[Peetwo]

Update 15/01/18: The hunt is back on..

Via the Oz:

MH370 search ready for launch

12:00amEAN HIGGINS, AMANDA HODGE

The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is back on and due to start next week.

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The hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is back on and due to start next week, with the head of the underwater survey company conducting it saying it has “a realistic prospect of finding it”.

Ocean Infinity chief executive Oliver Plunkett said the ship Seabed Constructor was expected to be in the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean next Wednesday.

“It will launch almost ­instantly,” Mr Plunkett said, referring to the eight autonomous underwater vehicles, or torpedo-like unmanned mini-submarines with side-scan sonar that Ocean Infinity will simultaneously use to try to find wreckage of the Boeing 777 at great depths.

On the way from its last port of call in Durban, South Africa, Mr Plunkett said the crew and scientists had conducted some trial dives of the AUVs.

“We have had some pretty good results, as far as I can tell, a dive down to 5800m, which is pretty cool,’’ he said.

Mr Plunkett said the search would first concentrate on areas identified by Australian authorities and scientists as the most likely based on their “ghost flight” and “death dive” theory that the plane’s pilots were incapacitated and the plane crashed after fuel exhaustion.

But if it is not found there, Mr Plunkett said, it was possible to divert the Seabed Constructor to another target zone preferred by international airline captains Byron Bailey and Simon Hardy, who believe a rogue pilot ­hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end, ditching it.

“I think assuming all of the aviation analysis is right, then I think we have a realistic prospect of finding it,” Mr Plunkett said.

MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, mainly Chinese nationals.

A two-year, $200 million search led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau at the request of Malaysia failed to find a trace of the plane in a 120,000sq km search zone, and that survey ended a year ago.

Ocean Infinity, a Houston- based ocean survey outfit owned by several British investors, made an offer to the Malaysian government late last year that it would launch a new search on a “no find, no fee” basis.

& from NZ'ed's Stuff:

MH370 Kiwi's widow wants Boeing to pay for retrieval ahead of new search for missing airliner

OLIVER LEWIS

Last updated 20:34, January 14 2018



SUPPLIED

Paul and Danica Weeks on their wedding day. The couple lived in Christchurch until they moved to Perth in 2011.

As the search for missing airliner MH370 enters a new phase, the widow of a Kiwi passenger wants plane manufacturer Boeing to help pick up the retrieval bill should it be found.

Danica Weeks, whose husband Paul Weeks was on the plane when it vanished during a 2014 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, is suing the American aerospace company as she believes the Malaysia Airlines-operated Boeing 777 disappeared along with its 229 passengers and crew due to mechanical fault.

Weeks, who has also filed proceedings against the airline, said Boeing needed to prove its aircraft were safe and helping to pay for MH370's recovery – if it was found – would help to do that.

CELESTE GORRELL ANSTISS

Danica Weeks, the widow of MH370 passenger Paul Weeks, with the couple's two children, Lincoln, now aged 7, left, and Jack, now 4.

"If they've got nothing to hide then, why not? They've got the money, they've got the resources," the Sunshine Coast, Australia woman said on Sunday. 

"So let's hear from them, let's hear from the horse's mouth that those planes are safe, because quite frankly their silence has been pretty scary.

REUTERS

Squadron leader Brett McKenzie marks the name of another search aircraft on the windshield of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for missing MH370 over the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014.

"I'm not suing for money. The beauty of aviation law is they have to prove they weren't negligent, not the other way round."

Another aeroplane manufacturer, Airbus, helped fund part of the search for Air France Flight 447 after one of its 330s crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, killing 228 people.

The search for what remains of missing airliner MH370 resumes this week after the Malaysian Government signed a memorandum of understanding with American seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity to find it within three months.

A ship chartered by the company, the Seabed Constructor, was expected to reach and begin searching the 25,000 square kilometre area in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, following earlier extensive searches.

Weeks said court action was her only way to get one of the largest aerospace companies in the world to talk.

"We're so sick of not hearing anything from them, it's really a slap in the face.The people that manufactured this plane should be helping us find out what happened to it."

