[Peetwo]

From off this week's MH370 operational update:

Joint Agency Coordination Centre 
MH370 Operational Search Update

20 July 2016

This operational report has been developed to provide regular updates on the progress of the search effort for MH370. Our work will continue to be thorough and methodical, so sometimes weekly progress may seem slow. Please be assured that work is continuing and is aimed at finding MH370 as quickly as possible.

Key developments this week

• Fugro Discovery  continues operations in the search area.
  

• Fugro Equator is conducting underwater search operations and bathymetry as weather and sea conditions allow and is expected to depart the search area late tonight.
  

• Dong Hai Jiu 101 is currently on weather stand by and will conduct underwater search operations as weather and sea conditions allow.
  

• A piece of aircraft debris found on Pemba Island, just off the coast of Tanzania, in late June has been transported to Australia for examination. Malaysia and Australia have worked with Tanzanian officials to assume responsibility for the item, believed to be an outboard wing flap. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is working with Malaysian investigators to ascertain whether it is from a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
  

Malaysian and Australian investigators examine the piece of aircraft debris found on Pemba Island off the coast of Tanzania



Source: ATSB

Update: 21/07/16

Courtesy Oz Aviation & Dazzling Dazza's office :

ATSB analyses wing flap believed to be from missing MH370
July 20, 2016 by australianaviation.com.au
The wing flap washed up near Tanzania in late June. (ATSB)

A wing flap found off the coast of Africa in late June believed to be from missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been sent to Canberra for further analysis.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia said the piece of aircraft debris was discovered on Pemba Island near Tanzania on June 23.

“Malaysia and Australia have worked with Tanzanian officials to assume responsibility for the wing flap,” the pair said in a joint statement.

“Technical specialists from the ATSB are working with Malaysian investigators to determine if it is from the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, MH370.”

The statement said the ATSB had previously determined four pieces of debris to be “almost certainly” to be from the 777-200ER, 9M-MRO, that went missing enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 2014 carrying 239 passengers and crew. Meanwhile, a flaperon that washed up on La Reunion Island in July 2015 was positively identified by French investigators as a part from MH370.

Meanwhile, the ATSB said efforts to locate the missing aircraft continue to be hampered by poor weather in the Indian Ocean.

“Ongoing poor weather conditions have severely impacted search operations and resulted in delays to search operations of around 6-8 weeks,” the ATSB said in its weekly operational update.

“Since the onset of poor conditions associated with winter weather, progress has slowed with only a minimal area searched during this time.”

As a result, the ATSB reaffirmed previous guidance that should the run of bad weather continue, the remaining 10,000 square kilometres yet to be searched could run “well beyond the winter months”.

About 110,000 square kilometres of the 120,000 square kilometre search area has been covered.

The governments of Australia, Malaysia and China have said previously that in the absence of new leads the search would not be expanded beyond the current 120,000 square kilometre area.

The ATSB said marginal weather conditions still allowed the use of deep tow equipment. Further, the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used to search areas that the deep tow sonar could not was only able to be used in calmer conditions in spring and summer.

Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester said he would meet with representatives from Malaysia and China on Friday to discuss the search effort.

Also attending the Ministerial Tripartite Meeting at Putrajaya just outside Kuala Lumpur will be Malaysian Minister of Transport Dato’ Sri Liow Tiong Lai and Chinese Minister of Transport Yang Chuantang, Chester said.

“I’m looking forward to meeting with our international partners in the search for MH370. The search has been unprecedented in both size and scale, conducted in some of the world’s most isolated waters and at times in extremely challenging weather,” Chester said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The meeting will provide an opportunity to reflect on achievements to date and discuss next steps as we near completion of the 120,000 square kilometre search area.”

Ministers to meet to discuss MH370



Media Release

DC077/2016

20 July 2016

 
Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester will meet with counterparts from Malaysia and the People's Republic of China later this week to discuss the way forward in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The Ministerial Tripartite Meeting will be held on Friday in the Malaysian federal administrative centre of Putrajaya. Malaysian Minister of Transport, Dato' Sri Liow Tiong Lai will host the meeting which will also be attended by the Minister of Transport from the People's Republic of China, Mr Yang Chuantang.

