Malaysia 777 Missing

[deicer]

Tin foil hat time again? This just in.....

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/malaysian-authorities-to/2184868.html?cx_tag=recommend4u#cxrecs_s

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Transport Ministry has directed the Department of Civil Aviation to investigate a claim that wreckage of a plane which could be MH370 had been found on an island in the southern Philippines.

Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the investigation would also involve the ministry's Air Accident Investigation Division.

"I have received a report on the discovery and it cannot be confirmed yet. We will let them investigate," he told a media conference after the 62nd MCA annual general assembly in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday (Oct 11). He hoped the public would not speculate on the claim.

One Jamil Omar had lodged a report at the Sandakan police station claiming that a family member discovered the wreckage in a forest at Pulau Sugbay, Tawi-Tawi in the Philippines early September.

The report also claimed human skeletal remains and a 70-inch by 35-inch Malaysian flag were inside the plane.

Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said Philippine authorities had gone to inspect the site. "We have received no confirmation. It might take a day or two before they could let us know."

MH370 was reported missing on March 8 last year on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing carrying 239 passengers and crew.

[Woody Pusher]

At the request of the ATSB, the Australian Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group conducted a comprehensive analysis of the available data. The analysis used models of the Inmarsat satellite communications (SATCOM) data and a model of aircraft dynamics. Recorded meteorological data (wind and air temperature) were also modelled in the analysis. The SATCOM model was calibrated using SATCOM data and flight data from B777 flights including previous flights of the accident aircraft.

This analysis is available as a PDF at:-

http://atsb.gov.au/media/5733650/AE-2014-054_MH370-Definition%20of%20Underwater%20Search%20Areas_3Dec2015.pdf

Effectively, it is the equivalent of the Metron analysis undertaken for the BEA prior to the final phase of the search for AF447.

NOTE: The PDF is "probability density function" - explained in the document.

At the end of the day, this analysis using Bayesian methods relies on the final turn to the south having occurred near waypoint NILHAM in the Andaman Sea.

The ATSB weekly MH370 operational report dated 03 Dec 2015 is also available at:-

http://atsb.gov.au/mh370-pages/updates/operational-update.aspx

[Guest]

Interesting article from the "Daily Beast". http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/08/exclusive-mh370-was-crippled-by-sudden-electrical-failure.html

Exclusive: MH370 Was Crippled by Sudden Electrical Failure

New data reveals a runaway power outage doomed the 777, supporting the theory a fire in the cargo hold turned the jet into a flying zombie.

The pilots of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 were suddenly confronted by a cascading loss of electrical power in which many of the airplane’s vital systems shut down, placing an urgent demand on the crew to understand and deal with the failures.

Before this loss of power occurred the crew had been able to make regular contact with air traffic controllers and the airplane was able to automatically transmit its position.

After it, no word was ever heard again from the pilots. Its two automatic reporting systems, the transponder continually sending the airplane’s position and a separate system reporting the condition of its critical systems at half-hourly intervals, both stopped working.

This new revelation of a serious technical problem and its immediate effects is buried in the arcane detail of a lengthy report (PDF) issued last week by the Australian Transport Bureau who are directing the search for the Boeing 777. It is the first official acknowledgement of what had previously been only speculation—that there was a sudden loss of electrical power capable of disabling vital systems.

As well as portraying a sudden crisis of control in the cockpit, the report greatly undercuts theories that the pilots themselves went rogue—far from harming the airplane it is much more likely that they were struggling to save it in a situation that most pilots would find hard to master.

The purpose of the report was to reinforce confidence that the undersea search for the airplane is being carried out in the right part of the Indian Ocean and has a high chance of success.

Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, at 12:42 a.m. (Malaysia time) of March 8, 2014, bound for Beijing. Normally that flight would take around five and a half hours. In fact, it ended seven hours and 38 minutes later somewhere over the southern Indian Ocean, creating the greatest mystery in the history of modern aviation.

The last voice contact with the flight came 37 minutes after takeoff, with the captain signing off with the air traffic controllers in Kuala Lumpur, saying “Good night. Malaysian three seven zero.” The airplane was then on course heading out over the South China Sea.

Two minutes later the blip indicating the airplane’s position on the Kuala Lumpur controllers’ radar screens disappeared—indicating that the transponder was no longer working. At around the same time (as revealed later by military radar that had picked up the flight) the airplane made a sharp left turn, taking it back over Malaysia toward the Strait of Malacca.

