[Peetwo]

Captain's Log 21.01.17: HSSS archive entry 170121

In what is obviously going to be a slow news weekend here in Oz, Byron Bailey and 'that man' Higgins, teamed up with SE Asian correspondent Amanda Hodge, feature 3 times on the MH370 end of search wrap up in the Weekend Oz... :

‘Locate MH370, get reward’

12:00amEAN HIGGINS, AMANDA HODGE

The Malaysian gov­ernment has unexpectedly offered a possible reward if the MH370 aircraft is found.

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Search over, farce carries on

12:00amBYRON BAILEY

The Malaysian authorities must be pleased: the mysteries remain buried deep in an area no one searched.

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Riddle remains, anger deepens

12:00amEan Higgins

Private experts are unlikely to give up the quest to find missing Flight MH370.

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Six months ago, the man hired to lead the $200 million underwater hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, Paul Kennedy, blurted out he thought maybe he wouldn’t find it, because the Australian bureaucrats who hired him were working on the wrong theory.

When he made the remarks in July, Kennedy, the project director of the Dutch-based Fugro marine survey group, had spent the better part of two years meticulously guiding the search for the Boeing 777 in a band of very deep water in the southern Indian Ocean, often in very rough seas.

The 120,000sq km target zone had been chosen on the basis of complex analysis led by the Australian Transport Safety ­Bureau of satellite tracking data, other calculations and one big assumption.

That assumption was that by the end of the flight, no one was flying the plane, the pilots having become “unresponsive”, perhaps losing consciousness through lack of oxygen due to decompression of the aircraft at high altitude.

The ATSB’s “ghost flight” theory was that the plane had flown on autopilot from, perhaps, its last turn south, then plunged down suddenly in a “death dive” after running out of fuel.

In that unguarded chat in July with the Reuters news agency, Kennedy unwisely said what he really thought: since the aircraft had not been found in the target zone, maybe MH370 captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had hijacked it and flown it to the end, gliding it after fuel exhaustion to take it out of the ATSB’s defined search area.

“If it’s not there, it means it’s somewhere else,” he said. “If it was manned it could glide for a long way. 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.”

On Tuesday, Fugro Equator hauled up its torpedo-like autonomous underwater vehicle — an unmanned miniature submarine with sonar imaging equipment that can zip around on its own — for the last time. And that was the end of the search for MH370.
Kennedy’s words were prophetic: “It’s somewhere else.”

That conclusion comes nearly three years after MH370 disappeared. It deviated on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, flying back over Malaysia to the Andaman Sea and then south, with its radar transponder turned off and no radio communications.

Kennedy might have wondered if the search should instead have looked farther south and west, where commercial airline ­pilots estimate it would be had, as they believe, Zaharie flown the aircraft to the end and taken it farther and possibly off the main track south to thwart its discovery.

Or maybe Kennedy thought the search should be switched to an area farther north that some aerospace engineers, satellite experts and other professionals calling themselves the Independent Group, who analysed the data of their own accord, thought was a promising alternative.

Separately, scientists at the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change in Italy did a drift modelling study matching where debris from MH370 had washed up on the coast of Africa against ocean currents to try to work out where the aircraft came down. Those scientists also found that the area to the north of where Kennedy was searching was a promising place to look.

Just last month, the ATSB held a confab in Canberra bringing together a panel of international experts in data processing, satellite communications, accident investigation, aircraft performance, flight operations, sonar data, acoustic data and oceanography.

They reanalysed the satellite tracking and other data, and also had a new drift modelling study courtesy of the CSIRO. The group came to same conclusion the Independent Group and the Euro-Mediterranean people had reached many months earlier: the next place to look was north, and the experts identified a new 25,000sq km target zone.

But the political will to continue the hunt is gone. “We need to have credible new evidence leading to a specific location before we would be reasonably considering future search efforts,” Transport Minister Darren Chester said on Wednesday, defending the decision by the governments funding the search — Malaysia, China and Australia — to “suspend” it. “MH370 may remain as one of aviation’s greatest mysteries.”

Those in the ATSB leading the search privately told victims’ relatives they are keen to continue the quest. But the Malaysian government, which under international law has prime responsibility for the investigation, is thought to be quite happy to call it quits.
Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said this month, “The aspiration to locate MH370 has not been abandoned.”

But cynics suggest Malaysia would be happy for the mystery of MH370 to not be unravelled, because it would look bad if it turned out a Muslim Malaysian pilot had flown 238 people of various nationalities to their deaths.

This is especially so given one avenue of speculation is that Zaharie might have meant it as a ­political protest against the government’s alleged persecution of opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim, a distant relative of whom Zaharie was a supporter.

