[Peetwo]

'That man' Higgins sniffs a rort?

Courtesy the Weekend Oz x2 :

A question of confidence in filling $100m MH370 black hole

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• January 23, 2016 12:00AM
  

The revelation that Australia is relying on Malaysia to meet a potential $100 million “black hole” in the search to find MH370 demonstrates the pitfalls in the government’s approach to this project.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief Martin Dolan said on ABC Radio last week that Australia did not need to find out what happened on board MH370, since under international law the investigation was Malaysia’s responsibility.

The fact that Malaysia promised to contribute a survey vessel to the search, and it never showed up, does not augur well for the country’s enthusiasm over solving the mystery.

Mr Dolan and the bureau have fallen over themselves to avoid the clear evidence that the most likely scenario, given the deliberate flying evident in the first part of the flight back over Malaysia and the turning off of the radar transponder and cut in communications, is that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane.

The bureau has said the first part of the flight doesn’t matter for its purposes, and is working only on the track from the last turn south and a scenario consistent with the crew passing out from lack of oxygen because of decompression or otherwise becoming “unresponsive’’.

Zaharie was a strong supporter and relative of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who the day before the flight had faced court where his acquittal on sodomy charges had been overturned, in what is widely seen as a politically motivated trial.

If it turns out that the loss of MH370 was a political statement by Zaharie, it would be a bad look for the Malaysian government. One has to ask in those circumstances how confident Australian taxpayers, who have so far put up $60m for the underwater search, can be that if the cost blows out, Malaysia will stump up as much as $100m to meet it.

&..

Questions over MH370 search funding shortfall

• Ean Higgins
  
• The Australian
  
• January 23, 2016 12:00AM
  

Australia is relying on Malaysia to fund a potential $100 million shortfall in the search for Flight MH370, as it emerges that a survey vessel promised by Malaysia to join the search never showed up.

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss’s office would not produce any public statement from the Malaysian government in which it committed to meet the remaining cost of the search, and the Malaysian high commission did not respond to a similar request.

The Weekend Australian can also reveal that while nearly two months ago Mr Truss, whose transport portfolio covers the search for the Malaysia Airlines plane, said a Chinese vessel would join the search this ­summer, none has appeared; his department did not say when one would.

The federal government has taken prime responsibility for the search for MH370, which dis­appeared on March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, because its presumed final resting place, in the southern ­Indian Ocean, is within Australia’s search and rescue zone.

The hunt will be called off once the designated 120,000sq km target zone has been searched, ­expected in June.

Australia has committed $60m to the cost of the search, and China has recently committed $20m in “assets and financial ­contribution”.

In a statement this week to The Weekend Australian, the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, set up within Mr Truss’s department to orchestrate the search, said: “It is expected that the underwater search may cost up to $180m.’’

Asked how the $100m gap, understood to be the result in part of a declining Australian dollar against a US contract with the Dutch Fugro survey group whose three ships are conducting the search, would be met, Mr Truss’s spokesman said: “Malaysia has committed assets and financial contribution to fund the balance of the cost of the underwater search.”

The spokesman would not provide a copy of the tripartite agreement he said embodied the commitment, or produce any other corroborating statement from the Malaysian government.

Since the Boeing 777 was ­Malaysian-registered, under international aviation law Malaysia is charged with investigating its ­disappearance.

This point has been repeatedly stressed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau when asked why, rather than work on the dominant opinion put by commercial airline pilots and other aviation experts that MH370 was hijacked by its captain, it relies on a theory consistent with the pilots becoming unconscious due to lack of oxygen during decompression or otherwise “unresponsive.”

Early last month, Mr Truss said “within the coming months a fourth vessel to be provided by China will add to the search ­effort’’.

Recent weekly bulletins from the joint co-ordination centre about the search have made no mention of a Chinese vessel joining the effort.

“Any new vessel entering the search will be announced at an appropriate time, prior to it arriving in the search area,” a co-ordination centre representative said.

Hmm...sounds like there are some serious questions that fall within the remit of 'the Heff' & his band of merry men & women that they could possibly ask at Estimates in a couple of weeks time...

- Okay tin hat donned:

Not sure how many people have a subscription to the Oz but some of the commentary, comment numbers must now have surpassed 1000 across all MH370 blogged articles, associated with the Higgins articles (above) & the Bailey articles is really very good.

Now although I don't totally agree with some of the finer points (opinions/theories), the best for today's Higgins article so far has to be from Mervyn, who IMO pretty much nails it: 

Mervyn 5ptsFeatured
1 hour ago

It would seem to me that the real story here is the sheer incompetence and bloody-mindedness of the ATSB, whose investigative members do not have the experience or knowledge of the airline pilots who have commented on this matter.

Consider for one moment the implications globally of the aircraft being found, and the recovery of the black box clearly shows that the pilot was in command right until the very end. Not only will that contravene all the rubbish that has been touted by the various authorities to-date, but will give the ATSB a resounding slapping which they so richly deserve.

There is no doubt that a very serious game of cover-up is being played by all the governments embroiled in this fiasco, no the least our own Australian government, but mostly the Malaysian government. Please do not think that for one moment because Australia commissioned Fugro to conduct the search, and that Australia guaranteed the fees for such search, that Australia is not part of the cover-up. When one controls the search, and more importantly the information dissemination, then one controls what is being reported!

And what is being reported is what the ATSB is dribbling, because this is what our Government, in collusion with Malaysia and others, has decided is the best strategy to cover up the obvious - that the pilot may well have committed this atrocity as a extremist Islamist in the name of Islamic State!

If that is the case, and it does appear to be a logical albeit unproven possibility, then it is not unreasonable to assume that Malaysia, as a secular Muslim state, would seek to distance itself from such atrocity - and the easiest way to do this is to cosy up to Australia and quite easily convincing our relevant Minister that it is best served to sweep this matter under the rug than for the truth to prevail.

Consider for one moment the implications of a pilot with an Islamist bent behind the controls of a commercial airliner - there would be mass panic in air travel circles, with aircraft from secular Muslim countries banned from entering our airspace. Think Etihad, think Malaysia Airlines,  think Air Singapore. Think chaos.

Truss is a National, who are socialist agrarians, who believe in state protection of primary industries, and like every other farmer has a sense of entitlement to mass government handouts to maintain the status quo. He is the Minister for Transport because of his political position, not because of his competency or knowledge of matters transportation.

The theory submitted by the ATSB will over time be shredded, as more and more B777-200 pilots voice their knowledge and experience in this regard. However, for now, the ATSB is the "official" voice on this matter, and clearly it is doing the bidding of a subversive agenda, and not fulfilling the mandate for which it was empowered under law.

As I said, the real story here is about lies and deceit, not about air safety. Root out who is telling the lies and who is being deceitful, expose them publicly, and air safety will have meaning and precedence once again.

Now although Bailey comes across as somewhat arrogant & opinionated I have to admire the fact that he is prepared to face down any of his critics. One way he is doing that is by being interactive on the blog comments, where one dude called 'Mick' is repeatedly & comprehensively dishing it out.

Here is an example:

Mick 17 hours ago

I know that Captain Bailey is not a bona fide journalist but he would be well served by having a journalist proof his work prior to publication. That way he might avoid misrepresenting the Air Transport Safety Bureau. The ATSB have not postulated on the cause of the loss of MH370, that is not their job. Their job is to find the crash site and then hand over to Malaysian and US investigators whose job it is to determine the cause.

In order to determine the search zone the ATSB are working with limited data
- the known performance characteristics of the Boeing 777-200 ER in general (Boeing are assisting here)
- the specific performance characteristics of the actual aircraft that operated as MH370, rego 9M-MRO (Malaysian Airlines have assisted here)
- the projected flight path of the aircraft based on the analysis of satellite data (INMARSAT and The University of London have assisted here).

What the ATSB have said is "The limited evidence available for MH370 was compared with three accident classes: an in-flight upset, an unresponsive crew/hypoxia event, and a glide event (generally characterised by a pilot-controlled glide). The final stages of the ‘unresponsive crew/hypoxia’ event-type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370’s flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction."

Note - "best fit", "available evidence", "final period", emphasis on "final period".

Captain Bailey's theory is that the captain, for reasons unknown, took control of the aircraft by securing himself in the cockpit, made the aircraft "dark" (difficult to track) by disabling all communications including the transponders, depressurised the aircraft so as to incapacitate and kill everybody on board, reprogrammed the flight management system (FMS), what most of us know as the "auto-pilot", to fly back across the Malaysian Peninsula and then down between Malaysia and Indonesia before turning south into the Indian ocean, repressurised the aircraft so that he would not freeze to death and then stayed at the controls for the remainder of the flight so that he could ditch in the Southern Indian Ocean whereupon he flooded the aircraft to sink it so as to avoid leaving any debris and he then died by either drowning or exposure.

One question immediately arises - why would the pilot risk a ditching in the Southern Indian Ocean, a manoeuvre fraught with the risk of an aircraft break-up (one only needs to look at video of the last moments of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 to understand the risk) in order to leave no debris in an area that no one would be looking at (there is absolutely no doubt that the captain was not aware that the INMARSAT satellite handshakes were even occuring leave alone that the data could be used to plot the course of the aircraft he had so painstakingly disappeared).

If you accept the first premise of Captain Bailey's theory - that the Captain was responsible for disappearing the aircraft as part of an elaborate suicide - once the FMS was reprogrammed, the Captain's efforts to disappear were effectively complete; he did not have to stay at the controls for the aircraft to fly the elaborate evasive track it subsequently flew. He could have completed the reprogramming very shortly after securing the cockpit and if the ultimate end he had in mind for himself was suicide, what method would he choose?