FINDING HUSBAND 'STILL THE END GOAL'

Weeks' husband and the father of her two children was from Christchurch. The young family lived in the city before moving to Perth in 2011.

"I just want to find him. That was the start goal and that's still the end goal – to find Paulie," she said.

"I know it's been four years and the boys have grown so much, but it feels just like yesterday for me.

"Since day one we're no further ahead. They say time heals, but time doesn't heal in this. We still don't know."

Weeks said their eldest son, Lincoln – who was born in Christchurch on the day of the September 2010 earthquake – remembered his father and would tell stories about him to his brother Jack, 4.

"I don't know if anyone has been able to start grieving yet, because it's so surreal and so unprecedented – as Malaysian Airlines likes to say – that we just have to handle it day by day."

Weeks had yet to hold a memorial or funeral service for her husband and said it was too soon to do so until she knew what had happened to the engineer.

Sara Weeks, Paul Weeks' sister, said every year around the anniversary of the MH370's March 8 disappearance she and other family members and friends gathered in Christchurch to "share a couple of drinks for Paul".

Weeks said she supported her sister-in-law's court action: "If it helps her through her journey through this awful situation that's fantastic and if it leads to some answers that would be great, too".

She said "hope" was the wrong word to describe the latest efforts to find the plane. However, she said the search – payment for which was dependent on a result – was a good thing, as it would help provide closure.

"I can't mourn, I can't move on until I know what happened to my brother. There's just nothing you can do. We need to have some clear, hard facts – 'This is what happened to the plane', 'This is where it is' – so we can process it," she said.

Boeing has been approached for comment.
 - Stuff

& via the ABC:

MH370: Evidence points to Malaysia Airlines wreck being at 35 degrees south in Indian Ocean

By Anne Barker
Updated Sat at 2:47pmSat 13 Jan 2018, 2:47pm

Play (2.3 MB)

There's a particularly tantalising reason why the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may indeed be found inside the proposed new search area at 35 degrees south in the southern Indian Ocean.

It's the lack of any debris from the plane found on Australia's west coast.

Other than a small towelette in Malaysia Airlines packaging found on a WA beach in 2015 — which may or may not have come from MH370 — every piece of debris known to have come from the missing plane washed up on the east coast of Africa, or nearby islands.

This is significant, given Australian investigators believe there were five possible autopilot control modes the plane could have been on at the time it ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean.

Calculations based on four of those settings point to a crash site further south (36-39 degrees south) or further north (33-34 degrees south), where the ocean currents in the days after the plane disappeared ran in an easterly direction, and would be expected to wash at least some debris towards Australia.



Photo: Evidence points to the wreck being near the seventh arc. (Supplied: Geoscience Australia)

One source close to the investigation says only one of the five auto pilot settings — constant magnetic heading (CMH) — would lead to a crash site at 35S, where the ocean current at the time ran in the opposite direction, towards Africa.

Nevertheless, other evidence in the weeks and months after the plane disappeared — namely the satellite "pings" picked up from the aircraft by Britain's Inmarsat satellite, and the assumption another autopilot setting was used — prompted the Australian-led search team to focus on a 120,000-square-kilometre area around 36 degrees or further south, a search which ultimately proved fruitless.

Only now, since the examination of the various debris and studies on ocean drift patterns, has the likely wreck site shifted north to an area around 35 degrees south, straddling the imaginary line known as the "seventh arc" — which shows possible locations of the plane at the time of the seventh "ping".

We asked you to leave your thoughts on the search for MH370 in the comments below.

Debris discovery location leaves 35S the 'only option'



Photo: More than 20 items of debris have washed-up on coastlines across Africa, Madagascar and La Reunion Island. (Reuters: Stringer France)

The Malaysian Government this week confirmed it had signed an agreement to pay a US seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity between $20 million and $70 million if it finds the missing aircraft within 90 days of embarking on a new search.

Its search ship Seabed Constructor is already heading to the new search zone and will begin scouring the ocean floor as early as next week.

Ocean Infinity is confident of finding the plane if indeed it is inside the search area.

