[Peetwo]

Thanks for that "V", I hope that clears it up for Joe C..

In the Oz today the ever contentious, former Sky God Byron Bailey comes back full of 'vim & vigour' ready to take on all comers, like the - MH370 Super Sleuth Muppet - ATSBeaker, Mick & Co.

MH370: search for missing Malaysian jet all but a farce

• Byron Bailey
  
• The Australian
  
• March 5, 2016 12:00AM
  

Two years have elapsed since the not-so-mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean. The ultra-modern Boeing 777 vanished without warning from radar over the South China Sea en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with the loss of all 239 people on board.

The ongoing search by four state-of-the-art vessels — three Dutch, one Chinese — with highly qualified crews has drawn a blank. Scientists from the Defence Department’s Defence Science and Technology Group, through awesome mathematical deductions and assumptions based on hourly satellite pings, established the so-called seventh arc, the trajectory MH370 is believed to have followed. It was this arc that provided the basis for defining the search area, which is the responsibility of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

So why has MH370 not been found? I believe it is because the search has been conducted too far to the north and east based on the ATSB’s theory of an unresponsive crew. Under the rogue pilot scenario, and a controlled ditching, the plane would have been farther to the south and west when it entered the water.

In November, the DSTG scientists with their PhDs and masters of mathematical science degrees released a prepublication draft report. They qualify that the draft is not about the search for MH370 but about the mathematical modelling underpinning it.

In their report, the scientists make some interesting observations, which the ATSB has ignored: “beginning of descent is not known”; “a model is required to describe how it may have descended. This is primarily the responsibility of the ATSB”; “it is possible for the aircraft to have travelled further, especially if a human was involved”.

The scientists were of the opinion that, given the expertise of the search crews and the sophistication of the equipment being used, it was highly likely that MH370 would be located if the search vessels passed over it.

Once the seventh arc was established, the ATSB should have asked Virgin Australia, which operates Boeing 777s and whose highly qualified pilots — some of whom I have flown with at Emirates — to calculate a probable controlled-ditching location. This could be based on known facts such as the amount of fuel on board at takeoff, the fuel used on the subsequent southwest turnaround over the South China Sea, the pilot-controlled turn south over the north of Sumatra in Indonesia and the final straight leg to the southern Indian Ocean.

Assuming a pilot was hijacking the aircraft, attempts to hide the aircraft in as remote a location as possible would mean calculating the final leg on long-range cruise speed and optimum altitudes. These would be about 40,000 feet before an idle-engine descent with enough fuel to carry out a controlled ditching.

A normal descent profile at engine-idle for a Boeing 777 is M.83 (83 per cent of the speed of sound), transitioning to an airspeed of 310 knots, which would cover about 130 nautical miles (240km). A pilot wishing to cover a much farther distance would engine-idle “glide” at about the optimum minimum drag speed of 220 knots and cover much greater distance.

Westerly winds generally are on the beam (cross angle) of a southerly heading. Just a difference of five degrees over 5500km in the heading from the turn north of Sumatra would result in a possible longitudinal splay of 450km. This position line based on probable fuel used by a rogue pilot hijack tied in with the seventh arc would give a much more probable location for MH370 of hundreds of kilometres farther south and west of where the search originated.

A controlled ditching under power is a Boeing flight manual procedure requiring the flap down and undercarriage up at the lowest possible speed into wind of more than 40 knots and a landing just on top of or just after the primary swell. Even in a perfect ditching, in heavy seas engines may be torn off and other significant damage — especially to protruding airframe parts — may occur, but the aircraft would be substantially intact.

The pilot would not be so foolish as to wait for engine flame-out (engine failure because of lack of fuel), which is a serious emergency situation that limits flight control through reduced hydraulic power via the ram air turbine (which generates power from the airstream) and reduced electrical power to standby instruments.

The auxiliary power unit may fire up for a limited duration but could repressurise the aircraft only at 22,000 feet on the descent.

However, no flap would be available in this one-shot attempt at a ditching in those rough seas south of latitude 40 (the Roaring Forties) and the water contact at about 300km/h is essentially a crash with resultant debris.

The ATSB consistently has stated that the evidence does not support a controlled ditching. What evidence? All we have as real evidence is the fuel on board at take-off at Kuala Lumpur and that MH370 ended up in the southern Indian Ocean. ATSB head Martin Dolan is being disingenuous to hint at a possible controlled glide by an unspecified pilot who could also have been a passenger who knew how to fly.

You have to be kidding. A pas­senger forces through a locked door and immediately overpowers the crew just after the flight’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, says goodnight to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control, then turns off all the communication equipment and turns the aircraft southwest. They then climb above 40,000 feet — supposedly to kill all the passengers after they depressurise the aircraft (only a pilot’s mask has the required pressure control to prevent hypoxia).