- hypoxia, achieved by taking his oxygen mask off, painless and certain, he would have lost consciousness and then died from lack of oxygen; or
- drowning, only after he had executed an extremely hazardous ocean landing that may have left him badly injured or killed him anyway.

If you opt for hypoxia (who wouldn't?) then the ATSB's unresponsive crew/hypoxia event accurately describes the terminal phase of the flight.

I fear Captain Bailey is simply and persistently looking for a very public fight where there's none to be had.

To which BB replied:

Byron 16 hours ago

@Chris @Mick The Australian did proof my article and left out a lot of the damning criticism of the ATSB and my challenge to the head of CASA to debate live on the ABC, why the ATSB report of 04 Dec 2015, so proudly presented by Warren Truss, was, to put it mildly a confection that did not agree at all with what I and a senior Emirates B777 Instructor experienced 3 weeks ago, in a Dubai B777 simulator when we tried their various Flame Out theories.

It is a bit of a ding-dong but if nothing else it is very entertaining...


MTF...P2

[Gobbledock]

Another weekend and more excitement;

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-24...ay/7110710

Doesn't look like a 777 component from what I could see online. The curved nature of it would lend weight to the theory of a rocket piece.

Warning: The link contains a comment by Beakers twin super sleuth, Geoffery the John Thomas. Seriously, dickhead journo's should be culled.

[Peetwo]

More updates from 'that man' & the Oz on MH370:

MH370 search vehicle towfish crashes into volcano

• Ean Higgins
  
• AAP
  
• January 25, 2016 12:17PM
  

Fugro Discovery is returning to Fremantle where a replacement cable will be installed on the vessel.

The controversial search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has suffered a further setback, with one of the search vessels crashing an underwater “towfish” sonar device into an underwater “mud volcano” and losing it.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre in Canberra today released a statement saying:
“Yesterday, while conducting search activities in the southern Indian Ocean, Fugro Discovery lost the sonar vehicle deep tow (towfish) being used to search the ocean floor.

“The towfish collided with a mud volcano which rises 2,200 metres from the sea floor resulting in the vehicle’s tow cable breaking. The towfish and 4,500 metres of cable became separated from the vessel and are now resting on the sea floor.

• More: MH370 theory does not stand up
  
• More: The case for pilot hijack
  
  

“There were no injuries to crew and it is believed it will be possible to recover the towfish at a later date.”

Fugro Discovery has commenced its return to Fremantle where a replacement cable will be installed on the vessel.

During the journey, JACC said, the spare towfish on board Fugro Discovery will be readied for future search activities.

The vessel is expected in Fremantle around 30 January.

The search for MH370, which disappeared in March 2014 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board, is being carried out by the Dutch Fugro survey group, using three vessels.

The process first involved mapping the ocean floor, precisely to avoid the possibility of towing the sonar devices into uncharted underwater features.

The search has blown out in cost, and has not been helped by the failure of Malaysia to send a promised survey vessel.

A Chinese vessel which Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss early last month said would join the search this summer has also thus far failed to show up.

Critics, including commercial airline captains, have criticised the search strategy because it assumes the last part of the flight fitted a “type” of scenario of the pilots being unconscious due to lack of oxygen through decompression, or otherwise “unresponsive.”
Most pilots and other aviation experts believe the track of the flight back over Malaysia, and the cut in communications and turning off of the radar transponder, points to the captain hijacking his own aircraft.

The critics argue that initially, at least, the search was consequently in the wrong area.
A piece of suspected plane wreckage found off the east coast of southern Thailand is unlikely to belong to the missing aircraft, experts said yesterday.

This article garnered some more interesting commentary from Mick?? & Co...

Bruce

This whole saga is starting to smell very fishy (excuse the pun!). Why has the ATSB ruled out pilot hijack? Why are they not listening to the likes of Byron Bailey? Why are the Malaysians putting is such a pitiful effort?

What do the Malaysians fear will be revealed between the pilot and the leader of the opposition? Do Malysia actually want the plane to be found? What are the financial implications of not finding the plane by the time the Statute of Limitations (2 years) run out? And why the hell are we funding the search? It's not our plane and not in our territorial waters!!

Mick

@Bruce Bruce, there's no shortage of misinformation being peddled about the search for MH370, most of it to criticise the ATSB. 

Despite assertions from some quarters (Captain Bailey, for example) the ATSB has not ruled out pilot hijack.   They have not speculated on what caused MH370 to disappear because that's not their job.   There job is to find the wreckage and then hand over to the Malaysian authorities whose job it is to determine the cause. 

There are possibly three reasons for the ATSB not listening to Captain Bailey:

1. He has repeatedly and persistently misrepresented the ATSB, effectively creating a straw man of sorts that he then criticises and ridicules, repeatedly and persistently;
2. His theory does not account for all the known facts (it cannot account for cause of the the non-routine 7th and last satellite handshake);
3.  For an expert, his own work contains many alarming errors (I can expand on these if required). 

The Malaysians are not responsible for finding the aircraft, we are - it falls in our search and rescue zone under The International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (1979).  Once the wreckage is found, the Malaysians have to fund both the recovery and the investigation.   That's how responsibilities are divvied up under International Law - it's a common sense approach based on mutual cooperation. 

Brian

@Mick Captain Bailey, from what I've read, has put forward an evidence-based assertion as to the causes of MH370's disappearance. He does so from a considerable position of expertise and, according to him, is a supported view by other pilots. If it does not account for all known facts, that doesn't mean the hypoxia theory becomes valid by default. If you have added insight (love to know your sources/position of expertise here) you should put those forward. But so far, his account is making significantly more sense than that being proposed by the ATSB.

The point that Captain Bailey has been making is that the possibility of locating MH370 depends on the assumptions made as to the causes of its disappearance. The ATSB may not have ruled out a pilot hijack, but that is a meaningless assertion if the resource available for the search are spent entirely on searching an area determined by the hypoxia theory.

And, if it's true that the ATSB has chosen not to listen Capt. Bailey because he "...criticises and ridicules, repeatedly and persistently" their organisation, that is a shocking example fragile public service egos reacting to being bruised over evidence-based decision making.

Mick

@Brian  The ATSB’s "hypoxia" theory as you put it, simply contends that the airplane was not under the command of a conscious pilot for the final portion of its flight (ie  that the airplane entered the water in an uncontrolled fashion soon after fuel exhaustion).   Captain Bailey can have his pilot hijack theory (which I hasten to point out includes passenger and crew (less pilot) incapacitation due to hypoxia), the ATSB hasn't postulated on those aspects of the flight, they simply contend that whatever brought MH370 to the Southern Indian Ocean, there was no conscious pilot at the controls at the end of the ride.  

Captain Bailey looks to pick a fight when there is none, and I'd suggest that his repeated and persistent criticism of the ATSB is a more likely an example of a fragile professional pilot's ego being bruised.


Brendan

@Mick @Bruce  I was a bit in the dark about this, until reading, on here and ATSB that it looks like the aircraft's last "handshake" was probably triggered by fuel exhaustion, the exact cause of the handshake being the SatCom rebooting after its power had been interrupted by the second engine stopping,  and then restored by the APU starting. The batteries would not have kept the SatCom powered up, hence the reboot

Presumably the aircraft was at cruising altitude when the fuel ran out, and under autopilot, and so the aircraft would have adjusted for the loss of the first engine and maintained its path, the ability to maintain altitude on a single engine being irrelevant as the second engine failed shortly thereafter.

I guess the autopilot would have remained engaged after the first engine failed but then after the loss of the second one it gets interesting.

1. If there was pilot in the cockpit (which seems unlikely) would 13 minutes of APU fuel (the dregs in the tank) give him time to glide for a landing (like on the Hudson).

2.  If there is no pilot, i.e. he has checked out hours earlier, does the autopilot remain engaged and maintain some degree of stability for the aircraft, at least for 13 minutes and maybe land it gently on the water, or does it just give up, in which case does the aircraft's natural stability allow a graceful landing or does it just crash?

Anyway if the fuel ran out at the time of the last handshake, the aircraft can't be far from there, so why hasn't it been found? It appears that the data from Inmarsat is not really designed to fix position (compared to GPS which is very accurate), hence the 100,000+ square km search zone.


Mick

@Brendan  After the second engine shut down there would have been at total loss of power from the engine powered generators which would caused the following:

• the autopilot and auto-throttle would disconnect
• a small windmill-like generator called the RAM air turbine (RAT) would deploy from the fuselage;
• the APU would attempt to auto-start.

The combination of the RAT and batteries would have provided emergency power to critical systems and hydraulics (primary flight controls - ailerons, rudder and elevators - would be powered, secondary flight controls - spoilers, flaps, flaperons - would not). 
The APU auto-start would have taken about a minute to complete, once fired up the APU effectively provides full electrical power. 

However, once the auto-pilot and auto-throttle disconnect, they need to be manually re-engaged; the return of full electrical power would not have re-engaged either automatically. 

14 minutes (one minute of RAT/batteries plus 13 minutes of APU) would be barely enough time to get the airplane in a powerless glide from cruising altitude onto the water, the pilot would have had to expedite part of the descent.   Further, the pilot would have to contend with a probable APU flame-out right at the critical moment of ditching.
That all begs the question, if there was a conscious pilot at the controls why would you let the airplane run out of fuel before attempting a ditching. 

