The Daily Beast asked a spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Board, ATSB, which leads both the underwater search and the inspection of debris, whether in view of the value of even the smallest piece of debris once that it is established that it is from Flight MH370, it is not time for a more systematic search to be made of the coastlines where the highest likelihood exists of finding debris.

He declined to reply and recommended that the question should be put to the Malaysian authorities in charge of the investigation in Kula Lumpur. This was done, but following a familiar pattern, the Malaysians did not respond to several requests for a reply.

After the discovery of the flaperon on La Reunion there was a short and perfunctory search by airplanes and helicopters of surrounding coastlines but it turned up nothing.
All of the debris has so far been found by a combination of amateur sleuthing, beachcombers and observation by people on vacation.

The ATSB has told the Daily Beast that the current undersea search will have cost as much as $180 million at its conclusion. Australia committed $60 million, China committed $20 million in assets and finance and the balance, in both assets and finance, came from Malaysia.

Experts I have spoken to argue that if only a small fraction of the money and resources devoted to the undersea search were devoted to a more systematic search of the coastlines where more debris almost certainly remains undiscovered it would surely be justified.

That said, finding the main body of the wreckage, and particularly the flight data recorders, remains by far the most important part of the search, and the only hope of ever really explaining what happened to create the greatest mystery in modern aviation history.

Of the 48, 263 square miles of the total undersea search area, 9,600 square miles remains to be searched—that is an area more or less exactly the size of Vermont. In February the ATSB said that they anticipated that the search will be completed by June.

“In the absence of credible new information leading to a specific location of the aircraft there will be no further expansion of the search area,” they said.

If—heaven forbid—the search is unsuccessful it will be a tough moment of reckoning and there will doubtless be pressure to reexamine the premise on which the search area was based.

That would also leave the floating debris as the only surviving evidence. And that, at the very least, does prove that the airplane crashed into the Indian Ocean, and did not—as some conspiracy theories proposed—get snatched by some unseen hand to be diverted to a hidden location on land.

Each piece of floating debris, no matter how small, has its own story to tell when investigators examine it. The more pieces that are discovered, the more that can be understood about, for example, how different parts of the airplane were torn away on impact with the water and, possibly, in what sequence. And, based on what has been found, there is no evidence of fire or an explosion playing a role. It is not enough, but in the absence of anything else it is better than knowing nothing.