Critics of the search remain vocal in their belief the ATSB chose the “ghost flight” and “death dive” scenario over the “rogue pilot to the end” theory to avoid embarrassing Malaysia.

The ATSB insists the decision was based on the best analysis of the information available. No control inputs were detected in the flight route on the long last leg south, and the ATSB claims satellite tracking data shows MH370 was in rapid descent. A study of a flap from the aircraft that washed up determined it was probably in the retracted position, suggesting it was not lowered, as a pilot would do if ditching under power.

Pilots and air crash investigators take issue with each ATSB premise. Commercial airline pilots point out that aircraft are normally flown on autopilot except for takeoff and landing; had Zaharie been alive throughout the flight, he would likely have kept it on autopilot until he took it to the ocean at the end.

Inmarsat, whose satellite track­ed the aircraft, has quietly let it be known the data cannot measure altitude, only relative changes. And former US airline pilot and senior air crash investigator John Cox has told Inquirer: “I do not believe there is sufficient data in the Inmarsat data to draw any conclusion on the rate of descent.”

Another top international air crash investigator, Canadian Larry Vance, remains convinced the pattern of damage on the trailing edge of the flap shows it was deployed in a controlled ditching.

But even if it was retracted, Vance says, that’s where it would be if Zaharie had glided the aircraft after fuel exhaustion, because without the engines running there is not enough hydraulic power to lower the flaps.

He also says had the aircraft come down in a fast dive, the two bigger pieces of debris, the flap and a flaperon, would not have been mostly intact, as they were found, but smashed into pieces.

“They conducted a very professional search, but unfortunately they started with incorrect assumptions,” Vance says of the ATSB approach. “There is solid evidence that the aircraft was intentionally ditched, but they went with a high-speed dive scenario.”

Chester this week said any decision to resume the search would primarily be up to Malaysia. That gives the families of the victims, whose international support and lobby group is called Voice 370, very little hope.

“Malaysia from the very beginning seemed a reluctant, unwilling participant in the search,” says KS Narendran, a Voice 370 spokesman and Chennai-based business consultant whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on MH370.

In a statement following the suspension of the search, Voice 370 made a critical point: if you don’t want to hunt for something unless you know precisely where it is in advance, it means you’re not going to hunt: “Expecting to determine the ‘precise location of the aircraft’ before continuing the search was at best an erroneous expectation and at worst a clever formulation to bury the search.”

Not everyone is sure MH370 will never be found, though.

John Goglia is a legend among air crash investigators. The American started as an aircraft mechanic, was a union delegate in accident investigation teams for more than 20 years, ran his own aircraft service company, and was the first and only licensed aircraft mechanic to be appointed by the US president to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Goglia was one of the key investigators of mysterious crashes of Boeing 737s in the US in the 1990s, where they just fell out of the sky with the rudders stuck all the way to one side, or “hard over”, as it is known.

After two years of experiments and theories, investigators reached a dead end, and the investigation was all but abandoned. But here and there, sometimes informally and in their own time, experts continued to analyse the possibilities, and another two years later an explanation was found, related to a rare combination of low temperature and tiny particles in the rudder hydraulic system. Design changes were made, and the problem fixed.

Like the 737 rudder hard over mystery, work behind the scenes on solving the MH370 puzzle will continue, Goglia says: “The work on the investigation will not stop because the government of Malaysia has given up.

“There are other people who have a vested interest in what happened to that aircraft, the most prominent of which is Boeing.”

Goglia doesn’t think Boeing is going to hire a ship to continue the underwater search, but expects the company’s experts will continue to analyse the available data.

A Boeing spokesman says the company “provides experts who assist on site as well as many more within the company who … are called upon to contribute.”

The fascination, sometimes to the point of addiction, with the MH370 riddle will stay with those directly involved, but also the informal army of professionals. “It’s the human element that brings it all together,” Goglia says.

“Every single one of the investigators around the world … are part of a community. They take it personally when they can’t figure out what happened.”

Also from Newscorp yesterday Marnie O'Neill  revisits the nearly 3yr disconnection between what was the official Malaysian narrative, the Lido Hotel supposed radar screen  depiction, the 2015 Annex 13 JIT 'Interim Factual Report' and the now leaked RMP criminal investigation files.

Marnie via the NZHerald version :

Malaysia, military agencies deliberately withholding radar data that could help find MH370

By Marnie O'Neill
6:01 AM Saturday Jan 21, 2017

The shadow of a Royal New Zealand Air Force P3 Orion is seen on low level cloud while the aircraft searches for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. Photo / AP

Key members of the Independent Group of international aviation and data experts who advised Australian authorities in the hunt for MH370 say crucial data that could help find the plane is being withheld.