Captain Bailey asks us to believe that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, having executed his plan of disappearing his aircraft perfectly thus far and with only the controlled ditching (in order to minimise debris) left as the final act in his virtuoso performance, let's his airplane run out of fuel, thus forcing him to attempt a dead-stick (no engines) ditching in the open ocean with just the APU running for full hydraulic control (remember he needs full hydraulics to lower the flaperon). 

It simply doesn't make sense - why make the hardest part of the disappearing act even harder?

To address your last point, no, the INMARSAT handshakes are not designed to fix an airplane's position.   A lot of very clever analysis (of the sort derided by Captain Bailey as "used for stock market analysis")  has gone into calculating the airplane's location from the limited data. 

Will be fascinating to see (presumably tomorrow) how BB refutes the very factual commentary from Mick & Brendan in his next MH370 instalment..

Also today in the Oz:

Fishing net snags MH370 search ship

• Mitchell Bingemann
  
• The Australian
  
• January 28, 2016 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney


The hunt for Malaysia Airlines MH370 has hit another snag, ­literally, after a vessel’s underwater communications equipment was caught on a fishing net.

The Havila Harmony — one of three vessels of the Dutch Fugro survey group conducting the underwater search for the Boeing 777 — sustained damage to its HiPaP pole, which is lowered through the hull and carries an acoustic transceiver used to control the autonomous search vehicles.

“Divers confirmed the pole was bent and fouled with fishing net. The vessel was subsequently dry-docked at the BAE Systems ship lift facility to allow the pole to be replaced,” said a statement from the Joint Agency Co-ordin­ation Centre overseeing the international search for MH370.

The vessel is expected to ­be back in the search area early next week after ­repairs in Fremantle.

Earlier this week, the $1 million “towfish”, while being towed underwater by the Fugro Discovery, sank after it struck a mud volcano rising about 2200m above the sea floor in the southern Indian Ocean. The Fugro Equator continues the search.

Australia, Malaysia and China have committed to searching 120,000sq km for the missing aircraft. More than 85,000sq km of the sea floor have been searched so far. MH370 disappeared in March 2014 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board

It is anticipated that the search of the agreed area will be completed around the middle of the year, but should no credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific ­location of the aircraft be ­uncovered, the governments have agreed to not expand the search area.

The search has blown out in cost, and has not been helped by the failure of Malaysia to send a promised survey vessel

MTF..P2

[ventus45]

So, at a rate of approx 10km^2/hr = 240km^2/day for 35,000km^2 = 146 days "on the job" to go. Allowing for ship returns to port for resupply/repairs, say 48 days lost = 194 days total from now = Search predicted to End on Saturday 30th July 2016.

[Gobbledock]

In the 'Mick' of time!

Peetwo, interesting commentary from 'Mick'. The wording of his comments, absolute defence of the ATsB, the spin he puts on some of the ATsB's public statements, plus the way he 'breaks down portions of his comments into laymen terms for the reader', and criticises others spelling etc it is almost like reading one of the ATsB's ridiculous Shite filled reports directly from its website!!!

I've  no doubt that 'Mick' is either one of their Investigators or one of their 'report writing department' employees, someone who can no longer control their emotions and their internal 'underwater mud volcano' has finally erupted! After all I recall another f#ckwit from another government agency doing the same thing, the name 'Flyingfiend' might ring a bell'?

"Safe towfish for all"

[Peetwo]

'Mick' the insider man?

P666 - I've no doubt that 'Mick' is either one of their Investigators or one of their 'report writing department' employees, someone who can no longer control their emotions and their internal 'underwater mud volcano' has finally erupted! After all I recall another f#ckwit from another government agency doing the same thing, the name 'Flyingfiend' might ring a bell'?

I think your right Gobbles? I'm glad someone else picked it up, the man/woman/troll/entity/drone is just a little to knowledgeable about - well everything...

However IMO 'Mick' probably sits closer to the side of the angels than Flyingfiend ever would or could. There is no doubt Mick is extremely defensive & tetchy about the ATSB but I don't  see him spruiking Dolan's 'Beyond all sensible Reason' philosophy; or being frugal in splashing out cash to retrieve a small jet's CVR/FDR from a lower profile investigation - do you?

No this guy definitely comes from an Ops background and like a true dyed in the wool TSI is more offended by the 'imbalance' & bias that the Bailey rants are bringing to the public's lazy, jaundiced eye...   

Oh well it would seem that we will get another chance to 'suss' out just who? the mysterious 'Mick' is because BB is at it again..

Courtesy the Oz:

MH370: report’s ‘stupid’ flaws hinder search

• Byron Bailey
  
• The Australian
  
• January 29, 2016 12:00AM
  

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss released the latest Australian Transport Safety Bureau ­report on the search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 in early December, and the next day a concerned airline captain of 30 years’ jet experi­ence forwarded me the ­report with the comment: “How could they be so stupid?”

I have since sent the report to four other experienced captains and all expressed a similar view. It took me only a couple of minutes to realise that this report was seriously flawed as it showed ignorance of basic principles of flight.

The ATSB says a “hypoxia/­unresponsive flight crew” scenario, in which the pilots were unconscious or dead because of loss of oxygen through decompression or some other event, is the “type” that best suits the evidence of the last leg of the flight south, rather than that of a pilot being in control to the end and performing a controlled ditching.

ATSB chief Martin Dolan says he does not have to worry about what happened on the flight ­before that point — during which it turned back to Malaysia on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with no radio contact and with its radar transponder switched off. That is to say, it is fine to ignore the overwhelming evidence that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft on March 8, 2014.

The ATSB used Bayesian mathematical modelling to project the most likely flight path of the Boeing 777 after fuel exhaustion and flame out to define the search area. It is important to note that introducing the variable of an input from a conscious pilot renders the modelling invalid.

I tested the ATSB “flame-out theory” in a B777 full flight simulator in Dubai. The results led me to totally disagree with the flight path assumed by the ATSB’s modelling, which used only an engineering simulator.

First, the ATSB states “the right engine flamed out and in each test case the aircraft then turned left and remained in a banked turn”.

That’s strange because, as any experienced multi-­engine pilot knows, if the right engine stops, the aircraft will want to turn right because of simple moment of forces. Strange also because when I flamed out an engine in the FFS, the thrust asymmetry compensation via the autopilot kept the aircraft flying straight.

Now comes the flame out of the second engine in which, as the ATSB correctly states, “the autopilot disconnects” before the air-driven generator deploys. It then states they performed a basic ­trajectory analysis of an uncontrolled “but stable aircraft” for 230km.
What utter rubbish — because jet aircraft are not naturally stable and require ­either an autopilot or pilot hand flying to keep them in controlled flight.

If the autopilot is disengaged the aircraft would rapidly roll into a spiral dive because the autopilot would have turned the control surfaces to compensate for flying on only one engine. Less than two minutes later, the aircraft would have hit the sea at more than 1000km/h, resulting in masses of debris that would float for months.

So the ­reality is that even if ­pilots were unresponsive — that’s to say, dead — the ATSB’s search area projection is flawed.

If MH370 is not found in the ­next few months and the search is called off, one can hope China will commission the US National Transportation Safety Board and American oceanographer Robert Ballard, who has found a series of underwater wrecks including the Bismarck and Titanic, to start afresh using real experts.

       
I don't know about anyone else but the Bailey rant is getting a bit repetitive, let's just hope his Jiminy Cricket 'Mick' comes out to play, his commentary is much more informative & thought provoking...


MTF...P2

[ventus45]

BB

If MH370 is not found in the ­next few months and the search is called off, one can hope China will commission the US National Transportation Safety Board and American oceanographer Robert Ballard, who has found a series of underwater wrecks including the Bismarck and Titanic, to start afresh using real experts.

Never going to happen BB.
It is clear that China:-
(a) has had no interest whatsoever in the search since the day that Angus took the stage, and
(b) treated their own NOK harshly thereafter.

The deduction is obvious.

[Peetwo]

Pick the Troll??
It is not 'Mick' but Andy sounds a lot like him..
 

Andrew 


Byron Bailey’s latest article continues to misrepresent and, dare I say it, lie about statements made by the ATSB.  It is full of inaccuracies.

He just doesn’t get it when he claims the ATSB thinks it’s fine to “ignore the overwhelming evidence that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft”. The ATSB isn’t concerned about why the aircraft went missing; they are only concerned about where the aircraft might have ended up so they can define a search area.   How it got there is irrelevant for the ATSB’s purposes.

He claims the “ATSB used Bayesian mathematical modelling to project the most likely flight path of the Boeing 777”.  Again, that is not correct and shows his lack of understanding of the process.   The flight path analysis was conducted by other parties, including Boeing, Inmarsat and Thales, using a variety of analytical techniques.   The results of that analysis were subsequently tested by the Defence Science & Technology Group using a Bayesian statistical approach.  Controlled vs un-controlled flight didn’t even come into that part of the analysis.

He says he tested the ATSB’s theory in a full flight simulator and states the results led him to disagree with the ATSB’s flight path, which was derived using “only an engineering simulator”.  What he fails to mention is that the aircraft manufacturer’s engineering simulator is actually far more capable than full flight simulators used for pilot training.

He claims the ATSB said, “The right engine flamed out and in each test case the aircraft then turned left and remained in a banked turn”.  That is an outright lie.  The ATSB report actually said, “The aircraft behaviour after the engine flame-out(s) was tested in the Boeing engineering simulator.   In each test case, the aircraft began turning to the left and remained in a banked turn”.   In other words, the aircraft began turning left and remained in a banked turn after BOTH engines had flamed out.