The new report is not precise about when the airplane suffered its loss of electrical power: It places the blackout inside a 56-minute window between the final scheduled transmission from the system monitoring the airplane’s critical functions, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, ACARS, and an unsuccessful attempt by the airline’s dispatchers to contact the crew.

But that window can actually be narrowed: The power loss must have occurred in the time between the attempt from the ground to contact the airplane and the last normal contact between the controllers and the captain, some 44 minutes, and very likely it happened very rapidly after the captain signed off—when the transponder failed.

However, whatever the extent of the power loss, the report makes clear that, remarkably, at least one system was able on its own to recover power and continue functioning.

The total search area is as long as the distance between New York City and Charleston, North Carolina, and about as wide as the I-95 corridor.

Twenty-one minutes after the airline’s dispatchers tried to contact the flight the airplane was able to transmit a scheduled electronic “handshake” to a satellite.

Tracking the flight path of the Malaysian jet has always rested on one slender thread of data that was detected by the London-based satellite operator Inmarsat.

An Inmarsat ground station in Australia recorded seven electronic “handshakes” transmitted automatically from the 777 beginning with one before takeoff. From those brief and impersonal pulses and after many hours of calculations the searchers were directed to an area deep in the southern Indian Ocean, called the seventh arc, between latitudes 40 and 50 and more than 1,500 miles from the nearest land mass, southwestern Australia.

The handshakes, more commonly called pings, were sent at hourly intervals.

Amazingly, though, the system used to transmit the hourly pings, the Satellite Data Unit, SDU, was able to reboot itself within 60 seconds of the power failure and was able to send the subsequent hourly pings for the rest of the flight, while the ACARS remained silent, as did the transponder.

What caused the power loss?

The Australian report gives four possible causes:

One, a sudden failure that caused the airplane’s Auxiliary Power Unit, APU, to kick-in to restore emergency power.

Two, an action carried out in the cockpit using overhead switches.

Three, someone accessing the Main Equipment Center below the flight deck, pulling out circuit breakers and, later, resetting them.

Four, intermittent technical failures.

Clearly, these possibilities suggest a choice between actions that required deliberate human intervention (using the overhead switches in the cockpit or someone gaining access to the Main Equipment Center, pulling out the circuit breakers and then later resetting them) or the sudden onset of technical failures that the airplane’s backup systems were able to restore, at least in part.

In making this range of possibilities clear the report demonstrates that there is no data that could make a persuasive argument for either scenario. That can only be settled when—or if—the remains of the airplane are found and recovered.

However this new information seriously undermines one of the most persistent conspiracy theories: that the pilots did it.

First, the theory widely advanced in the early days of the disaster that as a first step to make the airplane “vanish” the pilots switched off the transponder. Nobody switched off anything at that moment—it now appears that a power interruption or failure could have disabled the transponder. (A transponder only works for ground tracking within radar range, otherwise its signals can be picked up only by other airplanes that are nearby.)

Second, that one of the pilots left his seat, opened a hatch in the floor, went down into the Main Equipment Center, pulled out the circuit breakers and later reset them.

I asked an expert on the 777 and its systems to comment.

He said that the idea that a pilot went below to pull one or more circuit breakers was extremely unlikely, even bordering on the absurd. He added: “Few airline pilots would even know how to get down to the lower deck while in flight.

“And even if they tried, few would be familiar with the locations of avionics components, or be able to find the relevant circuit breakers to pull. That kind of information is not even contained in the typical pilot training or operating manuals.”

He also explained that the pilots would most likely need to be following “non-normal” procedures to use the overhead switches that control electrical power generation as part of coping with failure messages flashing on their instrument displays.

Indeed, rather than this being an attempt to harm the airplane, the expert said, the pilots could very well have been implementing “a well-defined non-normal procedure” to respond what was a “very complex failure”—and that those actions were exactly what the pilots should have done.

However, he added, if it was a failure that went beyond anything anticipated in their training—“like a severe uncontained fire”—the crew may not have fully understood the severity of what was happening. “They would simply have no way of knowing.”

Simultaneously, he said, “they would have been trying to decide whether to divert and get on the ground as fast as possible.”

The captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, was very experienced, with more than 18,000 hours flying time and 8,659 flying 777s. Fariqu Abdul Hamid, the co-pilot, had only 2,800 flying time experience and—this could well have been significant in a crisis, only 39 hours on the 777, no more than a few flights.

Most of the power to run all the 777’s systems and avionics comes from generators attached to each of the two engines. It is distributed throughout the airplane through multiple connections, many with backup systems and controlled by computers. The main concentration of computers, including those controlling the airplane’s communications systems, is in the Main Equipment Center.

