[Peetwo]

Des Ross latest on MH370 via SMH

Search for MH370 thousands of kilometres off target: Australian aviation expert
Date June 17, 2016


Lindsay Murdoch
South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media

A pilot searches for debris from MH370 in the Indian Ocean in the weeks after it disappeared.

• Suspected MH370 cabin debris found on island in Mauritius
  
• Possible MH370 debris found in South Africa
  

Bangkok:  An Australian aviation expert says he is convinced MH370 crashed into the sea west of the Malaysian mainland without proper control by the pilots who were incapacitated by a catastrophic event on board the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777.

Desmond Ross, a commercial pilot with 25 years experience as an aviation and defence industry manager, told Fairfax Media that his "gut feeling and experience" tells him the southern Indian Ocean search has been conducted in the wrong area, thousands of kilometres from the crash site.

A curved piece of debris which may be part of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, was found in Wartburg, South Africa, in March. Photo: AP

"I have said since day one that the aircraft was not under full control and was flying on a course set on the flight management system but with incapacitated pilots unable to make changes," he said.

"The aircraft descended to a low altitude because the pilots had set an emergency descent when a catastrophic event occurred on the aircraft, but they had been unable to complete their manoeuvre due to incapacitation."

The aircraft carrying 239 people inexplicably altered course from its scheduled flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing while flying over the South China Sea in the early hours of March 8, 2014, turning back to fly across Malaysia.

Debris washed on to the Jamaique beach in Saint-Denis on Reunion. Photo: Reuters

Investigators say turning the plane around would have required typing a complicated code input into a flight management system, indicating either foul play or an event that caused the pilots to lose consciousness after they had done it.

Captain Ross, who conducted a review of Kuala Lumpur's international airport in 2005, said the search area was based on the "relatively flimsy science" of calculations by the British company Inmarsat, which the company itself said were not guaranteed to be accurate.

The search area was based on calculations using automatic "pings" to Inmarsat's satellite via a ground station and the aircraft after it vanished.


MH370 search map

Captain Ross said people seem to have forgotten the reports of eyewitnesses on an oil rig and yacht seeing a flaming object in the sky on the night of the disappearance, in an area west of Malaysia.

"The scientific theory could not allow these reports and they were discarded," he said.
New Zealander Mike McKay told authorities he saw what he believed to be a burning plane at high altitude when he was working on an oil rig off the Vietnamese coast on the night of the disappearance.


MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

"I believe I saw the Malaysian Airlines plane come down," he said.
A woman sailing a yacht between India and Australia in early March 2014 also told authorities she saw a plane surrounded by bright orange lights and with a tail of black smoke pass above her. 

Captain Ross pointed to reports that six Swiss people who were on board a cruise liner travelling between Perth and Singapore on March 12 2014 saw debris in the sea including life jackets, food trays, papers and pieces of polystyrene.


MH370 first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.

He dismissed the argument by pundits that some aircraft parts that have been discovered on the beaches of Mozambique, Reunion Island and other east African locations prove the accuracy of the Indian Ocean search area.

"Well now – isn't it also true that these same parts may have come from somewhere much closer? How about a crash site to the west of Malaysia?"

The first debris confirmed to be from MH370 was a control panel called a flaperon that washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July 2015.

Other debris that almost certainly came from plane washed up in Mozambique in December 2015 and February this year.

In March, a section of an engine bearing a Rolls Royce logo washed up in Mossell Bay South Africa and the same month a fragment of an interior door panel was found on Rodrigues Island, Mauritius.

Captain Ross dismissed as "rubbish" the theory that a suicidal Malaysian pilot did a circuit around his home island before flying on for more than seven hours to ditch the plane in the Indian Ocean.

"The home island was beside a highly sensitive international '5 eyes' surveillance facility and the major Penang air force base, the home of the Royal Malaysian Air Force, and it is highly unlikely that the Malaysian military would have allowed such loitering of an unidentified aircraft in their airspace," he said.

"If it did, it shows their lack of interest in security or their incompetence in following unidentified traffic."

Investigators said in a report released in March last year there were "no behavioural signs of social isolation, change in interests or habits, self-neglect, drug or alcohol abuse of the captain, first officer and the cabin crew."

The report said investigators found nothing in the backgrounds of the plane's captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah or more junior pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid to suggest they would deliberately crash the plane.

Captain Ross said he is concerned about speculation that the plane "glided" from its cruise altitude further on a southerly course than thought when the engines quit before going into the water.

"We have already been told that military radar showed it descending to about 10,000 feet when it turned back toward Malaysia and the Gulf of Thailand," he said.

"If that was the case it would be burning much more fuel than normal at a low altitude because jet engines are efficient at high altitude but not low altitude," he said.

"Therefore simple logic is that if the aircraft was at or close to 10,000 feet it would have run out of fuel much earlier and glided a much shorter distance."

Captain Ross said there is no evidence the plane climbed back to its normal cruise altitude around 35,000 feet.

"I think people are over-thinking this thing and confusing themselves with complicated mathematics which are not guaranteed by anyone," he said.

The possibility a pilot or crew member hijacked the plane has been one of the most plausible theories about what happened to the plane.

Captain Ross said he firmly believes that whatever search funds remain should be used to search the area between Malaysia and the location of the aircraft parts that have been discovered.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/search-for-mh370-thousands-of-kilometres-off-target-australian-aviation-expert-20160616-gpkn7g.html#ixzz4C6Q3WvyX

Inclined to agree with Des's last but the trouble is the funds have basically been fried...

Also I am afraid that I'm in the "V" & "K" camp - see HERE - i.e. "it's a wrap" -


MTF...P2