That result is entirely consistent with the expected behaviour of the aircraft.  The aircraft would have continued flying straight after the right engine failed due to the left rudder input from the aircraft’s Thrust Asymmetry Compensation function.   Once the left engine failed, however, the residual rudder input would have caused the aircraft to start rolling and turning to the left.

He then states “they performed a basic trajectory analysis of an uncontrolled ‘but stable aircraft’ for 230km”, claims that was “utter rubbish” and that the ATSB’s search area projection is therefore flawed.   The ATSB report actually states, “A simulation was performed to determine the glide distance of the aircraft under active control to maintain wings-level attitude.  The simulation (from FL330) resulted in the aircraft gliding for a total distance of approximately 125 NM from the point of the second engine flame-out”.   The point of that simulation was to determine a maximum gliding distance if the aircraft had remained under the control of a pilot.  

However, the search area definition was based on the theory that the aircraft was not actively controlled and crashed within about 20nm of the second engine flame-out.

I fail to understand why The Australian continues to publish Byron Bailey’s nonsense. 

Maybe Andy is another bureau white hat? Anyway in answer to his question in bold, BB has created a readership & loyal following and he has drawn out the ATSB, including insightful commentary like yours. I also think there is a game at play going on behind the scenes, why is it people like Andy & Mick feel the need to finally give (although purely theoretical) such factually accurate analysis?

Quote from 'that man' - "The controversial search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has suffered a further setback.."

Okay some other recent comments that perhaps highlight how the narrative is being crafted to paint the ATSB in an extremely poor light:

John 


It's worrying to think that people capable of such risibly incompetent analysis have anything to do with the safety of transportation in Australia.

I was wavering between viewpoints before, but now it seems virtually certain that a pre-determined outcome favouring the standpoint of a fellow member of the Club of Governments has been the motivation all along.

Why is it that I don't feel surprised? Angry at all the taxpayers' money being wasted, but not surprised...

Terrance 


" one can hope China will commission the US National Transportation Safety Board and American oceanographer Robert Ballard, who has found a series of underwater wrecks including the Bismarck and Titanic, to start afresh using real experts."......
Something along these lines is the only hope that there is to find the plane because those who are in control of the current search have a vested interest in denial...that is the protection of their collective reputations or, if you’re a conspiracy theorist, to continue to ensure that it isn’t found.

Mark 


None of those governments want it found, particularly Malaysia.  Both China and Malaysia have promised cash and resources to assist the search, but nothing has ever been forthcoming.  The ATSB, as an organisation, is hopelessly incompetent, actually, The ATSB doesn't even aspire to climb to the level of hopelessly incompetent
 
Bill 

Again we have a taxpayer funded body pursuing their own agendas and ignoring real world experience and advice. Why? Well it keeps them in spending mode (on themselves particularly) and creaming it for as long as possible.  The moment the head of this search operation was selected - one who has no commercial airline experience - it was doomed to failure.  Still Australia has the great propensity of "jobs for the boys" first, second and always.  My only surprise was that an ex politician/ state premier  wasn't appointed to head this soon-to-be another stuff up!

 Ok but none of them are Trolls.. ..but IMO this joker is -  

Chris


The conspiracy nut jobs are out in force today (see below). Its not even a full moon. I'm just amazed with all your knowledge insight and wisdom you cranks aren't employed by NASA.

By the way Byron...What do you do for a crust?...Sit at home and watch repeats of Air Crash Investigation?

&..in reply (feeding the Troll):


Damien

@Chris Read the paragraph in italics at the bottom of the article. Besides what credentials do you have to make any criticism here? I'm a retired flight engineer by the way.

DJD


Chris

@Damien @Chris " ..who has found a series of underwater wrecks including the Bismarck and Titanic, to start afresh using real experts."

The comparisons between finding the Bismarck 41,700 ton, 251 m  Bismarck and the 52,310 ton, 269.1 m Titanic whose position was boxed within a 20KM square is close to certifiable...


Damien

@Chris @Damien And your point is?????
You haven't mentioned your qualifications.

DJD


Chris


@Damien @Chris  And your point is?????

Its a nonsense comparison which compromises his whole article.

Qualifications? Spent 12 years at sea on survey and research ships.

Byron

@Chris Actually Chris I still fly private/corporate jets for a couple of very famous celebrities. We get a laugh from these " trolls " about their outraged confected rubbish. I sent the report to about 20 real experts not just the 5 mentioned in the article and all agree that the ATSB was remiss in not considering the rogue pilot theory.  No flight engineers on a B777 and I did not lie in my article - problem is when I repeat what the Australian has printed re their talking to the head of ATSB then I get finger pointed at me and the editors do leave out a lot of my substantiating facts to appeal to the layman.

I am not concerned as to why Captain Shah may or may not have committed this hijack just like pointing out that these taxpayer funded self appointed ATSB experts on huge salaries are wasting our money. CAE Flight Simulation would be interested to hear that the B777 Full Flight Simulators are not 100 % valid - this is a worry cos we are trained 100 % in the simulators not the aircraft. 

MTF?- Definitely..P2

[Tinkicker]

P2:

I don't know about anyone else but the Bailey rant is getting a bit repetitive, let's just hope his Jiminy Cricket 'Mick' comes out to play, his commentary is much more informative & thought provoking...

It sure is getting repetitive...turning into a tit-for-tat exchange. I think it's also worth noting that it's industry, not an individual, that confers the title of 'expert.'  

From my vantage point, 'Mick' & 'Andrew' appear to have a professional grasp of the issues surrounding the disappearance of MH370, & subsequent search for the aircraft.

BB:

The results led me to totally disagree with the flight path assumed by the ATSB’s modelling, which used only an engineering simulator.

To suggest that a manufacturer's engineering flight simulator is somehow inferior, is mistaken. Validation data generated by engineering flight simulators is used to prove that flight training simulator performance corresponds to that of the aircraft.  

Andrew:

What he fails to mention is that the aircraft manufacturer’s engineering simulator is actually far more capable than full flight simulators used for pilot training.

Andrew is correct. Manufacturer's engineering flight simulators are heavily used throughout aircraft development. They are primarily used to verify that flight deck design is fully optimized. This includes the 'human-machine' interface. Engineering flight simulators are also utilized for testing & verifying new software & software updates that run on-board systems.

It's also worth noting that the Boeing Commercial Airplane team brings significant expertise to the table. The combined product knowledge & experience of aircraft performance engineering, Flight Operations Safety pilots, Flight Training pilots, and Fight Test pilots is second to none.

At the end of the day, I try to remember: it's better to admit you don't know something, ask a question, and learn something new than it is to pretend you know everything and remain ignorant.

[Gobbledock]

Paging Mick the media tart

Peetwo, only yourself and the Ferryman know how to calm down an agitated Gobbledock. So I'm going to lean on your wisdom, assume that 'Mick' isn't one of Dolans footstools and I will cut him some very very limited slack.

However, you posed a very interesting question Peetwo;

. I also think there is a game at play going on behind the scenes, why is it people like Andy & Mick feel the need to finally give (although purely theoretical) such factually accurate analysis?

I agree. But what could be the root cause of the 'game changer' that brings 'Mick' out into the open? Well I've seen similar before, so I'm wondering if there has been some reshuffling within Beakers lair? EBA's being negotiated boys? More government cutbacks coming to the frontline investigators while at the same time Beaker and his closest arse lickers get payrises, and Beakers budget cops a $100 million dollar hit in he arse c/o Malaysia? Someone been transferred from the Can'tberra office to McMurdo Sound? All good 'hypothetical' reasons for someones mud volcano to finally explode? Just sayin.......

I guess working under that bearded, stuttering, bobble headed mi mi mi-ing waste of oxygen for 5 years will do that to a person.

But to get back on track, Mick does do what the ATsB can't do - makes some sense and reason out of his analysis. I would like to encourage Mick to come to Auntypru and post. It's a nice place to hang out, the beers are cold, the mantra of the IOS is logical, darts night are a hoot and the cartoon caricatures we make of Dolan, Truss, Skid'Mark, Houston etc are a riotous laugh, you know big facial features, skinny bodies, small willies, that sort of thing.......

[Peetwo]

The Miniscule grows a set & overrules the Muppet -

It might be that Truss is under Prime Ministerial direction, combined with the return of the Chinese to the SIO search area; but the Oz thru the dynamic duo of 'that man' Higgins & newbie (to aviation) Mitch (give-em-hell) Bingemann write today that the DPM actually has an opinion:

Warren Truss concedes MH370 rogue pilot theory possible

• Ean Higgins, Mitchell Bingemann
  
• The Australian
  
• January 30, 2016 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney

The federal government has moved closer to accepting that Malaysia Airlines captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and brought down Flight MH370, after widespread criticism of Australian air safety investigators’ decision to exclude that scenario in deciding where to search.

The concession by Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss follows a series of articles published in The Australian and The Weekend Australian in which professional airline pilots and air safety investigators have said the “rogue pilot” theory was the most credible, and that to ignore this theory risked looking in the wrong area.

In correspondence with The Weekend Australian, Mr Truss said “it is difficult to conceive any scenario that does not include some element of human intervention” in the loss of MH370, which disappeared with 239 ­people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which operates under Mr Truss’s transport ­portfolio, has fought a rearguard ­action over its decision to work on the “type” of scenario in which the pilots became unconscious because of loss of oxygen through decompression or became otherwise “unresponsive”, and considered only the last leg of the flight from Malaysia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Pilots and aviation experts say given the deliberate flying evident in the first part of the flight back over Malaysia and the turning off of the radar transponder and cut in communications, the most likely scenario is that Captain Zaharie deliberately took the aircraft to its end, possibly as a political statement.