In a Daily Beast special report, I examined a scenario in which a fire in the forward cargo hold of the 777, originating in a consignment of lithium-ion batteries that were being shipped on the airplane, could have breached a wall and reached the Main Equipment Center, seriously degrading the airplane’s avionics and leading to the incapacitation of the crew and passengers.

However, the avionics for the Satellite Data Unit, sending the pings, was located not in the Main Equipment Center but well clear of it, in the roof of the cabin behind the wings, because that is where the antenna to access the satellite is best positioned.

The picture in the Australian report of an airplane stricken by a sudden and extensive loss of electrical power, while in no way definitive, is entirely consistent with this scenario.

Indeed, the report gives dramatic new clarity to the “zombie flight” version of events in which the airplane, by then fatally crippled, makes one final change of course and then flies into the vast emptiness of the southern Indian Ocean without any sign of human direction or control. There is also much more detail about the airplane’s final moments in the air.

The report’s account draws on a scenario followed by Boeing in an engineering simulator (first reported by The Daily Beast) that shows Flight 370 cruising at a constant altitude of 35,000 feet for more than 5 hours at which point the airplane begins to run out of fuel.

The assumption is made that once Flight 370 made a left turn over the Straits of Malacca it was then being flown on autopilot. (The new report cautions: “The specific settings input into the autopilot are unknown. Furthermore, it is also unknown what changes (if any) were made to those settings throughout the accident flight.”)

Considering how little is known of what happened to turn the airplane “dark” the reconstruction of the flight and its conclusion is surprisingly graphic. As the 777 runs out of fuel the right engine flames out first, followed by the left engine 15 minutes later. The airplane then descends in a circling glide, covering as many as 100 nautical miles, hitting the water “uncontrolled but stable.”

As luck would have it, the final—seventh—ping sent from the airplane and intercepted by the Inmarsat satellite ground station was sent about 10 minutes before the airplane hit the water. Within those 10 minutes the SDU had lost power from the engines, the APU had automatically started (taking about a minute to restore power) and the SDU, because power had been interrupted, began automatically to log on again with the Inmarsat satellite and completed that process within seconds of the airplane crashing—thereby providing the Inmarsat analysts with one more essential clue to the final position of the airplane.

There can be no precise picture of how the airplane broke up on hitting the water. The only physical remnant from the crash appeared four months ago, washed up on the island of La Réunion near Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean.

That piece of wreckage was a flaperon, a part of the airplane’s flight controls. There is one flaperon on the rear of each wing close to the fuselage. Although it is relatively small, the flaperon is very busy throughout the whole flight. It is part flap, the control surface that is lowered in a series of phases to increase lift for takeoffs and landings, and part aileron, a separate surface that moves up or down to control “roll”—to keep the wings laterally level at all speeds and altitudes or to control the degree of banking in a turn.

Because of its hyperactive role in the airplane’s flight controls the value of the flaperon to investigators is far greater than its size would suggest. Given the final minutes of the flight as simulated by Boeing, its actions would have been essential to maintaining stability in the glide. For that reason its discovery could add some better understanding of how the airplane hit the water.

The flaperon was in remarkably good condition, given that it had spent nearly 17 months in the water. In photographs the only visible sign of damage is that its thinnest part, the trailing edge, is badly shredded. The forward part, where it is hinged to the wing, appears to have made a clean break.

Estimating the forces that produced that break would be an important part of what investigators would do in order to try assess what role the flaperon was performing right up to the moment of impact. And, by looking at that, the investigators could get clues to how violent—or otherwise—the final seconds of the flight were.

The flaperon was taken from La Réunion to France, where it remains in the hands of the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, BEA, having been examined there by experts who confirmed that it came from the Malaysian Boeing 777. (The BEA did not respond to a request from The Daily Beast for information on the examination of the flaperon.)

Meanwhile, in Australia the investigators seized on the discovery of the flaperon as a chance to confirm that their search was being conducted in the right place. Was landfall on the island consistent with the path that any floating wreckage would have taken if it originated in the area being searched?

A team at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, CSIRO, including oceanographers and weather experts, had been working for 16 months using a technology called drift modeling, to predict where, if any floating wreckage survived, it would wash up. Now they reverse-engineered the flaperon’s path from La Réunion back to the search area at the other end of the Indian Ocean, based on the elapsed time, distance, and oceanic conditions from July 2015 back to March 8, 2014, the day that the airplane disappeared.