"We can roughly cover 1,200 square kilometres a day," chief executive Oliver Plunkett said.

"Which means that we will finish the first 25,000 within first three to four weeks of the search."

The data behind the MH370 search



The data gathered during the Australian Government-led search for flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

Dr David Griffin, an Australian oceanographer at the CSIRO, led the drift analysis that last year helped narrow down the search zone to an area no bigger than 25,000 square kilometres, where Ocean Infinity will focus its search.

"The oceanographic reason for why 35 [degrees south] is more likely than say 34, or 33, or 32, is that at all those latitudes the current is going to the east," Dr Griffin said.

"So if the crash had been in any of those latitudes then there'd be a high chance of at least one or two things turning up in Australia. Whereas there've been 20 or 30 or so items turned up in Africa, and not a single one come to Australia.

"Once you start looking in the vicinity of 36 to 32, then 35 is the only option."
Interest revived in dismissed French satellite images



Photo: Debris from the missing Boeing airline has been recovered but previous searches have failed to find the rest of the plane. (Reuters: Andrew Winning, file)

The autopilot settings and the discovery of debris in Africa — including a flaperon confirmed to have come from flight MH370 — are not the only evidence supporting the theory that the missing plane is in the proposed new search zone, north of the area already searched.

French satellite images first seen in March 2014, a week or so after the plane disappeared, showed white objects in this same area, at 35S.

At the time the objects were dismissed as unimportant.



Photo: French satellite photos showed the objects around 35 degrees south in the days after the disappearance of MH370 in 2014. (Supplied: French Military Intelligence Service)

Other photos had showed similar "blobs" elsewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, many of which were later ruled out as shipping containers, general ocean rubbish or even pods of dolphins.

The French photos were also of poor quality, making it almost impossible to see what the objects were.

But as other evidence began to point further north — the results of the CSIRO drift study and the discovery of more debris linked to the missing plane — investigators suddenly remembered the satellite images.

They asked the French for better copies. And only then did they realise the photos were more significant than first thought.

"When anyone looks at them you think, if they're not bits of plane, what are they? Because for lots of those other objects you can find an explanation, but for these you can't," Dr Griffin said.

Finding wreck now is unlikely to solve the mystery



Photo: The recovered aircraft flaperon suggests the pilot was not in control when the aircraft crashed. (Supplied: CSIRO)

The drift analysis included retrospective calculations to gauge where the objects might have been in the hours after MH370 disappeared. And sure enough, it was around 35S, the new zone where Ocean Infinity is preparing to search.

When Ocean Infinity reaches its destination next week, it won't be the first time that seabed vessels have searched along the seventh arc at 35S.

In the weeks after MH370 first disappeared, searchers scoured the ocean floor along the same trajectory from about 32 to 39 degrees south, and found nothing.

What debris and the ocean told modellers



CSIRO's Dr David Griffin says he's never been "so completely consumed by a scientific question" as he has during the MH370 search. Read more CSIRO analysis of the search.

But Dr Griffin says that search was very narrow — barely 20 kilometres either side of the arc.

The new search will scan a wider area. Although evidence including the plane's flaperon, which was found in Tanzania, supports the theory that the aircraft went through a rapid descent once it ran out of fuel and landed close to the "seventh arc".

Examination of the flaperon indicates it was retracted at the time of impact, debunking the theory that the pilot was still in control and trying to glide the plane as far as possible before it crashed.

Evidence in a report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in late 2016 assessing satellite communications from the plane, known as the Doppler Shift Burst Frequency Offset, is also consistent with a rapid descent and the wreck site being closer to the seventh arc.

The new search is due to begin next week. To qualify for its multi-million-dollar pay day, Ocean Infinity must find the debris field or the flight recorders within 90 days.
And even if the plane is found, there may never be a satisfactory explanation for why MH370 disappeared.

"If they find it, will it be financially viable to bring it up? And even if they did, what information could it give us?" aviation specialist Trevor Jensen said.

"The flight recorders, the voice recorders, would all be so damaged now."

 

MTF...P2