[Peetwo]

The trouble with Chinese whispers is they tend to have a life of their own; take the story - unbeknownst to us downunda folk - that somehow filtered across the pacific, across mainland USA and into the Big Apple, all apparently while we were sleeping...

Here 'tis from the New York Times:

Australia Says Hunt for Missing MH370 Jet May Be Called Off Soon

By REUTERS
MARCH 1, 2015, 4:04 P.M. E.S.T.

CANBERRA — The search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 cannot go on forever, Australia's deputy prime minister said, and discussions are already under way between Australia, China and Malaysia as to whether to call off the hunt within weeks.

No trace has been found of the Boeing 777 aircraft, which disappeared a year ago this week carrying 239 passengers and crew, in what has become one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.

MH370 vanished from radar screens shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing, early on March 8. Investigators believe it was flown thousands of miles off course before eventually crashing into the Indian Ocean.

The search of a rugged 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq mile) patch of sea floor some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth, which experts believe is the plane's most likely resting place, will likely be finished by May.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss told Reuters that a decision would have to be taken well before then as to whether to continue into the vast 1.1 million sq km area around the primary search zone if nothing has been found.

Discussions had already begun about what to do in that event, including the possibility that the search might be called off, said Truss, who is also transport minister.

"For many of the families onboard, they won't have closure unless they have certain knowledge that the aircraft has been located and perhaps their loved ones' remains have been recovered," Truss said in an interview.

"We clearly cannot keep searching forever, but we want to do everything that's reasonably possible to locate the aircraft."

Truss compared the search, already the most expensive of its kind, with another great mystery from an earlier era, the hunt for missing aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 during an early attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

Four vessels owned by Dutch engineering firm Fugro, equipped with sophisticated underwater drones, have searched about 40 percent of the previously unmapped expanse of sea floor that has been designated the highest priority.

DECISION TIME
Australia and Malaysia contributed to evenly split the costs, estimated at up to A$52 million ($40.5 million), but Truss warned that continuing the search beyond that area would be impossible without more international help.

"We put in the amount of money that we believed was necessary to do this job well and thoroughly with the best available equipment," he said. "We have to make other decisions, then, about how long the search should continue."

Military radar showed the plane turned back across Peninsular Malaysia after contact with it was lost. A handful of faint "pings" picked up by a commercial satellite for around another six hours helped narrow down its likely final location.

Martin Dolan, Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau which is leading the search, said he remained confident that the plane would be found in the remainder of the so-called "priority search area".

If, however, the search has to be expanded into the much larger surrounding area, the costs could prove prohibitive.
"It's almost impossible to get your head around the scale of what's involved here," he told Reuters.

"If you take the theoretical maximum of the possible area for the aircraft – 1.1 (or) 1.2 million sq km – you're talking about orders or magnitude in terms of cost and time above what we're currently doing, and that's something that governments will obviously have to bear in mind."

Most of those on board the lost flight were Chinese or Malaysian.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Australia, China and Malaysia had cooperated closely on the search.
"The Australian side has put in a large amount of personnel and material resources and we are deeply grateful for their help," Hong said. "The search effort is still ongoing and we hope the relevant work will produce progress."

The Malaysian government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Loss-making Malaysia Airlines, whose fortunes worsened when another of its Boeing 777's was shot down over Ukraine on July 17, killing all 298 people on board, was delisted at the end of 2014 as part of a $1.8 billion government-led restructuring.

Rounding out a bad year for Malaysian-affiliated carriers, an Indonesia AirAsia flight from Surabaya to Singapore crashed on Dec. 28, killing all 162 people on board.

      
Then it filters backwards & forwards evolving again &.. again, till the latest on twitter is that it will be quite literally a matter of weeks till the official MH370 search will be called off...sheesh talk about snowball effect...

Fortunately here in Oz - in aviation journalist circles - we have our resident Tendentious Blogger Ben Sandilands who is very good at sifting out the facts from the bollocks, so here is his take on the NYT MH370 apparent scoop: 

Australia is keen to quit MH370 search soon, but why?

Ben Sandilands | Mar 02, 2015 11:21AM

Recent well placed hints by Australia that it is looking to winding up the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have made it to the New York Times. The implications of this need to be carefully considered.

‘Looking to’ isn’t the same as ‘has decided’ as Canberra made clear this morning after the US story hit the internet. Australia would not reach such a decision without the agreement of the Malaysia authorities, and there have been no structured discussions with Malaysia or China, as to striking a tripartite agreement to end the search.

The ending of a search obligation by a country such as Australia which is a party to a set of ICAO protocols isn’t something lightly done, but Australia has been exemplary in its conduct of the detailed sea floor search since last year once there was sufficient preliminary bathymetric mapping of the terrain to safely deploy towed side scanning sonar devices (or towfish).

The NYT story itself would be a very good catch up for Australians who have given up trying to follow the MH370 mystery disappearance, but not much use to those who have been parsing every word to come out of the JACC, the ATSB or the Minister responsible for aviation, and Deputy PM, Warren Truss.

Unless the current and well resourced search of the ‘priority areas’ gets lucky within a matter of weeks, it is likely that Australia, Malaysia, and China, will contemplate the non-extension of the efforts to find the lost Boeing 777-200ER, which vanished with at least 239 people on board, almost a year ago on 8 March 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The search organisation needs to declare this in advance of the completion of the priority search area this May in order to give proper notice to the operators of the four ships which have been variously mapping, sonar scanning, and in one case, closely examining target areas on the complex sea floor with a deep sea automated submersible vehicle.

The risk in doing what may on the available evidence seem the logical course of action is that of feeding conspiracy scenarios. And some of those scenarios contain hard to dismiss elements of concern, while others are just wacko.

Malaysia’s authorities have lied to or grievously misled the public and the relatives of the lost on a number of counts, they have kept part of the cargo manifest secret for so long nobody will believe anything they might say about it the future, and have, no doubt for some good reasons, been opaque about the criminal investigations that have been made made in parallel to the physical search.

It is the performance of the Malaysia authorities that makes quitting so risky, but at a technical level, it has also been the fierce critiques applied to the official view as to where and at what speed and altitude the jet flew to its doom that will continue to be controversial.
With good reason. Much of that good reason comes from the self styled, and exceedingly well credentialed, Independent Group who with some difficulty, eventually engaged the ATSB which, like the JACC, manages the search. (The ATSB/JACC thing isn’t worthy of space for the purpose of this story, which is to explore the implications of ending the search.)

This is a good place to start to understand the Independent Group’s work. It requires your careful and undivided attention.
In recent weeks Mike Chillit, an indefatigable ship tracker, has been following the activities of the search flotilla, and picked up indications that at least some of them have widened their scan tracking, which would work against finding small pieces of wreckage, but radically improve the chances of picking up evidence of big chunks, like the two engines, and the main undercarriage assembly of the jet by exploring a larger area in the same time.

There is no doubt that the search is a determined one, and conducted with confidence that MH370 is in or very near the general area of the priority search. But the problem is the quality of the data on which the search priorities have been framed.

Mike Chillit, who can be followed on Twitter @MikeChillit, has summarised the plausible variations as to where MH370 might be if some tightly held assumptions are incorrect, in this morning’s diagram (below). It makes discontinuing the search graphically understandable.

Which is all very interesting, however IMO one thing is for certain the MH370 exit strategy by the JACC/ATSB/OzGovt is now firmly in play....

MTF...