In a recent ABC radio interview, ATSB chief Martin Dolan said the responsibility of working out what happened rested with Malaysian investigators, and the ATSB, which is merely guiding the search, did not need to change its strategy to base it on the scenario of the pilot flying the aircraft to the end.

“All the evidence we have at the moment says that is very ­unlikely,” he told the ABC.
But in correspondence, Mr Truss appeared to open the door to accepting the possibility.

“The Australian government has not adopted a position on the cause of the crash, but … I have always acknowledged that it is difficult to conceive any scenario that does not include some ­element of human intervention,” he wrote. He also revealed Malaysia had paid $80 million towards the cost of the search. Meanwhile, the Chinese government has announced it will ­finally rejoin the hunt for MH370, saying it will send a search vessel by the end of next month.

Who'd of thought...

{Coincidence?? Malcolm's new head Mandarin 'Parko' has had his feet under the desk a week now and he is not known for letting moss grow between his toes. So is this the 1st sign of a new paradigm within the Australian bureaucratic politics associated with oversight of the MH370 SIO search?? One can only hope so, for Murky Mandarin's mob (except for AMSA) are definitely on the nose; & we all know that the PM&C rules supreme in any turf war - }

Who is Mick? Could be sin-binned Watto perhaps, being side-lined to pushing a desk he certainly would have the time? Could even be a Joe Hattley, certainly JH would be privy to all the details etc & would have the necessary experience & knowledge to provide such a comprehensive (theoretical) overview?? Anyway here is the latest instalment from tinkicker Mick :  

Mick

10 hours ago

Various commentators assume that MH370 must have been ditched largely intact because there was no wreckage found.   However, the fact that no floating wreckage was found in the initial search is hardly proof that there was no floating wreckage.   It would do well to remember that 10 days elapsed from when MH370 went missing to when the search was moved to the Southern Indian Ocean.  Further, the new search area itself was somewhat loosely defined at that stage as a complete analysis and interpretation of the INMARSAT data had not yet been completed.

A lot can happen to floating wreckage in 10 days; some of it will sink, all of it will drift.  Even if the precise location of the impact site were known, after 10 days, with a rate of drift of just 3 knots and an unknown or uncertain direction of drift, the search area would be well over 4.2 million square kilometres - that is a bit over half the area of Australia; with up to 5 knots of drift the search area increases exponentially to be more than one and a half times the area of Australia.

If the general direction of drift was known (a combination of currents and surface wind) you can reduce the areas stated above by one half to one third.   But remember, those areas apply to the first day of the search (day 10 in elapsed time), because the drift is continual, by day 2 they have expanded by 20%, the next day a further 20%.

By any standard, that is a lot of ocean to search and it gets a whole lot bigger each day! 
I really struggle to understand how anyone can argue that we would have found floating wreckage if it was there.   Frankly, with a 10 day handicap and an uncertain starting point I would have been surprised if we found anything (needless to say, I wasn't surprised). 
It does well to remember that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Mick
9 hours ago

@Brendan  You might recall a paucity of satellite imagery from the day of the crash was available 10 days later; it was all "time of request" stuff.   That said, you may also recall that an Orion and a ship were tasked with investigating an item that appeared on one satellite image but neither of them could locate it.
 
Unlike the movies, satellites capable of reading the numbers on your credit card from 200 miles up aren't recording happenings all over the world.   And that bit of the Southern Indian Ocean is a relatively un-trafficked, unremarkable stretch of water. 

John
9 hours ago

@Mick @Brendan  Exactly - And that bit of the Southern Indian Ocean is a relatively untrafficked, unremarkable stretch of water. - Only say variation is the Remakably bad weather propensities for that location: ie often  very strong winds/seas - all able to break up and disperse any ?? debris that may remain afloat - John H


John
9 hours ago

@Mick  Quite agreed - Mick - as I have posted a lot this Absence of Debris  is in itself  Neither a proof that the aircraft either landed ( ie controlled ditching ) or Crashed ( ie uncontrolled as per Capt Bailey ). With much seagoing experience I totally agree with your  scenario esp with the time factor and imprecise starting location for search efforts.

John H

Mick
8 hours ago

@John  John, good to hear from you.  What level of certainty (as in ±x°) regarding direction of drift do you reckon would have been possible 10 days after the event?  Any ideas what an average rate of drift might be in those parts?

Mick
6 hours ago

In the interests of clarity and accuracy I should point out that the rate at which the potential search area increases each day is not a flat 20% per day.   From day 1 (elapsed day 10) to day 2 (11) the search area increases by 21%, day 2 (11) to day 3 (12) the rate of increase is 19%, day 3 (12) to 4 (13) is 17%.

Perhaps a simpler way of describing the rate of increase is to say that after 4 days the area has doubled and after 8 days it has tripled in size. 

 
Gobbles not sure whether Mick (aka ???) will come and play but will put the invite out there & see if he will bite..



MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

NewsCorp v ATSB war ratchet's up a notch. 

Today the war devolves to the lighter weight NewsCorp tabloid publications. 

Extract from off my post on the 'Tick flick & publish' thread:

MH370 - The dangers of desktop journalism?

The following article by Robyn Ironside (courtesy the Sunday Mail) on the MH370 SIO search developments (or not ), seems to be somewhat disjointed and quotes from 'exclusive' news filed almost a year ago & then jumps to recent news from just days ago:

ATSB boss admits MH370 search vessels may have missed plane

January 30, 20165:08pm

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/news/content/v1/origin:video_integrator.9ta2NlMDE6PiIh2w9k3hNa2yiTozW-Xg?t_product=video&t_template=../video/player[/img]

Fugro Discovery heading out to the search zone in the southern Indian Ocean. Picture: ATSB

Robyn Ironside News Corp Australia Network

  
That strange, disjointed, tabloid article has elicited this highly critical & sometimes sarcastic, word lashing from Ben Sandilands : 

News goes ga-ga over year old MH370 news

Ben Sandilands | Jan 31, 2016 8:36AM
The cruel sea beneath which the durable wreckage of MH370 lies

The News organisation definition of ‘exclusive’ when it comes to MH370 appears to be reporting news that is more than a year old. - Luv it Ben

In defence of RI, I do get the impression that she is just a small pawn in a much bigger game that has seen a national newspaper in recent weeks regurgitating essentially old news files & theories related to MH370. Where that game is headed who knows, I just hope that respect will be shown for the MH370 NOK while the NewsCorp v ATSB battle continues. Keep the JACC head Judith Zielke's comment (in regard to the wind up of the search) in mind before publishing some of this rubbish.

“No matter what we do that’s an extremely difficult thing for the families to come to terms with and we will continue to hope that we’re successful (in the search),”

 Remember false hope is sometimes a lot more soul destroying than no hope..   

And on the Mick v BB front well unfortunately it now seems to be turning into a slanging match..

Byron



At last some common sense The truth has a way of eventually surfacing.

Mick

@Byron Says the man who took a heading from a diagram and a sentence that appeared 550 words later from an ATSB report, stitched them together with a "The" and an "and" and hoodwinked readers into believing it was a direct "quotation" from the ATSB for the sole purpose of ridiculing them.  

Spare us any pontifications on the truth, please.

However there is still some good common-sense debate & analytical reasoning coming through, examples:

David

This is nothing new. The ATSB has never said it rejected the rogue pilot theory, or endorsed it. That is the business of the Malaysian investigation. The ATSB's task is to establish where to search for the lost aircraft and to do that it does not need to establish the cause of the loss, merely what the situation is at the end of the flight. That includes the aircraft's last known likely position and what is likely to have happened after that. Because the last signals to and from the satellite are consistent with fuel exhaustion and no-one has offered a sensible alternative interpretation, the ATSB has said it is unlikely the aircraft ditched. This was Captain Bailey's assertion and would require fuel. The above is on the ATSB's web site. 

While Captain Bailey has been asserting there was pilot control early on, he has created a straw man in asserting the ATSB opposed this. It is not its business to argue for or against. Many others have held the opinion that someone was flying the aircraft early on when its radar transponder and other things stopped operating; and still do. He is not and has not been, a lone voice in the wilderness.

It makes no difference as to whether that is so or who that might have been flying the aircraft early on as to where to look for the wreckage.

 
&..

Brendan

One thing which stands out in the ATSB December 2015 Definition of Search Areas document compared to the corresponding part of the June 2014 document, is the shift in emphasis about the end of flight scenario.

In the earlier report, they supposedly review previous accidents and end up deciding that this case best fits what they call the “unresponsive crew/hypoxia event”, but only relating to the cruise phase, and also they emphasise only for the purposes of deciding a search strategy. They even say that “a maximum glide distance of 100+ NM would result in an impractically large search area, the search team considered that it was reasonable to assume that there were no control inputs following the flame out of second engine”

This is what Captain Bailey and others (I hope I'm not misquoting anyone) have always been unhappy about, and as always acknowledged by ATSB themselves, it would have consequences for the search area.

But the latest report simply says that there are no comparable B777 accidents. And on page 13 the report says that “the evidence is therefore inconsistent with a controlled ditching scenario” However their definition of that term is probably different to what most people would understand. The report states that a “controlled ditching scenario” (also p. 13) must include having engine thrust available. So the ditching on the Hudson was not a “controlled ditching scenario.” Also in stating that MH370 is not a “controlled ditching scenario”, they are not ruling out a pilot sitting in the plane operating the controls. They just avoid the question.

Not to say that they are wrong.

