[Peetwo]

Bailey at it again - FDS!  

Like a broken record Bailey can't help himself and has to put his 2 bob's in...  

 Via the Oz:

MH370 victims deserve better than invalid searches

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has some serious questions to answer after its accredited representative signed off on the Malaysian government’s recent investigation report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The report contains a couple of howlers, the first being the suggestion a mysterious unknown “third party” might have hijacked the aircraft, which vanished on a routine scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

This intervention would have had to be by an expert Boeing 777 ­airline pilot with Special Air Service combat skills. The assailant would have had to get past the cabin crew, get through a locked reinforced door, overpower the ­pilots and turn off the transponder in well under two minutes from when captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah said goodnight to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control.

The second howler is letting the Malaysians include the statement that the flaperon and flap probably were retracted.

It is now confirmed the French engineers in Toulouse ­advised the Malaysians and the Australian Transport Safety ­Bureau 2½ years ago that the flap­eron was in a lowered position, therefore confirming a pilot was controlling the aircraft to the end.

Those world-class experts in Toulouse, where I have done Airbus simulator training, are the only ones to have examined the right flaperon in person.

The French engineers, after detailed analysis, confirmed that the damage to the flaperon indicated it was in the lowered position when it separated from the wing during an obvious ditching. The flap is directly linked to the flaperon, which also must have been in the lowered position.

The French supplied the ­Malaysians and the ATSB with this information, yet they both continued with the search on the basis of pilots not being in control at the end of the flight.

It was suggested to me that the reason the French refused to release this item, critical to the possible criminal investigation, is that they did not trust the Malaysians or the ATSB.

For the flap and flaperon to be lowered, there are two things that need to be present.

The first is hydraulic power, from ­engines running or from the auxiliary power unit. The second is a pilot’s arm to position the flap lever to extend the flap and flaperon.

The ATSB therefore should have immediately discarded its discredited ghost flight theory, that at the end the pilots were ­unresponsive and the plane went down in an uncontrolled rapid death dive.

Instead, it should have searched the small close-by area identified by British airline captain Simon Hardy a couple of years ago, based on his analysis of the scenario that the captain made a controlled ­ditching.

Everyone involved agrees that the B777 started its rapid descent at the probability “hot spot” identified by the Defence Science and Technology Group, based on the satellite tracking data, at latitude 38 south.

It is simple mathematics to calculate, using B777 performance characteristics of a cruise climb to 40,000 feet to extend the flying distance on the known fuel, where the fuel exhaustion point coin­cided with the seventh arc from the satellite handshakes. This occurred at 38 south, and the captain then put the aircraft into a steep accelerating dive of 20­ ­degrees, equal to an initial descent of 17,500 feet per minute, before converting kinetic energy into a glide that achieved a distance of 88 nautical miles (about 160km).

This was demonstrated by Hardy in a simulated flight during the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes report MH370: The Situation Room, broadcast in May.

He also demonstrated, as I did in an Emirates B777 simulator 2½ years ago, that the uncontrolled crash scenario favoured by the ATSB achieved a distance of only eight nautical miles (14km).

We believe Shah maintained the true track of 188 ­degrees, or close to due south, even past 38 south, which we calculated he had been steering ­towards in full ­autopilot navigation mode since turning south, north of Sumatra.

I believe that after 70 nautical miles on the descent past the 38 south hotspot — that is, at latitude 39 degrees 10 minutes south — Shah then turned the aircraft into the southwesterly wind and, with the first light of sunrise at sea level, assessed the primary swell radiating northwards from deep low pressure weather systems far to the south.

A flap-up ditching at 400km/h would have resulted in considerable debris, which would have ­negated Shah’s intention of hiding the aircraft in a condition as intact as ­possible.

For 4½ years the search was conducted on the initial erron­eous assumption that the pilots were rendered unresponsive and were not in control at the end of the flight.

There was no evidence to support the ATSB theory and indeed there were masses of evidence and opinions of real aviation ­experts that a pilot was in control at the end.

Since this is now a criminal ­investigation, as well as an incomplete investigation of a missing airliner, then surely a coronial ­inquest is required to examine the deaths of our Australian MH370 passengers.

Also, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, presented with the French evidence, is now duty-bound to declare the 4½ years of Fugro and Ocean ­Infinity searches invalid and ­initiate procedures for the search of the small pilot-controlled ­ditching area, 100km down range of the original search area, as originally defined by B777 captain Hardy.

Byron Bailey is a former RAAF fighter pilot who flew B777s as an airline captain.

Not that I particularly want to weigh into yet another hypothesis devoid of any firm facts or hard evidence, on the contrary there is much evidence which disproves the BB hypothesis. However was this statement from BB true?

  "...It is now confirmed the French engineers in Toulouse ­advised the Malaysians and the Australian Transport Safety ­Bureau 2½ years ago that the flap­eron was in a lowered position, therefore confirming a pilot was controlling the aircraft to the end..."


MTF...P2