The result, however, was rather less than assured. Indeed, in describing the findings the CSIRO team leader, Dr. David Griffin, was careful to hedge the bets: the arrival of the piece of wreckage on La Reunion Island “does not cast doubt on the validity of the present MH370 search area” he said, but then added, “it is impossible to use the La Réunion finding to refine or shift the search area.”

It was wise of the scientists to be as careful as this because they had made an embarrassing error in a previous drift model. They originally predicted that the first wreckage would wash up on the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, by July 2014—some 4,000 miles northeast of La Réunion.

When this didn’t happen they went back to the numbers and discovered that the data had been corrupted by a significant miscalculation of the effects of wind on the ocean.

It’s fair to say, then, that drift modeling, no matter how conscientiously conducted, is as yet far from being an exact science.

However, the absence of any further floating wreckage since the flaperon was discovered in July lends credence to the idea that perhaps major parts of the 777 did remain intact after impact and then sank, possibly through wave action forcing water into the engines and empty fuel tanks.

I discussed this possibility with the expert on the 777.

He advised caution on reaching any firm conclusions on the basis of a single piece of physical evidence—particularly when the flaperon is visible only in photographs and not by way of a physical inspection.

Nonetheless, he told me, “Even a pilotless jet could possibly get lucky and enter the water at a shallow angle and minimum sink rate that minimizes the impact.

“Most of the structure could have remained intact, or at least separated into only a few big pieces. Not a lot of extraneous debris may have exited the fuselage, particularly if there was no attempt at opening doors or deploying rafts in the water evacuation.”

That would be encouraging for the undersea search because the larger the pieces of wreckage the more likely they are to be detected.

Last week, when the new report was released, the Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said that he was “hopeful, indeed optimistic, that we will still locate the aircraft.”

The area being searched totals more than 46,000 square miles of which around 29,000 square miles have so far been covered. As a result of the new analysis of the flight path, priority has been given to the southern sector—the total search area is as long as the distance between New York City and Charleston, North Carolina, and about as wide as the I-95 corridor, little more than 60 miles. Using the new calculations, the length may be shortened as the width is expanded.

And, as the area remaining to cover diminishes—according to the math—the chances of finding the Boeing 777 should increase exponentially.

“We are anticipating that the search will take to around mid-2016 to be completed,” the official spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Dan O’Malley, told The Daily Beast.

The search has continued, operating 24 hours a day, during the southern hemisphere winter, even though the conditions were often appalling.

“There have been times when the vessels were obliged to break off searching because of rough weather,” said O’Malley. “The highest waves were 50 feet in a tropical cyclone. When the weather is really poor work becomes very difficult and obtaining adequate rest is difficult too, so it’s also very fatiguing.”

On two occasions crewmembers fell ill and their ships had to break off and return to their home port of Fremantle, 1,700 miles away.

“There is no helicopter with the range to fly out and recover a patient, and it’s too risky to winch a person from a ship in rough conditions. It’s at least 10 days sail for the round trip, so this delays progress on the search” said O’Malley.

Before the flight disappeared this was one of the most remote stretches of ocean in the world and its floor had never been mapped. Some of the ocean is as much as 20,000 feet deep, with extremes of terrain. Now, after a bathymetric survey using state-of-the-art equipment, the Australians believe that they have an accurate and detailed map of every piece of the seabed.

These extreme depths and challenging terrain call for the most advanced search equipment, an autonomous underwater vehicle, AUV. Since last May rough weather made it impossible to use this system.

This week, with the financial help of the Chinese (153 of the passengers were Chinese), a third ship equipped with an AUV will join the search.

For months the search had been limited to two ships deploying torpedo-like towfish that scan the ocean bed with sonar. “The deep tow equipment is the most efficient method to search large swathes where the seafloor is relatively flat” explained O’Malley. “However some of the seafloor features have very steep gradients and maneuvering the towfish over them can leave ‘terrain avoidance’ gaps in the data. These are the areas we will search with the AUV.”

One thing is for sure among many that are not: should the searchers find the remains of an airplane that took 239 people to their deaths in such baffling circumstances it will be an unmatched achievement in the history of air crash investigations, and the only thing that can finally explain what really happened.

[Don Hudson]

The article doesn't "scan" well so I'm not sure I believe this. Too many independent events have to coincide. But I haven't read the "arcane" (Daily Beast characterization), Australian document yet. I'm not sure I'd turn to the Daily Beast for information on serious matters if this is an example of their writing.

What is required for this theory to work is a knowledgeable explanation of why the aircraft stayed on a southerly course for five hours without the autopilot which would be among the first services, (along with the satellite system & antenna) lost in an "extensive" but "selective" electrical failure. The pings had to come from operating equipment, so...