David

@Brendan Captain Bailey in the 9/10 Jan Weekend Australian said it was "commonsense" that a rogue pilot had, "performed a controlled ditching under engine power." This would entail fuel. He has not explained how having fuel could be consistent with reasonable interpretation of the satellite communication data, which indicates the aircraft ran out of fuel before ditching. The Hudson ditching was not "controlled" in this sense and was at the end of a glide, albeit flaps had been lowered under the emergency power of the APU to get ditching speed down. It is not what Captain Bailey had in mind or, Simon Hardy, another pilot and bookwriter, who he quoted earlier.

A controlled glide has not been discounted but it would lead to a much larger search area if included. More to the point it is thought to be unlikely for several reasons I have encountered, some of which the ATSB advances. One is that a pilot, if wanting to minimise flotsam, would elect to do a ditching under engine power, which, on the evidence this one didn't. (This raises whether a ditching from a glide in other than calm waters would be other than a crash, and predicting and finding smooth waters down south would be chancy. And in any case, because there is little debris does not mean that this was accomplished. As pointed out elsewhere, delays, distance and search site selection would account for this, when supplemented by some items being dragged down by barnacles and sinking)

Secondly the pilot would have to be aware that after engine fuel exhaustion there would be some still available, because of a different fuel outlet position, to start the APU. He would need the APU to get flaps down. Even if aware of this, he would be unaware whether it would run for long enough since that is very dependent on aircraft nose up or down, the exact relationship remaining unknown even now. Third he would have to switch off the IFE (it was on earlier in the flight) or shut down/disconnect the APU shortly after it started to cause the satellite communications which actually occurred. There is no obvious reason why he would want to do any of these things, almost certainly being unaware of these satellite communications.

So yes the definition of the controlled ditching scenario is in the middle of this. Glad that you too have read the ATSB reports. 

As to John's comment above, I have no present nor past affiliation with the ATSB. I do think they are doing a fine job, utilising all sorts of skills, national and international, and I see them and the searchers as a team we should support. It is through quite some skill from them, the satellite people and analysts that a rational search area has been identified at all, giving at least a shot at finding the wreckage. I daresay there is a deal of skill and perseverance being applied by the searchers also. Scepticism is fair, but cynicism and denigration are out of place. 
Hrmmph.

&..

Andrew

I have no skin in the game of protecting the ATSB, just an aviation professional who gets annoyed at the frequent misreporting of aviation matters in the media. Here we have Byron Bailey, a former airline captain, pushing his theory of what happened to MH370. That's fine, we all have our theories and there is some logic to Byron's conclusions. What is not fine is that he selectively misquotes the ATSB in a bid to promote his theory. I have no problem with anyone criticising the ATSB's analysis, but please be honest.

IMO if nothing else the BB Oz articles have led to some seriously good thought provoking commentary. The Oz has also managed to bring the MH370 SIO search back in the spotlight, which from experience is the last place that Dolan, Mrdak & the Minister really want it to be - unless of course they do actually find MH370...


MTF..P2     

[ventus45]

The ATSB has always held to two fundamental "positions".

(1) They are only interested in the post FMT flight south. Anything pre FMT, ie, in the time frame 16:30utc to 18:40utc (pushback from gate C1 at KL to the FMT) is for the Malaysians, and the Malaysians only, ie, we, the ATSB, "do not want to know".

(2) The ISAT data, post the FMT at 18:40utc, is "consistent with unresponsive crew".

What people need to understand is the simple fact that (2) is the "cruise" portion of the flight, from the FMT at approximately 18:40utc to the SIO at 00:11utc, and is 5hours and 31 minutes.

Any crew, (dead or alive, or asleep = brain dead) "routinely" fly B-777, B-787, B-767, B-757, B-747, B-737 and all the Airbuses too, the A-380, A-340, A-330, A-320 etc, and every other "jet airliner" on autopilot during the "cruise".  

So, the fact that MH-370 was on autopilot during that time interval (18:40utc to 00:11utc) is perfectly normal, and indeed, actually "routine".

In fact, it may surprise many in the media, and the general public, to "discover" that all modern airliners are flown on autopilot from soon after "gear up" to most often even after "gear down" for landing, indeed, sometimes they are even "auto-landed" by the computers. Why ?  Because the airline accountants "hate" pilots "flying", because the "computers" can do it more "efficiently", ie, optimal fuel economy = reduced costs = more profit = higher management bonuses = perfect for them.

The ATSB has however, for it's own reasons, skillfully, deliberately, continuously and disingenuiously, fed the ignorant media, and an ignorant public, with the bullshit line that:-
"routine cruise" = "unresponsive" = "hypoxic" = "pilots dead" = "certainly crashed".
And from that it thus logically follows that:-
"no way it ditched" = "anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot".

They then follow that up with:-
"it ran out of fuel" = "you need fuel for power to ditch".

As a glider pilot, with many "unfueled", and "unpowered" landing, I can tell you, straight up, that the ATSB is sprouting total crap.

The public might remember the "mirricle on the Hudson", but apparently they have forgotten.  Then of course, there is something "little known" outside that event.
Airbus test pilots conducted tests in a simulator, trying a different "energy management technique" to what Sully did.  The "outcome" was "better".
I took a special interest in that, because in gliders,we sometimes did what we called "a hangar landing" which was an exercise in "precision energy management".
I might explain a hangar landing some day, and what the Airbus test pilots did in the SIM. It might open a few eyes, but alas, not in the ATSB.

So, quite frankly, anyone who swallows the ATSB "line", that it "had to be" a "crash", let alone leaping into print to defend their "line", is really out with the fairies.

A number of pilots have postulated that:-
(a) the flight was deliberate and
(b) the flight was under pilot "management" and "control" until the end, and
© that end was a ditching.

I for one agree, indeed, I have my own specific theory, with a specific flight plan, and a specific "ditch zone".

[Gobbledock]

Good post Ventus, i quite enjoyed it. I like this bit too;

I for one agree, indeed, I have my own specific theory, with a specific flight plan, and a specific "ditch zone".

That makes two of us. I have a few thoughts on the matter, I won't digress here. However it is interesting that the aircraft has met it's unfortunate demise in the deepest parts of the deepest oceans on this planet.

[Peetwo]

No pong about the pings! - Let the search continue.

Yes "V" excellent post...

I have a question for you in regards to:

A number of pilots have postulated that:-

(a) the flight was deliberate and
(b) the flight was under pilot "management" and "control" until the end, and
© that end was a ditching.

Q/ In regards to (a) & (b), does your view/theory entertain the possibility that MH370 may have been under control to TOPD then with flameout of LH engine 'person(s) in control' have nosed over into steep dive prior to RH engine flameout, RAT auto-deployment & APU auto-start (in time to transmit 00:11UTC ISAT ping).  So hitting the water controlled, much like Germanwings A320 into the foot of the French ALPs?

I know that brings into question the matter of debris dispersal (or lack of), but as it was pointed out by Mick & John at post #232, it is conceivable that debris would have drifted many miles from the impact point by the time the SIO SAR had begun.

One thing from the rubbish article from News Corp that I think is significant, was the comment from Mr Mimi on the one bit of evidence that could ultimately prove/disprove the many "cruise portion" theories:

Commissioner Dolan said the ATSB was still awaiting the outcome of a French investigation into the flaperon confirmed as coming from MH370.

“At this stage we’ve not heard anything from the French that would enable us to form a view about what position the flaperon was in when it separated from the aircraft which is the key question for us,” he said. “It’s quite possible we won’t get anything definitive on that.”

Malaysia is also due to release another report on the anniversary of the plane’s disappearance, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

“We’re still waiting to understand what it is that they’re intending to publish, said Mr Dolan.

“That’s up to them.”

   
From experience with this individual, when he says "anything definitive" is code for "hopefully never", therefore he feels vulnerable about what the French may ultimately reveal.

Coincidentally back to the Oz where the subject of the flaperon also gets discussed:

David

@Brendan Footnote. Suspect I am firing this into thin air, but in case anyone is there, why the flaperon detached is, I understand, under investigation by the French. Not that obvious because it is attached at four strong points and the Bailey theory that if might have been taken off by a separated engine seems unlikely because it does not display that sort of impact damage. Shame this investigation is incomplete (or its results not made public) because it might well throw light on the aircraft's last moments, in turn confirming search priorities or otherwise.

Mick

@David  David, you're correct. Captain Bailey has previously stated that Boeing had stated that the flaperon had "been broken off in a lowered position".   Boeing have made no such statement, they have examined the flaperon but only to the extent required to identify the part number.    The flaperon is still in the possession of the French authorities.

Have a look at the underwater pictures from the Air France AF447 crash; one wing is shown completely stripped of aileron, inner and outer flaps.

David

@Mick @David Thanks Mick. Air France hit the water fast. MH370 not so fast?
Probably left spiral, right flaperon. DuncanSteel com archives 2026 refers to Tom Kenyon's flaperon failure study of Oct last year, on Dropbox. His 1933 refers to others and also ocean drift analysis. Curious silence about this, months later. 

Mick

@David   Thanks David, that's a very, very interesting report, I hadn't seen it before.  Very interesting conclusion:

"Repetitive lateral or torsion forces appear most likely at this stage of the analysis. This conclusion, combined with the lack of strong secondary evidence of a trailing edge strike, infers that the disengagement occurred while MH370 was in flight."

That pretty well torpedoes the good Captain's claim that "the flaperon is an integral part of the wing and would not be broken off separately unless it were lowered."
 
