03-06-2020, 10:28 AM
MH370: BB again??
Via the Oz:
MH370’s resting place a $10m question
![[Image: byron_bailey.png]](https://media.theaustralian.com.au/authors/images/bio/byron_bailey.png)
BYRON BAILEY
![[Image: 150a76e2c652421107791b93b2edc5a4?width=650]](https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/150a76e2c652421107791b93b2edc5a4?width=650)
Estimated final flight path of MH370 extending beyond the ATSB search area.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott said on the recent MH370 Sky News documentary that the search for MH370 should continue as it is the decent thing to do to bring closure to the families of the deceased.
Such a shame that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, when informed by the FBI in mid-2014 that the MH370 captain was the presumed “guilty” party and supplied his practice flight plan to the southern Indian Ocean, did not search just that little bit further south past latitude 39S where a controlled glide would have ended up.
The bureau would have won either way. Find the wreckage and they are heroes. Fail to find it, the pilot hijack scenario would have been laid to rest and aviation experts could have ceased their complaining that the ATSB was searching in the wrong area.
It was agreed by the Defence Science and Technology Group, ATSB, Joint Agency Coordination Centre, Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Independent Pilots Group that the DSTG’s 7th arc/38S red hotspot of where, using satellite information and bayesian mathematical modelling, the Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777 ran out of fuel and commenced a descent, with a probability factor of greater than 99 per cent.
British Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy managed an 88 nautical miles (160km) glide in a 777 simulator after fuel exhaustion at latitude 38S.
A search of a circle with a radius of 160km gives a search area of 80,000sq km. Since the aircraft was on a southerly heading, the southern semicircle search area is 40,000sq km. But 70 per cent of this area falls within the ATSB’s already searched green rectangle based on 40 nautical miles either side of the 7th arc, reducing the area to 12,000sq km.
Logic would indicate against a downwind ditching, which would reduce again the now triangular area to 7000sq km. This Hardy triangle search area could be searched in under a week for less than $10m.
In the Sky News documentary, in a B777 simulator with investigative journalist Peter Stefanovic as my co-pilot, I turned into wind at 70 nautical miles on the glide descent and ditched at S39.10 E88.18, which is in the centre of the area.
The logistics are challenging as the search area is 2200km southwest of Perth, but with the weather window and calmer seas being favourable from October, the government should make a decision soon so planning can begin.
And from Mick Gilbert in reply..
Fuel, temperature wreck MH370 search theory
MICK GILBERT
![[Image: 346f962c0087b5da7931a327eb0986cb?width=650]](https://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/346f962c0087b5da7931a327eb0986cb?width=650)
9:27PM MARCH 5, 2020
13 COMMENTS
MH370’s final resting place is and will remain a topic of much debate until the aircraft is found. On this page Captain Byron Bailey has offered the far south location 39 10S, 88 15E as the site where the Boeing 777 ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean. I beg to differ.
The first and most critical problem is that MH370 didn’t have anywhere near enough fuel to get within gliding distance of that location. As MH370 left radar coverage in the Strait of Malacca, it had 34 tonnes of fuel on board, give or take 500kg. On paper, all things being equal, had the aircraft been flown absolutely optimally, there may have just been enough fuel to get MH370 to that far south terminus. However, in aviation, all things are rarely if ever equal. Two inescapable factors would have driven fuel consumption up that evening — the age of the engines and the warmer conditions.
From the day they leave the factory, the performance of jet engines, the thrust delivered for fuel consumed, declines. It is a known and measured factor called the performance deterioration allowance (PDA). The PDAs for the MH370 aircraft’s engines were 0.74 per cent for the left engine and 2.26 per cent for the right. Those PDAs meant that the aircraft was burning at least 1.5 per cent more fuel than the manufacturer’s published fuel consumption model.
A further and more serious issue was the much higher than standard air temperatures at cruising altitudes along the aircraft’s path that evening. Those temperatures would have driven fuel consumption up by 3 per cent.
Together, the PDAs and temperature meant that over the nearly six-hour flight into the southern Indian Ocean, the aircraft would have burned over 1.5 tonnes more fuel than the “on paper” values.
However, even if we were to leave the chemistry and physics of fuel consumption aside, Captain Bailey’s location still has some major problems.
The first of those happened 11 days after MH370 went down, on March 19, 2014. That was the second day of the Australian-run search effort and it was the day that three aircraft — two P-3 Orions together with a RAAF P-8 Poseidon — searched the area surrounding Captain Bailey’s 39 10S, 88 15E site. In the 11 days from the crash the floating wreckage would have drifted east-north-east but certainly not beyond that day’s search area. If a floating debris field was there it would have been overflown by one of those sophisticated maritime surveillance/anti-submarine aircraft.
But if we were to accept that maybe those pieces were missed, within a further six months another problem arises. Captain Bailey’s location is on the northern edge of the Antarctic Circumpolar Surface Current. All the drift modelling shows that at least some of the wreckage from that site would have been coming ashore on West Australian beaches by November 2014 and on South Australian, Victorian and/or Tasmanian beaches in the months after that.
Despite numerous beach clean-up and coastal survey groups being placed on alert to look out for aircraft wreckage, nothing from MH370 was ever found.
