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Captain's Log 27.01.17: Abbott & Chillit the search must go on..

Via the Advertiser:

Former prime minister Tony Abbott believes Australia should still be searching for missing flight MH370. Picture: AAP/Mick Tsikas

Former prime minister says search for missing flight should continue

CHARLES MIRANDA, News Corp Australia Network
February 26, 2017 12:00am

The search for lost flight MH370 should be continuing with the pilots’ “murder-suicide” likely to have forced the aircraft to a further southern radius than suspected, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday.

Speaking on the eve of the third anniversary of the Malaysian Airlines’ flight disappearance, Mr Abbott said he did not believe all search avenues had been exhausted and nations owed it to their citizens to resolve the mystery.

The whereabouts of missing flight MH370 is one of the great myetries of modern aviation. Picture: AFP/Manan Vatsayana

He said while he no longer received the official briefings since becoming a backbencher, based on what he had seen he believed there were two areas that could still be searched.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that while there is any, any reasonable prospective places to search we should still be searching, no doubt about that in my mind,” he told News Corp Australia, adding reasonable prospective sites still existed.

“I have always said the most plausible scenario was murder-suicide and if this guy wanted to create the world’s greatest mystery why wouldn’t he have piloted the thing to the very end and gone further south? Then there was the analyses that suggested there might be a prospective place to the north.

North or south? Despite the discovery of debris, the final resting place of the passenger jet is still unknown.

“When you’ve got nearly 240 people missing, the greatest mystery of modern times, as long as there is any reasonable prospective place to search you just keep searching.”
MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014 on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with contact lost over the South China Sea with all tracking lost after the aircraft looped west over the Andaman Sea, prompting the biggest international search in aviation history.

Murder-suicide was one scenario air crash investigators backed by the FBI probed including the background of pilot Captain Shah, but there was little to no evidence uncovered to support the theory.

More than 270 people perished on the ill-fated flight. Picture: 60 Minutes.

Mr Abbott said he thought often about the crash and it was always about giving families of loved ones closure over the cost, which for Australia he said totalled about $100 million.

“It was one of the critical points in my time as prime minister, I was pleased that we were able to take a leading role in the search, I was pleased we worked so closely with so many other countries and it did show that countries who aren’t normally partners could work together in a very very good cause and I think it reflected well on our country,” he said.

“I just don’t think (Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull cared as much,” said Amanda Lawton, whose parents were on the flight. Picture: Mark Cranitch

Amanda Lawton whose parents Bob and Cathy were on the flight, said she had always been heartened by Mr Abbott’s leadership on the issue.

“He spoke to us after the incident and he was so determined and I have always wondered if he was still in power whether it could have been found,” she said.
“I just don’t think (Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull cared as much,” she said.

And via MC's 7th Arc:

Does Anyone Want to Find MH370?
Posted on February 27, 2017 by Mike Chillit

With 4,000 km of “final arc” to search, Australia spent three years searching less than 300 km of it. Those in charge of the search refused to communicate with anyone not a member of “the team”, and they didn’t find so much as a hubcap.

Australia also defaulted on former Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s promise to search until it was found.



The only debris found to date has been found by beachcombers on the Islands of Reunion, Rodrigues, and Mauritius. Unlike those paid millions to search for the plane, beachcombers asked nothing, were paid exactly nothing, and without so much as a “thank you” in several instances.

Some debris was also found on Madagascar beaches and on East African beaches, but it offers no help in the search, or in understanding what may have happened to the plane. All debris ends up in only two places if it misses the Mascarene Islands: 1) Madagascar, and 2) the long East African coast between northern Tanzania and South Africa. Nothing that ends up on Madagascar or East African coasts can be traced to a starting point. It is absolutely worthless in the effort to find the plane.

Importantly, debris was NOT found on Western Australia beaches or along the Great Australian Bight. Nor was it found on the islands of St. Paul or Amsterdam to the south, or Cocos or Christmas islands to the north. Likewise, there were no acoustic detections at Rottnest Island or farther south at Cape Leeuwin where nuclear proliferation stations should have picked up artifacts of a “hard crash”. Implications: it came down where it would have been extraordinarily unlikely for debris to drift east; it probably came down as a “soft crash” water ditching; and it is likely to still be mostly in one piece.

Part of the search problem is that searchers hypothesized it was a murder / suicide and then they used that to decide where to search. It may very well turn out to be a murder / suicide, but whomever did it was infinitely smarter than those who are trying to second guess him.
I personally gave up on the official search area when the flaperon was found on Reunion Island on July 29, 2015, 508 days after the crash. We do not know how long the flaperon was adrift in the Reunion Island area before it was retrieved, but it may have been there for six months or more. We know from NOAA’s satellite-tracked drifters that, on average, it only takes 230 days for debris to drift all the way to Madagascar from the most likely initial areas along the plane’s “final arc”.

Those who have followed me for a while know I have been enormously critical of the Australian government for refusing to listen to anyone not on its own payroll. But I try to be an equal opportunity critic, and my patience has also run out on Malaysia’s small “next of kin” support group, which has been indecisive and supportive of failure for nearly three years. It takes more to go beyond official government intransigence. In my opinion, which I share too willingly at times, new leadership is required for the NOK group. It needs a decisive voice, a visionary voice, not just a soft shoulder.

Unless and until that happens, the real question has to be, Does anyone really care if the plane is recovered? I frankly can’t tell, and that isn’t a good sign. But if there are still some who care, it’s going to cost between $5 million and 10$ million USD, and those who want it need to roll up their sleeves now. If I am involved in any capacity, I will only work with Williamson and Associates of Seattle. No more amateur sidescan towfish like EdgeTech and ProSAS-60. It’s time to get the job done right, and quickly or not at all.
Posted in 7th Arc

MTF...P2