[Peetwo]

Good one Byron, the points made re “experts” are spot on.  The Ben Sandilands  Plane Talking article is as usual drawing comments: these..

11) Probably well known now that the French Ministry of Defence is taking over coordination of the search for parts or MH370 through the Prefect of Reunion. France is allocating more assets to the search, including a CASA aircraft, helicopters and unspecified maritime.

12) And I forgot to mention that the above was at the request of the President and Prime Minister of France, which gives some weight to bring the search and presumably its publicity under a measure of control and validation before release of any results.

from Aero Eng Aviator brings IMO the best bit of MH 370 news to date; finally a chance of probity and expert assistance.  Gods know, the investigation could use it.  Choc frog to Aero. 

Australia, ATSB & MH370 - "..le ver se tourne.."

Excellent stuff Ferryman & indeed kudos to Aero Eng Aviator, plus Byron Bailey courtesy the Daily Telegraph:

The ‘experts’ have no idea on MH370

August 7, 2015 12:00am
Byron Bailey- The Daily Telegraph

Pilot Byron Bailey.

I AM staggered to find Australia sent an “expert’’ to France to assist in the identification of the ­flaperon washed up on a beach on Reunion Island.

There are already B777 experts aplenty in that part of the world, along with Boeing reps. What ­more assistance could he provide and who approved this?

It’s bad enough with the politicians stretching their taxpayer funded ­entitlements but these government department employees are exceedingly well paid. The flaperon is from MH370, as revealed in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Why was another expert needed?


If one was required, I have colleagues in Qantas, British Airways and Emirates and between us we have hundreds of thousands of hours on B777 and Airbus aircraft. You will not find any of that kind of ­experience among the desk-bound warriors of Air Services, CASA and the Air Transport Safety Board and we seem to have a lot of ex-RAAF types, some who were pilots, but do not have experience on modern, ­computerised, glass-cockpit aircraft.

It does not make sense to me that the former head of CASA was a ­former fighter pilot, like myself, but with no civil experience.

Thirty years as admin staff officer in the RAAF does not qualify you to be able to head a body that through excessive regulation financially ­restricts the industry.

The new head of CASA is also a former RAAF fighter pilot.

I was interviewed live last weekend by CBS News Los Angeles and very quickly it became apparent the interview was fixated on one point and could not see the bigger picture.

As I pointed out on a Channel 9 live interview there are four facts, not theories, concerning MH370.

Fact 1: The captain was the last voice heard in the sign-off to Kuala Lumpur ATC.

Fact 2: Immediately after this all communication equipment was ­disabled so MH370 disappeared off ATC radar. (Radios, transponders, acars, etc, are triplicated and on ­separate electrical buses, so to quote the head of Emirates, the world’s largest B777 operator, “pilots should not be allowed to turn off communication equipment in-flight” ).

Fact 3: MH370 was found by analysis of military radar to have tracked west along the Thai border and up the Straits of Malacca and then a left turn around the tip of Sumatra.

Fact 4: The aircraft flew south for seven hours.

Everything else is conjecture — even the almost absolute certainty that it was under control to the end.

It is frustrating to continually hear on TV about a large debris field lying on the floor of the Indian Ocean or some ATSB expert talking about the crash of MH370.

The head of ATSB even said some time ago that the reason there was no debris from the crash when MH370 ran out of fuel was that it entered the water cleanly, nose first, in a vertical attitude. Isaac Newton must have been rolling in his grave at the rewrite of the laws of physics and gravity.

Byron Bailey is a former B777 captain and now flies corporate jets

 BB QON? - "..It’s bad enough with the politicians stretching their taxpayer funded ­entitlements but these government department employees are exceedingly well paid. The flaperon is from MH370, as revealed in the early hours of yesterday morning.

Why was another expert needed?.."  Why indeed? And why is it necessary for our media craving MH370 super sleuth, ATSB Chief Commissioner, Martin Dolan; to be in attendance in Toulose? From the ABC's World Today 2 days ago - MH370 debris brings little consolation to families of missing passengers & MP3 download

..LINDY KERIN: Martin Dolan is the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.


He's been with the French team in Toulouse examining the piece of debris and he's continuing to lead the search for the main wreckage.

MARTIN DOLAN: In terms of some certainly about the aircraft, it's good news, tragic news for those on, the families of those on board the aircraft of course.

LINDY KERIN: the debris is still being examined, and Martin Dolan told News Radio it could still be some time before there's more information about how the flight ended

MARTIN DOLAN: We have one of our experts in materials failure in these areas working with the team in Toulouse and we will see what the flaperon reveals about the last stage of the flight of the aircraft. Close examination is what's necessary to assess how much we can learn...

Presumably Dolan would have flown business class (at least) & is holed up in some reasonable digs until such time as the French announce confirmation on the provenance of the flaperon. But for what possible purpose - other than holding the investigator's hand - is Dolan over there and at what end cost to 'us', the taxpayer?? Well at least the French authorities won't have to go far to deliver the subpoena (or worse)...

While on the bureau CC Martin Dolan  - Quote from the Time magazine article linked to by Kharon on the SMH thread:

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan denied his agency, which is leading the search, had misled anyone or withheld information. And though the search area was changed several times as officials revised the scant data available, it has been the same since October, he said.


“As soon as new or changed information comes to light, we make it available,” Dolan told The Associated Press on Friday.

The ATSB has also faced criticism for making a mistake in its original drift modeling, which initially predicted debris would wash ashore in Indonesia, rather than the area east of Africa where the flaperon turned up. The bureau issued a statement this week saying a revised analysis showed that, in fact, debris could be carried by currents to the area near Reunion Island.

Dolan said the ATSB didn’t withhold that error, and instead had been working with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, to recalculate the drift area after noticing flaws in the model in November.

“We had to work with CSIRO to check the facts and as soon as we had something that was checked, we published it,” Dolan said. “We were in the process with CSIRO of publishing that revised drift modeling when the flaperon turned up at Reunion.”

  
Perhaps the Worldwide MSM should take the time to contact Senators Fawcett & Xenophon when testing the veracity of the ATSB Chief Commissioner's weasel words (above):

From  Chapter 3 of the  PelAir Senate Inquiry report:

Committee view

3.64      The committee finds the ATSB's refusal to retrieve the FDR incongruous and questionable. Furthermore, the committee takes a dim view of the ATSB's reliance on a version of ICAO Annex 13 that only came into force in late 2010, nearly a year after the accident, to justify this decision. Mr Dolan's evidence in this regard is questionable and has seriously eroded his standing as a witness before the committee.  Flight data recorders are routinely recovered around the world despite the existence of surviving crew. They provide objective records of how events transpired, and allow speech specialists and psychologists to determine stress levels and what was going on in the cockpit at the time.[43] This could offer valuable lessons for the whole aviation industry, not just about why an accident occurred, but, in this case, how such a successful ditching was executed under extremely difficult circumstances.

Definitely MTF...P2

Ps For the benefit  of Tango et.al off Ben's blog post, the following is extracted from page 3 of the minutes of the - Third Meeting of the Asia/Pacific Regional Search and Rescue Task Force (APSAR/TF/3)