[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 16.10.16: The trouble with correcting the record.

Reference O&O thread:

Sandy dubs it the 'Canberra disease' and Ventus reckons it is a syndrome i.e. "acquired institutionalised ostrichitis syndrome" (AIOS).

AIOS reaches epidemic proportions in Can'tberra -  

Earlier in the week 'that man' from the Oz kept reporting on a something-nothing (possible) tailskid occurrence of a Singapore Airlines on departure out of Melbourne: 

Tail strike suspected
12:00amEAN HIGGINS

A Singapore Airlines plane flew on from Melbourne to Singapore despite being told it had struck its tail on takeoff..

  
Now along with Ben Sandilands from PlaneTalking, I was a bit bemused where 'that man' was going with what appears to be on the surface a non-event?? 

Probe into ‘tail strike’ flight
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The air crash watchdog has launched an investigation into a now confirmed ‘tail strike’ at Melbourne airport...

But then after the 2nd Higgins report (above) the penny dropped...

This was not so much about the Singapore tail-strike occurrence but more about goading the ATSB into action by making reference to a) it being an immediately reportable incident that automatically must be investigated; and b) referring twice to the last high profile tail-strike incident that also occurred out of YMML:

..In 2009 at Melbourne airport, an Emirates Airbus A340-500 struck its tail three times, and sustained $100 million damage as it barely cleared the airport boundary fence before returning to make an emergency landing...

   
As a passing strange coincidence - - I too had recently referred to that accident in a Mount NCN post: Safety loops, trends & disconnections?...

..Perhaps the ATSB is being bloody-minded about this because it is 'that man' making a song and dance about this reasonably innocuous event.

But it also could be that they're otherwise distracted and have gone into a 'bunker' mode because apparently that man Higgins has been doing some more digging on the MH370 front... :

ATSB jumped gun on MH370
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was wrong to say it had consensus on a “death dive” theory for flight MH370.

[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/0573acb566bb47c45e64e4c55a998aba/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued a bulletin falsely claiming it had “consensus” from a team of international experts for its “death dive” theory that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went down fast in a pilotless crash, before two overseas agencies had a chance to express a view.

The ATSB made the claim as its chief commissioner Greg Hood joined the Malaysian government and Malaysia Airlines in a media campaign to hose down an alternative “rogue pilot” ­theory that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his aircraft and flew it to the end outside the search area chosen by the ATSB.

Internal ATSB documents obtained by The Australian show that while a senior investigator drew the incorrect “consensus” statement to the attention of colleagues only minutes after the bulletin was released, the organisation never issued a correction and instead secretly deleted the claim from its website the next day, after it had been widely ­reported internationally.

The ATSB repeatedly refused to say why it had deleted the “consensus” claim, and falsely denied doing so in a subsequent post.

Internal ATSB emails ­obtained under Freedom of Information statutes by The Australian reveal the truth behind the organisation’s media manoeuvres.

The revelations come amid doubts expressed by independent experts about the reliability of the Inmarsat satellite data the ATSB uses for its rapid descent assumption, and claims the agency has, to avoid embarrassing Malaysia, steered away from the “rogue pilot” theory.

MH370 vanished on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. Its radar transponder was turned off and radio contact was broken.

Radar and automatic satellite tracking data indicate the Boeing 777 reversed course early in the flight, and flew along the ­Malaysia-Thailand border and out over the Andaman Sea before making a sharp turn south to end up in the southern Indian Ocean.

The ATSB designed the search zone based on its “ghost flight” theory that the pilots were incapacitated, and that after flying on autopilot, the aircraft came down quickly after running out of fuel.

In July, two developments led to international debate about the ATSB’s strategy.
Reuters reported the project director of the underwater search, Paul Kennedy of Dutch survey group Fugro, said the rogue pilot theory might be right after all.

“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,” Mr Kennedy told Reuters.

The same weekend, New York magazine revealed a Malaysian police report indicated the FBI had determined Zaharie had charted a similar route on his home flight simulator.

Days later, the ATSB issued a bulletin in the name of the federal government’s Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre for the MH370 search, downplaying the rogue pilot theory.