“I'm looking forward to meeting with our international partners in the search for MH370. The search has been unprecedented in both size and scale, conducted in some of the world's most isolated waters and at times in extremely challenging weather,” Mr Chester said.

“The meeting will provide an opportunity to reflect on achievements to date and discuss next steps as we near completion of the 120,000 square kilometre search area.”

The Governments of Malaysia, Australia and the People's Republic of China agreed in April 2015 that should the aircraft not be located within the 120,000 square kilometre search area and in the absence of any new credible evidence the search area would not be extended.

Further update via Reuters:

We've been looking in the wrong place, MH370 search team says
SYDNEY | By Jonathan Barrett and Swati Pandey


A crew member from the Royal Malaysian Air Force uses binoculars onboard a Malaysian Air Force CN235 aircraft during a Search and Rescue (SAR) operation to find the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, in the Straits of Malacca March 13, 2014.
Reuters/Samsul Said


SYDNEY Top searchers at the Dutch company leading the underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 say they believe the plane may have glided down rather than dived in the final moments, meaning they have been scouring the wrong patch of ocean for two years.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew onboard en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Searchers led by engineering group Fugro have been combing an area roughly the size of Greece for two years.

That search, over 120,000 square kilometers of the southern Indian Ocean off Western Australia, is expected to end in three months and could be called off after that following a meeting of key countries Malaysia, China and Australia on Friday. So far, nothing has been found.

"If it's not there, it means it's somewhere else," Fugro project director Paul Kennedy told Reuters.

While Kennedy does not exclude extreme possibilities that could have made the plane impossible to spot in the search zone, he and his team argue a more likely option is the plane glided down - meaning it was manned at the end - and made it beyond the area marked out by calculations from satellite images.

"If it was manned it could glide for a long way," Kennedy said. "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."

Doubts that the search teams are looking in the right place will likely fuel calls for all data to be made publicly available so that academics and rival companies can pursue an "open source" solution - a collaborative public answer to the airline industry's greatest mystery.

Fugro's controlled glide hypothesis is also the first time officials have leant some support to contested theories that someone was in control during the flight's final moments.

Since the crash there have been competing theories over whether one, both or no pilots were in control, whether it was hijacked - or whether all aboard perished and the plane was not controlled at all when it hit the water. Adding to the mystery, investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the plane's transponder before diverting it thousands of miles.

The glide view is not supported by the investigating agencies: America's Boeing Co, France's Thales SA, U.S. investigator the National Transportation Safety Board, British satellite company Inmarsat PLC, the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

CARRY ON

The meeting between officials from China, Australia and Malaysia is expected to discuss the future of the search. The three governments have previously agreed that unless any new credible evidence arises the search would not be extended, despite calls from victims' families.

Any further search would require a fresh round of funding from the three governments on top of the almost A$180 million ($137 million) that has already been spent, making it the most expensive in aviation history.

Deciding the search area in 2014, authorities assumed the plane had no "inputs" during its final descent, meaning there was no pilot or no conscious pilot. They believe it was on auto-pilot and spiraled when it ran out of fuel.

But Kennedy said a skilled pilot could glide the plane approximately 120 miles (193 km) from its cruising altitude after running out of fuel. One pilot told Reuters it would be slightly less than that.

For the aircraft to continue gliding after fuel has run out, someone must manually put the aircraft into a glide – nose down with controlled speed.

"If you lose all power, the auto-pilot kicks out. If there is nobody at the controls, the aircraft will plummet down," said a captain with experience flying Boeing 777s - the same as MH370. Like all pilots interviewed for this story, he declined to be named given the controversy around the lost jet.

Fugro works on a "confidence level" of 95 percent, a statistical measurement used, in Fugro's case, to indicate how certain the plane debris was not in the area they have already combed, a seabed peppered with steep cliffs and underwater volcanoes.

"The end-of-flight scenarios are absolutely endless," Fugro managing director Steve Duffield said. "Which wing ran out of fuel first, did it roll this way or did it tip that way?"

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the agency coordinating the search, has consistently defended the defined search zone. It did not immediately respond to questions over whether it was assessing the controlled glide theory.

Authorities used data provided by Inmarsat to locate the likely plunge point through communication between the plane and satellite ground station.

"All survey data collected from the search for missing flight MH370 will be released," an ATSB spokesman said

MTF...P2