[Peetwo]

WTD? - MH370 the PM & miniscule mixed messages  

Suspend, halt or end? Either way the messages coming out of Can'tberra on the ATSB led MH370 SIO search would appear to be becoming somewhat disjointed..

Via the Oz today... :

MH370 search halt despite ‘rogue pilot’

• Rick Wallace
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM August 4, 2016
  

Journalist
Melbourne
@rickwallaceoz
[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/0e276581b5a11482c283ff9ad9da484a/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
Malcolm Turnbull has scotched the prospect that the MH370 search would be extended to cover the “rogue pilot” theory, revealing that there is an international agreement to halt the operation.

“There has been an agreement reached between the countries ­involved and the search will be coming to an end when it is completed,’’ he said yesterday.

The current search area is said to be based on projections that the pilots lost consciousness.

Just 10,000sq km of a 120,000sq km area of the designated sea floor remain to be scoured.

However, Transport Minister Darren Chester has rejected suggestions that the search for flight MH370 was looking in the wrong place and says the decision on the search site took into account FBI intelligence that flagged the possib­ility the plane’s captain hijacked and crashed the aircraft.

Mr Chester said there was nothing new in recent articles suggesting the FBI had intelligence showing Malaysia Airlines captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had “flown” a similar illogical zigzag path to the plane’s trajectory on his home flight simulator.

“The ATSB team in evaluating the search area considered all available information, including that information, that was available to it,’’ he said in Melbourne.

“It had to rely on the facts, and the facts were the last satellite handshake with MH370 indicated that the highest-probability search area was that 120,000sq km area (southwest of Perth).

“As I said, there is still 10,000 square kilometres still to go and we remain hopeful of success.” Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew aboard.

Contact was lost with the Beijing-bound aircraft after it took an unexpected flight path from Kuala Lumpur, turning back across Malay­sia before heading west.

Analysis of satellite and other data showed it flew for another six hours, information used to establish the search area.

Neither Mr Chester nor his US counterpart, Transport Secretary Anthony Foxx, who visited Melbourne yesterday, would comment on whether the FBI data should be released. “I have learned very well to let the FBI speak for the FBI and I have learned very well not to get in the middle of what the investigators have found and let them speak for themselves,’’ said Mr Foxx.

Mr Chester said Australia’s prim­ary responsibility was the under­sea search, and this data would be released in due course.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has come under increasing pressure to expand the search area to take into account the rogue pilot theory, which it has been accused of discounting in favour of a scenario involving ­decompression or a loss of oxygen killing the pilots.

The ATSB has fended off claims from Byron Bailey, a ­former commercial airline pilot critical of what he says is the ­bureau’s refusal to countenance the rogue-pilot theory, and others.

“For the purposes of its search, the ATSB has not needed to determine — and has made no claims — about what might have caused the disappearance of the aircraft,’’ it has said.
“For search purposes, the rele­v­ant facts and analysis most closely match a scenario in which there was no pilot intervening in the latter stages of the flight.

“We have never stated that ­hypoxia (or any other factor) was the cause of this circumstance.”

Some critics of the search have attributed the government’s ­refusal to publicly embrace the rogue-pilot theory to the wish to spare Malaysia the embarrassment of having to acknowledge its citizen took part in an act of terror.

Mr Chester did not respond to The Australian’s requests for comment on these claims.

Oh dear Chester ambushed again.. You would have thought that after his abysmal performance at Tamworth, that miniscule-NFI-4DPF's minders would have been better prepared for an off script media assault.

P2 comment: Could I suggest that the Murky Mandarin & the Hooded One need to either get a rope on Dumb Dancing Dazzling Dazza (the photogenic filter) Chester; or at least give him some new weasel worded lines to drone out at the appropriate times... 



MTF...P2