The ATSB claimed in its July 27 bulletin the satellite data showed MH370 came down “most likely in a high rate of descent”. As originally released, the bulletin said: “This is indeed the consensus of the Search Strategy Working Group,” referring to experts including from the US and British air crash investigation.

The documents obtained under FOI show that just a few minutes after the bulletin was ­issued, an ATSB senior investi­gator warned colleagues by email this was an “error” and that the sentence should be taken down.

“It is certainly not yet the consensus position of the SSWG … 2 parties are yet to make a formal response on the subject,” the investigator said.

The email chain shows another ATSB senior investigator agreed and gave instructions for the sentence with the “consensus” line to be removed from the ATSB’s and the JACC’s websites.

But the ATSB did not retract the sentence until the next day, by which time it had been reported internationally, including in Mal­aysian and Chinese publications.

As earlier revealed by The Australian, the deletion of the “consensus” line was discovered by British aerospace engineer Richard Godfrey, a member of the independent group of aviation experts who on their own initi­ative have been reviewing the MH370 scientific data.

When, at the time, The Australian rang the ATSB spokesman who had issued the July 27 bulletin to ask why the deletion had been made, the spokesman hung up and JACC director Annette Clark declined to respond.

Subsequently, ATSB MH370 spokesman Daniel O’Malley and JACC chief co-ordinator Judith Zielke would also not say why the “consensus” line had been secretly disappeared.

When The Australian reported the deletion of the sentence, the ATSB issued a denial on its website, saying the report “falsely ­accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information”.

In a statement after it had been made aware of the FOI material, the JACC said: “The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.”

Now I know it is just feeding more of the same 'he said, she said' MH370 bollocks, but given the Oz has obviously gone to some bother chasing FOIs etc. I kind of wonder where 'that man' will go next with chucking rocks on the ATSB chook-house shed -

So out of curiosity I visited the comments section of that Higgins article and I was quite surprised by the dampening effect the article has had on the usual Oz/Bailey/Higgins critics/ATSBsexual trolls like Mick & Andrew.

Mick (1 comment only??) - Since there's mention of the Independent Group of aviation experts who on their own initi­ative have been reviewing the MH370 scientific data, it's also worth pointing out that based on the Inmarsat satellite data, the Independent Group also came to the conclusion that MH370 ended its flight in a rapid descent, a "death dive".   They reached that conclusion nearly two years ago.

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Andrew (1 comment only) - An 800 word article, the essence of which is contained in the last two sentences:

“The information was retracted when it was learned not all working group members had, at that stage, provided formal responses. Subsequently a consensus view was reached.”

Big deal...

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Which was excellently countered IMO by Rodger...

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Rodger - [email=-@Andrew]@Andrew[/email] It is a big deal!

Australian has already spent millions of dollars on the search of MH370 aircraft without any tangible result or benefit.

The ATSB has apparently chosen not to consider or evaluate other experts’ views and theories. If it has, I do not remember The Australian reporting such. Now we read in the above article that when:   “When The Australian reported the deletion of the sentence, the ATSB issued a denial on its website, saying the report “falsely ­accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information”."

The ATSB’s failure to find the wreckage (after many months and millions of dollars), apparent disregard in listening to experts, and the apparent covering up of its inaccurate bulletin, is not a good look.

I think it is time for a Special Board of Inquiry be proclaimed and investigate the apparent “group think” in the ATSB and JACC, the erroneous bulletin release, and other matters of public interest (viz actual receipt of monies from Malaysia and China to cover some of the search costs as well as China’s actual search effort by its dispatched ship).

 
And then to general comments of interest:

Neville - Does feel like the sensitivities of the Malaysian government are warping the outcome here.

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Ann - They don't know and they don't know they don't know, how sad.

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Eric - If nothing else , the secrecy of the deletion shows the continuation of the culture of duplicity and obfuscation within the ATSB.

David - @Eric For those bent on finding it. You missed conspiracy.

Will continue to monitor where Higgins and the Oz are going with this latest line of attack...

MTF...P2