[Peetwo]

Byron Bailey calls for a Senate inquiry into MH370 -  

From off Chester's thread..

Chester's selfie tour temporarily suspended -

Canberra refuses call to reveal ‘secrets’ on missing Malaysian plane.


Ean Higgins
The Australian
12:00AM July 25, 2016

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Labor has called on the federal government to reveal what it knows about the FBI’s reported evidence that Malaysia Airlines captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah ­deliberately brought down Flight MH370, contrary to Australian authorities’ decision to adopt a “ghost plane” scenario with ­unconscious pilots that produced a narrower search area.

But Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester ­refused the push, saying the matter was one for “Malaysian investigators to consider” despite the fact Australian taxpayers are contributing tens of millions of dollars to the hunt for the aircraft.

Labor transport spokesman Anthony ­Albanese yesterday told The Australian the government had a duty to the families of the victims to explain what information it had.

The new claims have rocked the ­debate of what happened to MH370 just as the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China said they would wind up the search in coming months.

GRAPHIC — The MH370 mystery

“My concern all along has been the need for clarity for the families affected by this tragedy,” Mr Albanese said. “The Australian government should be transparent about what it knows about issues related to this.”

MH370 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

With its transponder turned off and radio contact cut two hours into the flight, radar and satellite tracking data showed the Boeing 777 reversed course back over the Malaysia-Thai border, before heading south to the southern ­Indian Ocean.

New York magazine published an article at the weekend saying it had obtained access to a secret FBI report that showed Zaharie had used his elaborate home computer flight simulator less than a month before the aircraft vanished to conduct a simulated flight along a route closely matching that actually taken by MH370.

New York quoted the FBI document as saying in part: “Based on the Forensics Analysis conducted on the 5 HDDs ­obtained from the Flight Simulator from MH370 Pilot’s house, we found a flight path, that lead (sic) to the Southern Indian Ocean, among the numerous other flight paths charted on the Flight Simulator.”

That the FBI had succeeded in recovering the flight simulator data, and concluded Zaharie had hijacked his own aircraft, was first revealed by Australian pilot Byron Bailey writing in The Weekend Australian in January, quoting an Australian government source.

Captain Bailey and British airline pilot Simon Hardy have ­argued the search has been in the wrong area because rather than crashing down sharply after running out of fuel because the pilots were unconscious, as assumed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, a conscious “rogue pilot” could have glided the aircraft much further or conducted a controlled ditching under power.

When Captain Bailey revealed what he had been told about the FBI conclusion, the ATSB and the FBI refused to confirm or deny the report.

Critics such as Captain Bailey have claimed the Australian government and the ATSB have known all along, including from the secret FBI report, that Zaharie hijacked the aircraft, but went with the “ghost plane” scenario to avoid embarrassing Malaysia, which would not want a conclusion its pilot deliberately took down a jet.

The specific document New York claims to have uncovered adds weight to Captain Bailey’s original revelation, and the magazine described it as “the strongest evidence yet that Zaharie made off with the plane in a premeditated act of mass murder-suicide’’.

Reuters news agency also reported at the weekend that the project director of the underwater search, Paul Kennedy of Dutch survey group Fugro, said the rogue pilot theory might be right after all.

“You could glide it for further than our search area is, so I believe the logical conclusion will be, well, maybe, that is the other scenario,” Reuters quoted Mr Kennedy as saying.

Australia agreed to a request from Malaysia, which under international law is responsible for the investigation into the loss of the Malaysian-registered aircraft, to take charge of the underwater search, and the ATSB considered three scenarios when considering where to look.

The first was an “in-flight upset” in which the flight runs normally with regular radio communications until “an unexpected upset event such as a stall due to icing, thunderstorm, system failure etc” — a scenario easily rejected because it clearly did not fit the known facts of a flight that was not normal and incommunicado almost from the start.

The second scenario was “a glide event” involving “normal en route manoeuvring of the aircraft”, fuel exhaustion and engine failure and a “pilot- controlled glide”.

The third scenario was that of “an unresponsive crew/hypoxia event”, generally categorised by aircraft decompression leading to loss of oxygen and the aircrew passing out, no pilot intervention, and loss of control when the aircraft ran out of fuel, leading to a rapid crash.

Had it gone with the “pilot-controlled glide” event, the ATSB would have had to say it thought MH370 was hijacked by Zaharie. Instead, it went with the “unresponsive crew/hypoxia event” despite clear evidence that the first part of the flight, since it turned off course, involved very deliberate flying.

In a statement to The Australian, Mr Chester said: “Recent media reports regarding information collected from MH370 captain’s home flight simulator are a matter for the Malaysian investigators to consider.

“Everyone is entitled to an opinion and to speculate on possible scenarios but I won’t be second-guessing the experts from Australia and around the world who have had access to all of the available data.

“All end-of-flight scenarios have been considered including controlled and uncontrolled flight in determining the 120,000sq km search area.”

