[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 27.05.17: HSSS entry 170527 - That man again..

Well aided and nicely abetted.

Higgins – “Mr Hood did not respond to questions from The Australian about whether he would seek permission from members of the SSWG to grant the FOI request, and whether Malaysian authorities had asked for this and other material to be suppressed.”

That man ‘Iggins asks one of the top ten most important questions which should be asked of the ATSB.  The fully justified deep suspicion which arose when the Dolan and the ATSB took over the search/rescue/recovery operation from AMSA has never been satisfactorily allayed and remains a large part of the ‘cover-up’ and collusion support argument. Although there was no direct evidence of ‘criminal activity’ (or any other activity for that matter) I believe its safe to say there was – in one form or another – a criminal act committed. The preponderance of available ‘evidence’ supports the argument.

It matters not ‘who’ committed 'the act'; at least not in the first instance. The law is quite clear, the ATSB cannot assume control of an  investigation when criminal activity is ‘suspected’. I say we are well past the point of even questioning whether this was a ‘criminal act’. Dolan and the ATSB had been proven, through a Senate committee hearing to be party to a gross manipulation of an accident investigation; (see Pel-Air). The very idea of pulling the AMSA out of controlling the search and passing the same along into the care of the discredited Dolan was outlandish. Clearly, the move from an ICAO annexe 12 to annex 13 based operation precluded ‘deep and meaningful’ investigation of criminal acts. In short, the move declared that no criminal activity had occurred. This single stroke of the pen, very effectively, precluded any chance of a wide investigation and narrowed the search to that for the ‘aircraft’ alone. To add insult to injury, the AMSA ‘team’ of experts analysts was side lined (dumped) and only the CSIRO opinion of drift modelling was considered. In short the ‘search’ was manipulated and reduced from a multi point focus effort to one single, very narrow, tightly controlled channel.  I digress.

Byron - Kudos to Ean Higgins and The Australian for refusing to let the highly suspect matter of what happened to MH370 fade into obscurity. The truth always has a way of eventually surfacing. I shortly have a meeting in USA with parties interested in privately funding a resumption of the search. The proposed search area is a deep trench to the north of the ATSB searched area, based on the excellent calculations of Captain Simon Hardy and agrees with the drift modelling. Captain Byron Bailey.

If the data Australia refuses to release belongs to Malaysia; then why does Hood simply just say so. “Sorry folks, if it were our data, we would release it without hesitation; but, it ain’t”. “If you want it, petition the Malaysian government, it all belongs to them”.  But Hood does not say this – clearly, that’s not case. So, like Higgins and Byron,  I’m left wondering just who is running this country?

Although I mildly disagree with ‘the Captain’ being guilty argument – purely for lack of evidence (benefit of the doubt) I hasten to add. I can lend my full support to Byron’s opinion and Higgins dogged determination to get to the bottom of this pit of deceit, half truths and misdirection. Well done both, efforts on behalf of those left behind much appreciated. This aircraft must be found, it is the only way the truth can ever be determined. Shame on Malaysia and Australia both.


Toot toot.

Yesterday via the Oz and that man 'Iggins... :

Limits to data in hunt for MH370

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

The mathematician who led the analysis of satellite data in the hunt for MH370 has spoken of its limitations.

The mathematician who led the complex analysis of satellite data in the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has told a select audience of its limitations, saying it only provides “some vague hints about the speed and direction that the aircraft was doing”.

Neil Gordon, who leads the Data and Information Fusion Group in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, also said in an unreported address last week: “You’re never going to end up with an ‘X marks the spot’.”

Dr Gordon’s remarks to a small gathering of the Institute of Public Administration in Canberra are likely to fuel the international debate over whether the satellite data is good enough to support the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s theory that MH370 went down in a rapid, unpiloted crash.

The IPA seminar also heard some revealing disclosures from the senior federal public servant in charge of co-ordinating the government agencies involved in the search effort, in which she spoke of “a few bumps along the way” in dealing with representatives of the other two governments involved, China and Malaysia. Judith Zielke, the head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, told the seminar: “The biggest thing that I have learnt from being involved in the search is actually the huge cultural differences between all the countries involved.”

The ATSB’s head of the underwater search, Peter Foley, also addressed the event, telling of the fears he had that someone on the search vessels would be seriously injured or killed in the treacherous seas of the southern Indian Ocean where the agency had defined a 120,000sq km search area.

MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board on March 8, 2014 on a scheduled trip from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with its radar transponder turned off 40 minutes into the flight and radio contact cut.

Analysis of hourly automatic electronic “handshakes” from the aircraft to ground stations via an Inmarsat satellite indicated the Boeing 777 came down somewhere along a band in the southern Indian Ocean.

That assessment, Dr Gordon said, came from one type of data measuring the time the signals took to get to and from the aircraft to the satellite and the ground station.

“There’s no data attached to those communications, there is no ‘I am here’ type information, but there is some metadata attached to those which you can use in a way it’s not, in a sense, intended for, to produce some predictions,” Dr Gordon said.

In addition to that, Dr Gordon said, “It turns out there’s another piece of metadata attached to this which you can use to give some vague hints about the speed and direction that the aircraft was doing.”

That data measuring a Doppler effect was used by the ATSB to conclude MH370 went down in what’s become known as a “death dive”, the theory the bureau relied on to define its search area.

In its public statements, the ATSB, under pressure over the failure of the search to find the aircraft, has expressed confidence in this conclusion.

In a recent statement criticising The Australian for reporting critiques of the search strategy by international pilots, aviation experts, air crash investigators and scientists and the counter view of many of them that a rogue pilot hijacked MH370 and flew it outside the search area, ATSB communications manager Carl Fellows wrote:

“The metadata from the aircraft’s satellite communications system has been painstakingly analysed by leading experts … this analysis concludes that the aircraft was in a high and increasing rate of descent at the end of flight.”

ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood has refused, despite calls from families of the MH370 victims in Australia and around the world, to grant a freedom of information request from The Australian seeking what the bureau claims to be those supporting analyses.

Many international experts disagree with the ATSB’s conclusions, with former airline pilot and top air crash investigator John Cox telling The Australian: “I do not believe there is sufficient data in the Inmarsat data to draw any conclusion on the rate of descent.”

Against the ATSB’s bold statements for public consumption, Dr Gordon’s remarks to the IPA audience were more cautious.

“You have got these things which in a sense have never been used for this purpose before, so you put a big effort into checking that you understand them correctly,” he said.

“The key thing you have to remember is there’s lots of uncertainty that’s feeding into this.”

ATSB spokesman Dan O’Malley denied the bureau exaggerated, saying: “There are a range of possible rates of descent, all of which are high and increasing.””

MTF...P2