If the pilots could fly to keep the aircraft aloft then they could also fly back to Kuala Lumpur and land the aircraft, ostensibly without any electronics and on emergency electrics. The B777 AOM is notoriously lacking in information regarding what busses supply what systems and what degrades with losses of specific busses, but such systems would not likely be on the emergency busses.

Back to the ATSB document.

[boestar]

I Still find it odd that the initial deviation from the flight plan occurred in a small piece of airspace that fell just outside SSR coverage on either side. That single piece is what keeps me going back to an intentional event. What are the odds that something went wrong inside a short window when SSR could not see the aircraft and Civilian Primary Radar was not available.

That's pretty coincidental. What happened beyond that point is just inexplicable.

[Woody Pusher]

FWIW, the "known" positions of the aircraft, including those when it was was still being tracked by SSR and later possibly by PSR, provide a view of the flight that is deterministic. In fact, the sharp turn shortly after IGARI on a track toward KOTA BHARU and PENANG, followed by another turn at Penang Island to head NW toward WP VAMPI and on to NILHAM on airway N571, confirms the aircraft was under complete control. By this I mean that it was being flown deliberately using HF induced AP control actions, and the high GS noted further adds to the deterministic nature of the flight.

The ATSB's current search area is also deterministic in how it was arrived at, i.e. a final turn to the south near NILHAM, then matching the BTO/BFO pings for each of the Inmarsat arcs to an LNAV track to "nowhere" and at variable MACH speeds.

Now, I'm not the betting type, but something tells me that the longer the ATSB search in their determined Priorty Search Zone without finding anything related to the flight, the greater the probability that their deterministic approach is flawed. As the longer I look at the various forward/backward Flaperon tracking scenarios, the more convinced I am that if the Flaperon departed the aircraft in a high speed descent following flutter fatigue, it did so closer to 30°S.

[Moon The Loon]

Has there been any damage analysis on the supposed flaperon i.e. its separation points from the main airframe?

Yes, the serial numbers match, but does the damage?

[moeman]

Why do you say "supposed flaperon"?

[Woody Pusher]

Has there been any damage analysis on the supposed flaperon i.e. its separation points from the main airframe?

The supposed flaperon has been analysed in France, but details have not been made public. Photographic analysis has concluded that the evidence equates to torsional vibrations due to in-flight "flutter" causing the hinge attachments and trailing edge to fail in flight. There is no visible evidence that matches expected impact damage while attached to the aircraft

As the only recovered item from the aircraft (so far), its separate detachment is also another explanation. Exactly where this detachment took place is just as much a mystery as the location of the remainder of the aircraft, but possibly happening after the last engine flamed out,

[Moon The Loon]

Thanks Woody. I continue to be amazed by your knowledge of this matter.

Will be very interesting to monitor results of most recent search based upon the latest analysis of "where it is".

[GDR]

Another take on the whole thing.

New Interesting thoughts About MH370 Disappearance

This article is from the January 9 issue of The Australian Digital Edition.

Australia's MH370 search has ignored evidence of someone at the controls

Twenty-two months ago, on March 8, 2014, at 1am, an ultramodern Boeing 777

of Malaysia Airlines suddenly and without warning disappeared from radar

over the South China Sea enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Flight MH370 had 239 people on board and the pilot in command was captain

Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a highly respected and very experienced aviator.

The B777 is state of the art; probably the safest aircraft flying today. I

know - I have many thousands of hours as captain on B777. How then could it

disappear?

Many theories surfaced but all of these can be explained away by the superb

protection devices and warning systems of the B777. Emergencies such as

engine fire or explosive decompression are easily handled by well-trained

pilots who practise these scenarios in simulators every six months.

Malaysia Airlines is not some cut-price operator with poorly trained pilots.

It is a world-class airline with well-trained pilots who can easily handle

any emergency , as they are trained to do with Boeing best practice

immediate action drills.

At first I thought it was a bomb, as only a sudden massive event (such as

MH17 being shot down over Ukraine) could have prevented a well-trained crew

from reacting according to their training.

But then a method of tracking the plane via hourly satellite handshakes

revealed the aircraft had flown for more than seven hours and was most

likely in the southern Indian Ocean. I, and every B777 pilot I questioned,

did not know about these satellite handshakes . Then the penny dropped. The

flight management system computer must have been reprogrammed . Otherwise

the aircraft would have flown itself to Beijing if the pilots were

incapacitated and the damage of any event was not so severe as to cause

autopilot disconnect - which would have resulted in a uncontrolled crash.