I think MH370 would have had a higher speed impact than AF447 which hit the water about 10,000 feet per minute or just under 200 km/h.  I think some of the simulations for MH370 suggest it may have exceeded its design envelope during the descent, exceeding 1,000 km/h.

David

@Mick @David  My first response now revised.  Yes I have now seen Air France was quite slow and nose up in the stall though with high descent rate. Maybe even tougher on the wing fittings. Unclear to me where in the flaperon report he got info on evidence of fatigue from and it will be interesting to see what the French find. 

It would be odd should the French not have been in consultation with Boeing since they will have all the stressing and test data.I hope they talk or Malaysia facilitates and something definitive is forthcoming shortly.

&..

Mick

@Rod Mmm, I really can't comment on the underwater locator beacon other than to say that it is not an integral part of the CVR or FDR, it is attached and its survivability rate is only 90%, when we heard the pings it was right towards the end of the normal operating life for one of those bits of kit, and the detection range is 5 kilometres under ideal conditions down to 1 kilometre in rough seas so you pretty well got to be right over the thing to be able to localise it, especially with one one detector (eg one ship) . 


The floating wreckage is always going to be a matter of conjecture.  Bear in mind that we weren't looking anywhere near close to the right spot until some three weeks after the actual crash; 10 days were wasted looking in the Gulf of Thailand and Andaman Sea and then we spent the best part of another 10 days looking way to the south and west of where we should have been (that was largely because we didn't get the refined INMARSAT analysis and interpretation until around about day 18 after the crash).


Without wanting to sound trite, it's a big ocean, complex currents, bounded by a lot of relatively remote and/or lightly trafficked coastline.   Add the complexity associated with what floats and for how long and under what circumstances and you've got one lowish probability layered upon another layered upon another ...    Why the flaperon?   If you look at the underwater pictures from the Air France AF447 crash you'll see that one of the wings is pretty well devoid of control surfaces, the ailerons and inner and outer flaps were all gone.   Depending on the damage sustained in the crash, the control surfaces are pretty good candidates to float and float the longest and be easily recognised if they are ever found - they are sealed, light, have good structural integrity and being "wing-shaped",  even to the casual observer, they look "aeronautical".



Rod


So from what I can gather the engines receive fuel from three tanks - one in each wing, a right or left centre tank and a shared centre tank. There is then no auxiliary tank which needs to be switched on either automatically or manually, the latter method requiring the hand of a living, breathing pilot, in order to exhaust the fuel supply.


A course was set for one of the remotest parts of the world such that, even if the plane had substantially broken up on impact, there would be little likelihood of finding debris. The theory that the pilot himself was responsible for this outcome seems plausible to me. His motive is lees clear as is the timing of his death.


As an interested member of the public I resent being told that we have pings, pings come from the plane but, guess what, there is no plane even to this day. I think Mick that even you have some trouble with this.



David



@Rod Unfamiliar with what you mean by the third ping Rod. There was a ping apparently detected (HMS Hero?) which proved to be a sonar fault. To add one point to Mick, it has been found that the pinger battery life was out of date I think so it may not have had normal oomph anyway. 



Rod



My recollection is that Angus Houston announced that there were enough pings to locate the plane but it is quite some time ago and further information about ping reliability may have come to light.



Mick



@Rod 

I can't recall Houston saying that (they never localised the pings with any precision).

I'm pretty sure that there were 5 "pings" picked up in total. 


On 5 April 2014 (day 30), a towed pinger locator detected two sets of underwater pulses of a frequency close to that used by the underwater locator beacons (ULBs).  The ULBs emit an ultrasonic 10 millisecond ping once per second at 37.5 kHz ± 1kHz; the battrey has a 30 day life at 4°C temperature.  At the depth the wreckage would have sunk to in that part of the Indian Ocean woukd have been colder than 4°C so getting 30 days out of batteries would have been unlikely. Also, the pings detected were outside the ± 1kHz range but there are some underwater phenomena that could account the frequency shift.


On 8 April the off-frequency pings were briefly reacquired twice.  The signals weren't localised and they were about 27 kilometres from the 5 April detection.

A fifth detection on 10 April by a sonobuoy dropped from an Orion, was way off frequency and not proximal to the other four and was deemed unlikely to be related to a ULB.


As David points out above the 8 April detection was put down to an equipment fault. Maybe that's where the third ping comes in - 5 in total, 2 eliminated leaves 3 - but that would make the sonobuoy ping, the least reliable, the third ping.

Riddle, mystery, enigma.



Rod



Good to know there is no pong about the pings! Let the search continue.........



Andrew



@Rod  Expanding on Mick's comments above re the fuel system, there are essentially three tanks; left and right main tanks and a centre tank.  The centre tank on the 777-200ER is essentially one big tank that feeds both engines.  Part of the centre tank is located in the left and right wing roots, just inboard of the engines, with the rest located in the centre wing section inside the fuselage.  There is no auxiliary tank.



The fuel system operation is automatic.  Fuel is normally used from the centre tank first, to supply both engines.  When the centre tank is empty, the left and right main tanks automatically supply the left and right engines respectively.  Fuel can be cross-fed from one side to the other, but that selection must be made manually and would normally only be done in the event of a fuel imbalance.



Re the 'pings', there were three sets of acoustic detections.  The first, by HMS Echo, was discounted as it was caused by the ship's own sonar equipment.  The second, by the Chinese ship MV Haixun 01, was discounted after analysis revealed the detections were unlikely due to the ocean depth, surface noise and the type of equipment that was used.  A submarine that was tasked to the same area was unable to get any detections.  The third set of detections, by Australian Defence Vessel Ocean Shield, could not be repeated when the ship was tracking in the opposite direction.  Independent analyses of the Ocean Shield detections determined that they were not consistent with the acoustic beacons fitted to MH370.  Nevertheless, an underwater sonar survey of the area was undertaken using an autonomous underwater vehicle about a week later, but nothing was located. 

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

“K” we got the gunfight bit right– wrong corral: maybe.

After some serious digging it seems (perhaps) the brick-bats related to the transfer from the AMSA – Search and Rescue (Annexe 12) to the Search and Recover (Annexe 13) is quite legitimate.  Whether there was; or, is some ‘friction’ between the camps remains firmly speculative.  The ICAO ‘requirements’ may have prompted the need for JACC as the AAI is not allowed to make public comment or statement.

The ATSB’s reoccurring forays into the media (Annexe 13 –{5.12}) however may be brought into question and go some way toward explaining the apparent differences between the rival camps.  Then there is the question of whether Malaysia stipulated Dolan, and only Dolan, to lead from the rear.  Indeed, it all remains passing strange, but part of the mystery appears at least to be partly, if not completely solved at very least.

It’s all fairly complicated, but it is, as it is.

In an effort to explain it is worth referring again to the abruptly ended, interactive, AMSA MH370 timeline where it stated...

"...As the search for MH370 transitions from a search and rescue operation to an investigation phase the Joint Agency Coordination Centre takes over the day to day communications..."

The JACC became operational on the 31st of March 2014 and the transition from a SAR phase (Annex 12) to an investigation phase (Annex 13) was already occurring?? This was despite the fact that the surface SAR would not cease operations for yet another month.

IMO the reason the Malaysians wanted to go to the investigation phase is that they desperately needed to wrest back control of the search & more importantly the narrative of the search, Annex 13 enabled the Malaysians to do that by being the State of registry for MH370.

However the transition from Annex 12 to 13 is dependent on (balance of probabilities) there being no survivors - hence going from SAR to 'search & recovery'.

How this decision could be justified, in the case of an aircraft disappearing without a trace, is beyond me but quite obviously legally this was somehow established?? 

It is interesting to note that in the AMSA/JRCC presentation to ICAO - MH370 SEARCH AND RESCUE RESPONSE – JRCC AUSTRALIA - under heading Search Challenges (para 2.2) at subpara q)) it states..

q) Clearly defined division of responsibilities between the search and rescue function (Annex 12) and the air accident investigation search and recovery function (Annex 13).

...which signifies that the JRCC found this 'transition' from Annex 12 to 13 as an impediment to their effective control & management of the SAR phase.

The irony of all this is that it is the Malaysians who were responsible for putting Beaker in charge of the greatest aviation mystery of all time. The question is did they do this by design or was there political/bureaucratic influence from our end??

IMO it is not possible to accept, after the Senate PelAir inquiry & numerous less than convincing Senate Estimates appearances, that either the Malaysians or the miniscule would honestly believe (unless there were ulterior motives) they had the best man for the job - or would they??

It would have been simple for Truss to appoint an acting commissioner with sole responsibility for MH370 in the interim, as the Chief Commissioner's contract was soon to expire. Instead Truss bizarrely extended the CC's contract for a further 2yrs, which coincidentally (like the SIO search) is due to expire in June 2016.

Following on from my post at #219 (above) the comments on the Planetalking blog - China sends hi-tech ship to MH370 search zone - through the endeavours of Ventus45, Dan Dair, Simon Gunson & Fred has led to similar ground.

Cheeky "V" observation :

2

Ventus45
Posted January 30, 2016 at 1:04 pm | Permalink

The Chinese abruptly abandoned all search activities for MH-370 when the JACC/ATSB took over from AMSA.

Since then, the Chinese attitude to the JACC/ATSB search could best be described as one of “studied indifference”.

So, one must ask, what motive could the Chinese now have for their apparent renewed interest in MH-370 ?

Will the Chinese join the ATSB search, perhaps using their “better SAS kit” for looking into those “difficult sites” that the ATSB has “mentioned in passing” at different times, or will the Chinese conduct their own “entirely independent” search ?

If the later, it will be interesting to see “where” they search.