This was Byron Bailey's overnight contribution to the regurgitated debate:

It’s time for Senate probe into what’s known on Flight MH370

• Byron Bailey
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM July 25, 2016
  

The truth has a way of coming out, even if it takes a couple of years.

The head of the Dutch company running the three ships searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 now believes they have been searching in the wrong area because it is likely that a pilot was at the controls and “glided” the aircraft to a different location.

FBI data from the MH370 captain’s home computer shows he plotted a course into the southern Indian Ocean and that it was a ­deliberate planned murder/­suicide.

I was told this two years ago and was also told that the FBI had told the Australian Transport Safety Bureau all this.

Why did the ATSB then persist with the BS theory of an unres­ponsive flight crew, which did not make sense to us pilots?

For nearly two years I have been writing articles in The Daily Telegraph and The Australian pointing out the absurdity and falsities coming from the ATSB, which even had then deputy prime minister Warren Truss leaping to its defence by criticising me over what I and my airline colleagues considered a rubbish ATSB report from last December.

So idiotic and fanciful was this report that I tried it out in a B777 simulator, knowing what the ­result would be: if the crew were unresponsive, then on second-­engine flame-out due to fuel exhaustion the autopilots would disconnect and this huge aircraft would rapidly enter a terminal vertical dive hitting the sea at 1200km/h smashing into thousands of pieces some of which would have floated indefinitely. This never happened.

The ATSB favourite falsity was that all the evidence points to an unresponsive flight crew. Bollocks.

The fact that the plane turned southwest three minutes after the captain said goodnight to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control means it was under control, otherwise it would have flown itself to the programmed destination, ­Beijing. It was under control 90 minutes later when it turned south, north of Sumatra.

The other favourite falsity pushed by the ATSB in the media was that the evidence does not support a controlled ditching. Again bollocks. It is the lack of ­evidence that supports an attempted ditching in heavy seas.

How is it that a taxpayer funded government department can be so devious? To ignore the massive amount of negative opinion coming from me, with many thousands of hours in command of B777s, and later other very exper­ienced pilots who joined the chorus means the ATSB was ­either totally incompetent and too stubborn to admit it had made a mistake at the start of the whole MH370 saga, or it was a deliberate cover-up.

Perhaps it was fear of the MH370 captain being regarded like Egyptair co-pilot Gamil al-Batouti, who deliberately crashed his B767 out of New York in 1999.

Recovery and analysis by the US NTSB of the flight data ­recorder showed he held the control column forward all the way down in the terminal dive to crash into the sea. Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder showed ­religious prayers being shouted. It is commonly ­believed he martyred himself in an act of mass murder/suicide.

The Seven Network reported that the FBI said that MH370 was a murder/suicide by the captain Zaharie Shah. Did the “ friendly” Malaysian government influence our government because of liability concerns? Payout over the murder of 238 passengers could run into billions.

This whole farce of the search for MH370 has occupied nearly 2½ year, and cost Australian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

What I would like to know is who made the decision, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to stay with a rubbish, unresponsive flight crew theory that has resulted in the search being conducted in the wrong area.

The ATSB should be the subject of a Senate inquiry — as should the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. Tony Abbott, Truss, former ATSB chief Martin Dolan and Transport Minister Darren Chester should be quizzed about what they knew more than two years ago from information supplied by the FBI and why it was not acted upon. The taxpayers of Australia need answers.

Byron Bailey 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 B777 as Flight MH370.

As for the FBI leak I am still holding reservations on whether it is bogus or not, it is all just a bit too convenient for mine, however this bit...

..The ATSB should be the subject of a Senate inquiry — as should the Civil Aviation Safety Authority... 

..I totally agree with in principle. However if it can be proven that Dolan & the ATSB were in possession of this information all along, then I believe that the whole festering, corrupt crew that administer, oversight and investigate aviation safety (including the Dept) should be brought before at least a judicial inquiry...

A Senate Inquiry simply does not have the horsepower and as history highlights these agencies are repeat offenders at obfuscating and/or ignoring all findings and recommendations (some 60 odd in the last 5 years) that a non-partisan, extremely diligent, well informed & aviation savvy Senate Committee has previously produced...


MTF...P2

    
Ps ..Labor transport spokesman Anthony ­Albanese yesterday told The Australian the government had a duty to the families of the victims to explain what information it had...

...“My concern all along has been the need for clarity for the families affected by this tragedy,” Mr Albanese said. “The Australian government should be transparent about what it knows about issues related to this.”...

Got to wonder where Albo thinks he is going with all this?? Especially when you consider Albo's positively stinking performance with the PelAir cover-up, where he seemingly didn't give a toss about the Australian victims involved, rather he was more interested in saving his moribund ass...

Also consider that Albo was originally responsible for hiring Dolan and McCormick, two individuals that in the last decade carry much of the responsibility for the huge pain, shame and decline that the aviation industry in Australia currently finds itself in.