An aircraft can be flown only in two ways. First is manual hand flying .

This normally is done only on takeoff and landing. In a typical eight-hour

flight the pilot would touch the controls only for several minutes. The

second method of control is by autopilot, which reduces human error to a

minimum. This is normal for climb, cruise and descent.

The B777 has three autopilots, all of which are linked - if one plays up,

the other two automatically reject it. The autopilot is controlled by an FMS

computer. The B777 has three - all linked - and it uses information fed in

by the managing pilot to command the autopilot how and where to fly. There

is no third way. It cannot meander by itself, uncontrolled across the sky,

as it would crash.

Say I were to fly a jet from Sydney to Auckland. I enter the departure

airfield YSSY and the destination NZAA, and the FMS responds with a

selection of suitable airways. I choose Airway L521. Immediately after

takeoff I engage autopilot, knowing the aircraft will now fly itself to

Auckland unless I delete the destination and select a new destination and

airway . The savants of the Australian Transport Safety Board surely know

this.

Examples abound. Take the Helios B737 flight from Larnaca in Cyprus to

Athens in August 2005, the victim of a failure to pressurise due to

incorrect switch selection by poorly trained pilots who were rendered

unconscious because of hypoxia. Autopilot flew the aircraft to the FMS

programmed destination , Athens, and went into a holding pattern waiting for

landing instructions to be entered in the FMS, until fuel exhaustion caused

a crash.

So, who changed the destination in MH370's FMS?

Soon after the revelation that MH370 flew for more than seven hours to the

southern Indian Ocean, I realized only an accomplished pilot could have

managed this feat. The ATSB has ignored information coming from sources that

should be considered expert.

Simon Hardy, a former British Airways B777 captain, wrote a book that almost

conclusively identifies Zaharie as responsible for the hijack of MH370 and

its flight to the southern Indian Ocean, which likely ended as a controlled

ditching as per Boeing flight manual procedures.

Hardy calculated a likely ditching area based on known fuel on board and the

fuel burn figures from the B777 flight manual, and allowing for known upper

winds. This is well to the south and west of the area so far searched. Such

calculations produce a much more accurate probable position than the very

broad one indicated by the satellite handshakes and the ATSB's mathematical

modelling.

It was apparent from the start the ATSB was pushing a flame-out theory that

negates any pilot involvement . Since November 2014 I have pointed out the

impossibility of some of the strange stuff put out by the ATSB. Why did it

never consider pilot involvement? The aircraft suddenly turned westward over

the South China Sea and flew a precise track - revealed by analysis of

Malaysian military radar - across northern Malaysia. It avoided Thai

military radar, then turned, after circling Zaharie's home island of Penang,

to the northwest up the Straits of Malacca and around the northern tip of

Sumatra, avoiding Indonesian military radar, and eventually headed south.

This shows precise control of the aircraft.

Why no debris? In 2004, a Flash Airlines B737 crashed after taking off at

night from Sharm el-Sheikh because of pilot disorientation . It came in from

2500 feet at about 500 km/h. Masses of debris floated for a long time. A much

bigger B777 hitting the sea from 37,000 ft at 1200 km/h would produce a huge

amount of debris that would float for months. Conclusion : it did not crash

and was flying under control.

The B777 has three VHF radios; two HF radios; two transponders that supply

secondary radar information to air traffic control of call sign, altitude

and position; ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting

system); a satellite phone; and even a fax machine . To disable all these

systems, which are on separate electrical buses to provide fail-safe

redundancy , the pilot would have to turn off everything within reach, then

leave his seat to pull circuit-breakers on a panel on the rear cockpit

bulkhead.

An event to disable all these systems would have to be so serious , it is

extremely doubtful the aircraft could still be flying, let alone continue

for seven hours.

Analysis of Malaysian military radar revealed the aircraft had climbed to

45,000 ft as it tracked across northern Malaysia. The only reason for doing

this would be to incapacitate passengers and cabin crew by hypoxia. Only

pilots' masks have selectable pressure breathing capacity.

Hardy's book is quite detailed about the rogue pilot theory and draws

attention to the fact the aircraft circled Penang as if in a farewell to

Zaharie's home island. Former Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has

confirmed Zaharie was a card-carrying member of his party (and an very

distant relative) but has dismissed suggestions he may have diverted the

plane as a political act. Hours before the flight vanished, Anwar, de facto

leader of the People's Justice Party, was sentenced to five years in jail

after a court overturned his 2012 acquittal on a sodomy charge. Zaharie

reportedly attended the hearing.