This person would then need to fly a deliberate track over northern Malaysia, swing past Penang, Zaharie’s home town, and up above the Strait of Malacca, then turn left north of Sumatra (the last military radar contact) and all the while reprogram the flight management system so the autopilots could fly the aircraft to the planned final location.
This is completely at odds with what I have observed and experienced as a senior and long-time commercial pilot.

At 4am in August 1998, flying a Boeing 777 over the Indian Ocean, I had a violent forced incursion through a flight deck door that was showing the locked indicator. My tough Egyptian purser physically handled the situation. The upshot was that Boeing then modified and strengthened the B777 door and the locking mechanism. Since September 11, airline protocols require the door to be locked and for access to be controlled.

The ATSB consistently has stated that the evidence does not support a controlled ditching. Well, it is the lack of evidence that supports a controlled ditching. Where is the debris?

The ATSB defined the end-of-flight scenario by stating in the ­report released in December by then deputy prime minister Warren Truss that “after dual engine flame-out the aircraft turned and entered a banked turn”. The report then leaves the reader in suspense.

What utter nonsense. Without an autopilot or a pilot to keep the wings level the aircraft would roll into a spiral dive and hit the sea 90 seconds later at 1200km/h, exploding into masses of debris. Air France flight 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in the Atlantic in June 2009, pancaked in at low speed in a stall and still had significant debris.

A huge aircraft hitting the sea with 15 times the kinetic energy would result in so much debris that some would float indefinitely — I was told this by experts at the Sydney Airport emergency ditching simulator who train pilots and cabin crew in life jacket and life raft drill and sea survival.

Surely after two years, with the wind and currents, some items would have washed up somewhere. Only the flaperon has been found, on Reunion Island, and a yet to be confirmed discovery this week on a Mozambique beach of some sheet metal, which has been flown to Australia for testing.

An initial overseas report from an unconfirmed source was that the damage indicated it was broken off at low speed in the lowered position. The ATSB said only that damage to the trailing edge was consistent with high-speed flight and did not support the theory of a controlled ditching.

The B777 in certification is flown to M.96. The drag rise at M.98 is so severe that a B777, with those blunt intakes and in a dive, could not go supersonic. I have been supersonic many times. A Sabre fighter required a full power dive to pass Mach 1.

High-speed flight would not damage a control surface (flaperon) by flutter, hydraulically locked in position by dual actuators. By the way, where is the report on the flaperon?

Why didn’t the ATSB consider the obvious rogue pilot theory? Not even after the head of Emirates — the largest B777 operator and my former boss — stated on live television that MH370 was flown under control for 7½ hours and that pilots should not be able to turn off communication and tracking equipment in flight? Why didn’t the ATSB take note of this very important statement?

I started writing about this 18 months ago, first in The Daily Telegraph and now in The Australian, pointing out some of the aerodynamically absurd and confusing information the ATSB was pushing out to the public. Other overseas experts (pilots) also started making their concerns known.

I am not some desk-bound self-appointed aviation expert, some of whom are well known and whose suspect opinions make it too often in the media.

I have been flying jet aircraft for 45 years. I have many thousands of hours flying B777, often out of Kuala Lumpur.

As a former fighter pilot I am an expert on aerodynamics. I fly a large corporate jet that has similar avionics, flight management systems and hydraulically powered flight controls and a ram air turbine like the B777.

I and my coterie of colleagues — highly experienced airline and former airline pilots from A380 Qantas, B777 British Airways, Emirates B777/A380 and others — think the ATSB dropped the ball with the nonsensical end-of-flight theory and as a result the search area is several hundred kilometres or more too far to the north and east. This is why MH370 has not yet been located. Two years wasted. The search area has now progressed south and west, getting closer to the probable correct area.

If MH370 is not found in the remaining few months and the search is suspended due to cost, which overall must now be well more than $200 million of taxpayers’ money, then MH370 will pass into legend like the ghost ship Mary Celeste. A movie will probably be made. The ATSB will not be in the credits. I wonder what the title would be? “The longest and costliest search in aviation history” or “the biggest farce in aviation history”.

Byron Bailey, a veteran commercial pilot with more than 45 years’ experience and 26,000 flying hours, is a former RAAF fighter pilot and trainer and was a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years, during which he flew the same model Boeing 777 passenger jet as Malaysia Airlines MH370.

   
As yet no reply from Mick but there is plenty of criticism pointed at Beaker's mob , e.g.

Dean

6 hours ago



Mr Dolan and the ATSB are an embarrassment to the nation. As Australians I thought we were better than this. Sometimes crude, often rude but if you want the truth ask an Aussie. Except the ATSB. They have let the country down.

MTF..P2