That could be “telling”, specifically as to who knows “what’s what”, in the intel world.

Yes indeed "V", hopefully they won't get sneaky & disable the AIS.
However where the comments get interesting is Dan from #7:

Dan

...You’ll have probably seen those action movies, such as the Jack Ryan series, where the CIA says, “we can get a satellite in position in two hours”.


The crux of the problem was that for two days, Malaysia was insisting that the search was continued in the South China Sea, thousands & thousands of kilometres away from where the satellite debris field was finally seen.
(make of that what you will.!!!!)
 
Simon Gunson

Except Dan Dair, that two floating objects the length of Boeing 777 wings and bigger than a shipping container floating in close proximity to each other roughly where an airliner disappeared are not to be dismissed as mere rubbish without any attempt to locate or recover them.

 Fred

Nonsense Simon. The area where those objects were spotted was covered during the aerial search. Ships were also sent to the area, but the objects could not be located. A number of smaller objects were spotted from the air, but they could not be located when the ships reached the area. Some objects were recovered, but they were described as fishing equipment and other flotsam not related to MH370... 

 
And so it goes until #13:

Simon Gunson

Dan
Thank you for clarifying what flotsam you were referring to. The sea in the Gulf of Thailand was full of all sorts of rubbish including oil slicks found to be heavy marine grade diesel fuel flushed from ship bilges.

That Einstein quote is the definition of insanity of you want to look it up. that is precisely what Martyn Dolan is proposing when he suggests to go back over the same area yet again.


 Fred

So was the area searched or not Simon? In post #8 above, you said the sightings were dismissed without any attempt to locate or recover them. I pointed out to you that aircraft and ships were sent to the area but could not locate the objects. You told me I was wrong but then launched into a monologue describing the search I mentioned. Make up your mind.

I didn’t mention any ‘facts’ in my previous post Simon. I simply pointed out that search activities did take place in the area you described, contrary to your previous post. Those search activities are described on the AMSA website and have nothing to do with my memory.

Which brings me back full circle to my post #219 and the "V" post (above) & the criticality of that point in time, here is my contribution to the discussion:

.




[*]15
PAIN_P2
Posted February 2, 2016 at 10:18 am | Permalink

@Fred & @Simon I think this is the part of the AMSA timeline to which you are referring:

•The search continues.
•AMSA’s RCC receives commercial satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search for the missing aircraft. The Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation assessment of them is ‘credible’; however, they may not be related to the aircraft.
•As a result of this information, four aircraft are reoriented to the 23,000 square kilometre area, 2,500 kilometres south west of Perth.
•A RAAF C-130 Hercules is tasked to drop datum marker buoys to assist in drift modelling.
•By the end of the day, two RAAF P3 Orions, a US Navy P8 Poseidon, a RNZAF P3 Orion and a RAAF C-130 Hercules aircraft have assisted in the search.
•A total of six merchant ships have assisted in the search since a shipping broadcast was issued on Monday night (17 March).
•The HMAS Success is en route to the area.

http://www.amsa.gov.au/media/mh370-timeline/

Also refer to AMSA presser with General Manager of AMSA’s Emergency Response Division John Young and Air Commodore John McGarry.

And these were the SAT PHOTs:




Then go to the 22 March where it stated:

•In the evening, China provides a satellite image to Australia, possibly showing a 22.5 metre floating object in the Southern Indian Ocean. AMSA plots the position but the object is not sighted on Saturday. The information is taken into account for Sunday’s search plans.

Then on the 24 March this:

•The Malaysian PM declares based on INMARSAT advice that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 ended in the Indian Ocean.

Significantly the next day PM Abbott declares the SAR mission (ICAO Annex 12) has officially shifted to ‘search & recovery’ (Annex 13), therefore effectively ending AMSA’s JRCC official control of the mission and giving control back to the Malaysians.
Coincidentally two days later Martin Dolan joins John Taylor in a joint presser & the daily brief states:

•The Australian Transport Safety Bureau receives new information as it seeks to refine the search area.

Then the next the daily brief states:

•On Friday 28 March, the search area shifts 1,100 kilometres to the north east, based on updated advice provided by the international investigation team in Malaysia.
•The new search area is approximately 319,000 square kilometres and 1,850 kilometres west of Perth.
•The credible new lead is based on continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost…
..•Six vessels set off for the new search area, including HMAS Success and five Chinese ships.

Three days later the excellent, informative AMSA timeline concludes – shame!

Thereafter we are left in an information vacuum, which seems to be standard fare anytime ATSB Chief Commissioner Martin Dolan is involved in any high profile investigations or, in this case, ‘search & recovery ‘non-investigations’. You see it is all about control i.e. controlling the narrative.

16
PAIN_P2

Posted February 2, 2016 at 10:28 am | Permalink

I have always wondered why, given the huge amount of resources & expense in monies outlaid, why it was that the whole 7th Arc ‘priority areas’ wasn’t saturated with SLDMBs. According to records there was only 33 SLDMBs dropped in anger. Anyway for Simon’s benefit it would have been extremely interesting to have kept track of the SLDMBs dropped by the RAAF C130 on the 20 March…

“..RAAF C-130 Hercules is tasked to drop datum marker buoys to assist in drift modelling..”

TBW..P2 

IMO the key is in that timeframe, something happened that spooked the Malaysians to act quickly & concisely to redefine the search for MH370 from a SAR to a 'search & recovery' in no more than 24hrs (24-25 March). What that 'something' was we may never know? However it certainly changed the whole paradigm of the MH370 search that IMO was definitely not for the better...


MTF...P2     

[thorn bird]

I still reckon the Aliens dun nit !!

[aussie500]

Well the Malaysians declared there were no survivors, despite the constant failure to find the still moving surface debris field and be sure of that. Then suddenly as it looked like the Chinese might fish something up, the searchers are sent off on a wild goose chase north on March 27th.

Next thing the ATSB is handed the problem. Dolan is in charge of the ATSB, cannot blame him if they are looking in the wrong spot. Someone went to a lot of trouble to discredit that more southern search area, where the aerial search did see some promising bits of debris. And yes the Tomnod taggers saw some as well, but no one is going to pay us any attention, after the hatchet job the media did. No one was interested in going further east for a look to see what was still floating. No they tied the search to the 7th arc MH370 flew through. Probably because it is a big ocean and the poor dears need a safety line, something to hang on to in case they get lost. Either that or yes they were searching where they were pretty sure MH370 was not going to be found, because someone had already found something.

I have wondered about that while watching those 7th arc limpets running around. Did someone set them up to fail? MH370 is not on the 7th arc.

[Peetwo]

DPM Truss this time corrects the record?

In a letter to the Oz yesterday Truss wrote..

"...Letter to the Editor - The Australian - Correcting MH 370 claims by Byron Bailey

2nd February, 2016 

I write to correct inaccurate commentary by Captain Byron Bailey "Ignoring ‘overwhelming evidence’ is hindering search for MH 370", 29/1) .



The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has consistently stated analysis of the known facts most closely matches a scenario in which there was no pilot intervention in the latter stages of the flight, but it has never stated hypoxia was the cause of that circumstance. Assertions that the aircraft was hijacked by the aircraft captain are speculation.



Mr Bailey states Bayesian mathematical modelling was used to project the most likely flight path of the Boeing 777 after fuel exhaustion and flame out, and that the inputs of a conscious pilot would invalidate the modelling. This is totally incorrect.



The Defence Science and Technology Group’s Bayesian analysis modelled the flight from the last radar return up to the point of probable fuel exhaustion, not to the end of the flight. The modelling is valid regardless of whether there were any control inputs during this time.



Mr Bailey misrepresents the ATSB, saying it stated that “the right engine flamed out and in each test case the aircraft then turned left”. The ATSB has said no such thing. Testing conducted in the Boeing engineering simulator showed the aircraft began turning to the left only after both engines had flamed out.



Mr Bailey recommends engaging the US National Transportation Safety Board. In fact, it has been part of the Search Strategy Working Group since May 2014..."

If nothing else BB has certainly grabbed the Minister's attention, it took a while but maybe the Truss minders have finally worked out that nobody believes a word that comes out of his Chief Commissioner's office or mouth - one can only hope


MTF...P2

[Gobbledock]

Poor BB, a nice young lad coming under scrutiny by the Deputy spin doctor. It's quite a privilege actually!

Miniscule Truss;

"Mr Bailey recommends engaging the US National Transportation Safety Board. In fact, it has been part of the Search Strategy Working Group since May 2014..."

Oh Mr Truss, you of all people should understand the meaning of the word 'intent'. After all, many of your portfolio's aviation rules and the wording in the 'Act' are written in a manner that allows the author to apply whatever angle he wishes to choose, and as a bonus to always be correct, even when challenged in a correct and reasonable manner and even when provided with overwhelming evidence!

As Sunfish would say; 'to put that another way', I would propose that what Mr Bailey is actually proposing is that Australia "hand over the entire investigation to an investigative body that is known to be of a vey high standard and capability, an organisation that can competently carry out it's function under strong managerial leadership who don't bow down to political pressure and ineptitude, an organisation that can accomplish it's task transparently and within a reasonable timeframe. An authority that is trustworthy, reputable and compliant with ICAO". And of course that organisation would not be the ATSB, which has managed to decimate it's fine global reputation under the leadership of Supreme Leader Beaker.

As you know Miniscule, it's just 'words', that don't really have any meaning and can be applied in whatever manner the author wishes. You yourself should be well acquainted with that methodology sir.

I wonder what 'Mick' thinks about all of this?

"Safe letter writing for all"