Who changed the destination in MH370's flight management system computer? B

Several months after the MH370 disappearance I was told by a government

source that the FBI had recovered from Zaharie's home computer deleted

information showing flight plan waypoints . Here, I assumed, was the smoking

gun. To fly to the southern Indian Ocean, which has no airway leading from

north of Sumatra to the south, the pilot would need to define flight plan

waypoints via latitude and longitude for insertion in the FMC.

When nothing about this emerged from ATSB I rang my source. He confirmed

what he had told me and left me with the impression that the FBI were of the

opinion that Zaharie was responsible for the crash.

A

The flaperon found on a Reunion Island beach was definitely

from MH370. The flaperon sits immediately behind the engines on a B777. The

engines sit well below the fuselage and in a controlled ditching would

contact the water first. The engines are held on by shear bolts and are

expected to rip off (taking the flaperon with them) on contact with water.

Ditching procedure is covered in every aircraft flight manual and training

is given by airlines every year for pilots and cabin crew. Common sense

suggests when Zaharie got a low fuel warning he initiated descent while

still heading south and performed a controlled ditching under engine power

before the engines flamed out because of fuel starvation. The aircraft would

sink rapidly.

When the flaperon was analyzed by Boeing, the manufacturer said, along with

US aviation safety consultant John Cox, that it had been broken off in a

lowered position, consistent with the theory MH370 had made a controlled

ditching into the sea. The ATSB initially said damage to the flaperon was

consistent with a high-speed dive after flame-out . Later the ATSB changed

tack to say damage to the flaperon still supported the flame-out theory but

showed the aircraft glided uncontrolled to a soft landing on the sea (hence

no debris). Really? Who lowered the flap?

Last month it was revealed the search for MH370 had been adjusted after

Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss released a new report indicating efforts

should focus on the southern end of the search area and go farther west. The

wider search area was considered the most "prospective" , and the search of

the northern end of the arc was to be abandoned. Only now is the search

operation probably moving to the correct area. Since March 2014, they have

been searching in the wrong area. All the projections assuming no pilot

involvement and "flame-out theory" have placed the search area too far north

and east.

If they had followed Hardy's and my reasoning of pilot involvement they

would have calculated a position much farther south and west. A B777 in

cruise covers 900 km in an hour and probably flew more than 7000 km after the

hijack event.

Two weeks ago I flew to Dubai for simulator training. On December 29, I and

another senior B777 pilot put the ATSB flame-out theories to the test in a

B777 simulator. The results revealed the ATSB's theories are completely

wrong. It claimed that most of the analysis from an estimated flame-out

involved the aircraft making a left turn. But when we flamed out an engine

at 37,000ft to simulate fuel starvation of the first engine, the autopilots

remained on the commanded track.

The ATSB, under the heading "Search Area Width" , said "glide distance under

active control after second engine flame-out was 125 nm (230 km) which favours

a no active control scenario" . To a pilot this is very confusing because I

don't understand what they mean. (Boeing would be gobsmacked a B777 with

both engines flamed out could glide so far while in a practically stalled

condition.)

Last month's ATSB report had me deeply troubled. It bases search area

calculations of projected flight paths on grossly incorrect assumptions. A

B777 cannot fly level at 37,000ft on one engine after a flame-out because of

fuel starvation. The only thing I can agree on with the ATSB is that MH370

would probably not be under active - hand-flown - control. Right from the

start the ATSB has assumed no pilot involvement. But only an expert B777

pilot could have disabled the extensive communications avionics suite when

the aircraft disappeared electronically. Only an expert pilot could have

reprogrammed the FMS to fly to the southern Indian Ocean, otherwise the B777

would have flown on to Beijing. Only a pilot could have lowered the flap for

the controlled ditching.

The only logical conclusion I can draw is that Zaharie carefully planned and

executed this very clever hijack scenario to end up in perhaps the world's

most unsurveyed deep-sea mountainous terrain, 6.5 km deep in a cold, dark

hell that would not be found - an area not that far north of Antarctica.

===================================================================================

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.

Copyright C 2016 The Australian

[deicer]

Time to put the tin foil hats on again...

[Woody Pusher]

Oh dear! This ghost of an aircraft has made light of day again...

For those that care, a look at what may have happened, and a small insight into why things happened can be found here:-

http://mh370.countjustonce.com/

[boestar]

My contention from day 1 has always been that the route the aircraft took was carefully planned to avoid Secondary Surveillance radar and only encounter minimal Primary radar. The only reason that would happen in that area is if one was trying to evade detection. The aircraft then headed to one of the largest dead zones on the planet. I agree that there was definitely a human controlling that aircraft to the bitter end.

