[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 30.12.16: HSSS archive entry 161230

From 'that man' in the Oz today writes that the AFAP (Australia's biggest pilot association) is amongst other pilot groups and aircraft accident investigators calling for the MH370 SIO search to continue..

‘Don’t abandon MH370 search’
12:00amEAN HIGGINS
Pilots and crash investigators have warned against allowing Malaysia to ‘get away’ with not continuing the MH370 hunt.

Professional pilots and air crash investigators have warned against allowing Malaysia to “get away” with not continuing the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with the remaining search vessel due to complete the last sweep of the southern Indian Ocean within weeks.

They called on Australian authorities to drop their public reluctance to consider whether a “rogue pilot” hijacked his own aircraft and ditched it, saying a new search strategy should ­include that scenario and a ­revised target zone to allow for it.

The last ship to scour the 120,000sq km search zone, the Fugro Equator, is well into its second week of what is usually a four-to-five-week deployment.

It appears likely to bring to an end a fruitless $200 million hunt for the Boeing 777 that disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 ­people on board.

This month a panel of international experts and the CSIRO defined a new possible area to look north of the current target zone, but the three governments funding the operation — China, Malaysia and Australia — have said it will not be resumed without new information identifying a specific location.

Since MH370 was Malaysian-registered, Malaysia has primary responsibility for the ­investigation and the decision of whether to continue the hunt.

The president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, David Booth, said his profession internationally had an “over­riding principle … the need to recover the wreckage to determine the cause of every accident”. “This means funding a search of all feasible areas,” he said.

Some suggested Malaysia would be content if the aircraft were not found because it could not be determined that — as many aviation experts believe — MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft and flew it to the end.

“If the Malaysians try to call this off, you would have to ask the reason why; any major airline would want to find out what happened to its aircraft,” Captain Mike Keane, a former chief pilot of Britain’s largest airline, EasyJet, said.

“They are ducking litigation and embarrassment, loss of face … they have a vested interest, to my mind, not to find the aircraft.”

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is directing the underwater search at the request of Malaysia, has based its strategy on the “ghost flight” and “death dive” theories that the ­pilots were incapacitated and MH370 went down fast after running out of fuel on autopilot.

“I am surprised they have not looked at the other argument that the captain has carried out some sort of controlled ditching,” Captain Keane said, saying the known facts suggest Zaharie tried to hide the aircraft through an elaborate plan including turning off the radar transponder.

MTF...P2