Aviation safety is a field where it is wise to never say never, but it is difficult to reconcile Captain Bailey’s bet with the realities.
Mick Gilbert is a former RAAF supply officer, and an aviation enthusiast and researcher.
MTF...P2
Via the Oz:
MH370’s resting place a $10m question
Estimated final flight path of MH370 extending beyond the ATSB search area.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott said on the recent MH370 Sky News documentary that the search for MH370 should continue as it is the decent thing to do to bring closure to the families of the deceased.
Such a shame that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, when informed by the FBI in mid-2014 that the MH370 captain was the presumed “guilty” party and supplied his practice flight plan to the southern Indian Ocean, did not search just that little bit further south past latitude 39S where a controlled glide would have ended up.
The bureau would have won either way. Find the wreckage and they are heroes. Fail to find it, the pilot hijack scenario would have been laid to rest and aviation experts could have ceased their complaining that the ATSB was searching in the wrong area.
It was agreed by the Defence Science and Technology Group, ATSB, Joint Agency Coordination Centre, Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Independent Pilots Group that the DSTG’s 7th arc/38S red hotspot of where, using satellite information and bayesian mathematical modelling, the Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777 ran out of fuel and commenced a descent, with a probability factor of greater than 99 per cent.
British Boeing 777 captain Simon Hardy managed an 88 nautical miles (160km) glide in a 777 simulator after fuel exhaustion at latitude 38S.
A search of a circle with a radius of 160km gives a search area of 80,000sq km. Since the aircraft was on a southerly heading, the southern semicircle search area is 40,000sq km. But 70 per cent of this area falls within the ATSB’s already searched green rectangle based on 40 nautical miles either side of the 7th arc, reducing the area to 12,000sq km.
Logic would indicate against a downwind ditching, which would reduce again the now triangular area to 7000sq km. This Hardy triangle search area could be searched in under a week for less than $10m.
In the Sky News documentary, in a B777 simulator with investigative journalist Peter Stefanovic as my co-pilot, I turned into wind at 70 nautical miles on the glide descent and ditched at S39.10 E88.18, which is in the centre of the area.
The logistics are challenging as the search area is 2200km southwest of Perth, but with the weather window and calmer seas being favourable from October, the government should make a decision soon so planning can begin.
And from Mick Gilbert in reply..
Fuel, temperature wreck MH370 search theory
MICK GILBERT
9:27PM MARCH 5, 2020
13 COMMENTS
MH370’s final resting place is and will remain a topic of much debate until the aircraft is found. On this page Captain Byron Bailey has offered the far south location 39 10S, 88 15E as the site where the Boeing 777 ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean. I beg to differ.
The first and most critical problem is that MH370 didn’t have anywhere near enough fuel to get within gliding distance of that location. As MH370 left radar coverage in the Strait of Malacca, it had 34 tonnes of fuel on board, give or take 500kg. On paper, all things being equal, had the aircraft been flown absolutely optimally, there may have just been enough fuel to get MH370 to that far south terminus. However, in aviation, all things are rarely if ever equal. Two inescapable factors would have driven fuel consumption up that evening — the age of the engines and the warmer conditions.
From the day they leave the factory, the performance of jet engines, the thrust delivered for fuel consumed, declines. It is a known and measured factor called the performance deterioration allowance (PDA). The PDAs for the MH370 aircraft’s engines were 0.74 per cent for the left engine and 2.26 per cent for the right. Those PDAs meant that the aircraft was burning at least 1.5 per cent more fuel than the manufacturer’s published fuel consumption model.
A further and more serious issue was the much higher than standard air temperatures at cruising altitudes along the aircraft’s path that evening. Those temperatures would have driven fuel consumption up by 3 per cent.
Together, the PDAs and temperature meant that over the nearly six-hour flight into the southern Indian Ocean, the aircraft would have burned over 1.5 tonnes more fuel than the “on paper” values.
However, even if we were to leave the chemistry and physics of fuel consumption aside, Captain Bailey’s location still has some major problems.
The first of those happened 11 days after MH370 went down, on March 19, 2014. That was the second day of the Australian-run search effort and it was the day that three aircraft — two P-3 Orions together with a RAAF P-8 Poseidon — searched the area surrounding Captain Bailey’s 39 10S, 88 15E site. In the 11 days from the crash the floating wreckage would have drifted east-north-east but certainly not beyond that day’s search area. If a floating debris field was there it would have been overflown by one of those sophisticated maritime surveillance/anti-submarine aircraft.
But if we were to accept that maybe those pieces were missed, within a further six months another problem arises. Captain Bailey’s location is on the northern edge of the Antarctic Circumpolar Surface Current. All the drift modelling shows that at least some of the wreckage from that site would have been coming ashore on West Australian beaches by November 2014 and on South Australian, Victorian and/or Tasmanian beaches in the months after that.
Despite numerous beach clean-up and coastal survey groups being placed on alert to look out for aircraft wreckage, nothing from MH370 was ever found.
Aviation safety is a field where it is wise to never say never, but it is difficult to reconcile Captain Bailey’s bet with the realities.
Mick Gilbert is a former RAAF supply officer, and an aviation enthusiast and researcher.
MTF...P2