[Moon The Loon]

My contention from day 1 has always been that the route the aircraft took was carefully planned to avoid Secondary Surveillance radar and only encounter minimal Primary radar. The only reason that would happen in that area is if one was trying to evade detection. The aircraft then headed to one of the largest dead zones on the planet. I agree that there was definitely a human controlling that aircraft to the bitter end.

Yabutt, is this their end? Therein lies the conspiracy.

[boestar]

Unless that aircraft ended up in Space somewhere abducted by aliens. How does one hide a 777. The only places that could (and possible would) is Diego Garcia with the assistance of Damn near everyone on the island including the US Government. how does one keep that quiet?

Perhaps the aircraft ditched in open ocean...Successfully. There was a waiting ship that picked up the passengers and crew. To what end? Where is the remains of the aircraft?

Could this simply not have been a suicide run by a crew member? it certainly wouldn't have been the first.

[DEFCON]

The article is very interesting, thank you GDR.

[conehead]

Unless that aircraft ended up in Space somewhere abducted by aliens. How does one hide a 777. The only places that could (and possible would) is Diego Garcia with the assistance of Damn near everyone on the island including the US Government. how does one keep that quiet?

Perhaps the aircraft ditched in open ocean...Successfully. There was a waiting ship that picked up the passengers and crew. To what end? Where is the remains of the aircraft?

Could this simply not have been a suicide run by a crew member? it certainly wouldn't have been the first.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t31.0-8/q79/s720x720/1960990_10152673385322388_1861844337_o.jpg

[GDR]

Maybe another piece found.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-plane-wreckage-discovered-washed-thai-beach-might-belong-1539730

[deicer]

This article suggests that from where it came and it's appearance, it's more than likely a rocket fairing....

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11578855&ref=NZH_FBpage

[DEFCON]

"Sonar vehicle searching for MH370 sinks after hitting volcano in Indian Ocean"

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/sonar-vehicle-searching-mh370-sinks-volcano-indian-ocean?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H&utm_term=152833&subid=16999017&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2

[DEFCON]

The media is reporting the recovery of what appears to be a B 777 horizontal stab on the shores of Mozambique.

I think it's starting to look like the search based on satellite / ac pings was somehow a misinterpretation of the data and the aircraft actually went into the Indian Ocean somewhere in the quadrants a little south and perhaps even west of Diego Garcia.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/02/us/mh370-possible-debris-found/index.html

 

 

 

[Guest]

Quote

MH370: New debris probed off coast of Mozambique

• 15 minutes ago
• From the section Asia

Image copyright Reuters Image caption A wing part from MH370 was found on the French island of Reunion in July 2015

Investigators searching for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are examining images of an object found off the coast of Mozambique, reports say.

The piece of debris, reportedly found on a sandbank off the coast of the eastern African country, could be from a Boeing 777, according to NBC news.

MH370 disappeared in March 2014 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. All 239 people on board remain missing.

One confirmed piece of debris has been found before, on Reunion Island.

Missing Malaysia plane MH370: What we know

 

Investigators in Malaysia, Australia and the US have seen photographs of the new object and say there is a good chance it came from a Boeing 777, according to NBC News.

NBC said the debris was found by an American man who has been tracking the investigation into the missing flight.

Mozambican authorities have no information on the sighting of the object, interior ministry spokesman Inacio Dina told Reuters.

The US National Transportation Safety Board and aircraft manufacturer Boeing also declined to comment.

The object was found in the same part of the southern Indian Ocean as the only previously confirmed piece of MH370 debris, which washed up on Reunion Island in July 2015.

Based on satellite communications data, MH370 is thought to have crashed in the Indian Ocean.

 

[blues deville]

More video and report from CNN.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/02/us/mh370-possible-debris-found/index.html

[Woody Pusher]

DEFCON,

Here is an interesting article from the South African press;-

https://www.ecr.co.za/news-sport/news/exclusive-kzn-family-picks-possible-mh370-debris/

More importantly, the piece of debris recovered is complete with a Boeing 777 part number, i.e. 676EB.

676BB and 676EB are B777 flap inspection panels.

Overall, the arrival of the 3 pieces of debris, the first at Reunion and the later two in the Mozambique Channel, conforms with statistical analysis of the expected current distribution of floating objects with a start point on the 7th arc near 30S.

There will be many more pieces of debris to be found, if not already found and not recognized for what they are.

In respect of the NO STEP debris first found in the Mozambique Channel, it is likely to have come from the inboard topside of the RH THS near the leading edge.