The underwater search for the Malaysia Airlines jet officially ended on Tuesday without finding any trace of the Boeing 777 in the designated area - a 120,000sq km section of previously uncharted sea bed in the southern Indian Ocean off Perth known as the "seventh arc".

But if you assumed those tasked with finding this needle in a haystack had been given every piece of information available to solve what is now regarded as the greatest aviation mystery in history, you would be wrong.

News.com.au reports that Malaysia withheld, and continues to withhold, from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and consulting experts, vital radar data containing possible clues to the location of the Boeing 777 - or what is left of it.

It can also be revealed shocking examples of negligence and obfuscation displayed by Malaysian authorities in the hours after the plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Malaysia on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

At least 20 pieces of wreckage, including at least one cabin fragment - confirmed as having come from the plane - have washed up on islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa over the past two years.

One promising piece was found by relatives of MH370 passengers who were so frustrated at the lack of progress that they flew to Madagascar and sifted through the sand banks with their own hands.

However, the black box believed to hold the secrets of MH370's final hours has never been found.

On Wednesday, Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester revealed the paradoxical criteria that needed to be met before the government would consider resuming the underwater search.

"We need to have credible new evidence leading to a specific location before we would be reasonably considering future search efforts," he said.

In other words, the government needs to know exactly where the plane is before it will resume the search for it.

DEFENCE SURVEILLANCE DATA FROM FOUR NATIONS MISSING

HMAS Success scans the southern Indian Ocean. Photo / AP

News.com.au approached MH370 investigators Victor Iannello (US) and Don Thompson (UK), who have been members of the Independent Group since its inception, to ask if they believed they had been denied access to data that could more accurately pinpoint the plane's location.

The answer was yes and plenty of it.

Their shocking revelations about the volume of information withheld by Malaysia and military agencies will have you asking yourself whether the biggest, most expensive search in history was effectively sabotaged.

Thompson told news.com.au his main concern was that crucial radar captured by eight military sites across four nations was never shared.

"My own 'hot button' is that military long-range air defence surveillance data from assets operated at seven, possibly even eight, sites across four nations is absent from the data set available to ATSB," Thompson told news.com.au.

Those satellites, all within range of the flight path MH370 is believed to have taken, are located at Lhokseumawe, Sabang/Pulau We and Sibolga in Indonesia; Car Nicobar and Port Blair in the Indian Andaman Islands; Khok Muang and Phuket in Thailand; and Western Hill, Penang, Malaysia.

Any one of them, or all collectively, could provide the vital clues to the plane's whereabouts.

After forking out about $60 million of an estimated $200 million spent looking for MH370, the Australian public - and certainly relatives of those on board - surely have the right to demand the release of information that could help pinpoint the plane's location and reignite the search.

BIZARRE DISCREPANCIES IN RADAR CAPTURES

Australian Transport Safety Bureau staff examine a piece of aircraft debris at their laboratory. Photo / AP

One of the most troubling inconsistencies is some evidence relating to the flight path - shown to victims' families just two weeks after the plane disappeared - was never made available to official investigators.

On March 21, 2014 - when global concern about the missing plane was at its peak - Malaysian air operations chief Lt Gen Ackbal bin Haji Abdul Samad shared specific radar data relating to the purported flight path with victims' relatives in Beijing, Dr Iannello said.

Relatives were shown radar captures placing MH370 in the Malacca Strait between 2.02am and 2.22am Malaysian local time, according to Dr Iannello.

Yet for whatever reason, these captures were never shared with the ATSB, he said.
In another discrepancy, evidence of radar coverage placing MH370 in the Andaman Sea at 3.12am - which was later acknowledged to be from Singapore radar - was included in the ATSB report released in June 2014.

Yet this vitally important data was omitted from Malaysia's Factual Information report released in March 2015.

TELEPHONE RECORDS AND CAPTAIN'S FLIGHT SIMULATOR DATA

A waiter walks past a mural of flight MH370 in Shah Alam outside Kuala Lumpur. Photo / AP

A full copy of the MH370 data communications log has never been made public. The version released has been heavily edited by authorities.

The existence of telephone records indicating First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid's mobile phone connected to a tower on Penang Island were initially denied by Malaysia.

Authorities later agreed the event had occurred and included details in a secret Royal Malaysia Police (RMP)* report completed in May 2014. Yet this seemingly crucial part of the MH370 timeline was omitted from the Factual Information report released on March 2015.

Details of this midair call have never been made public.

Similarly, WeChat activity detected on Captain Zaharie Shah's mobile phone while MH370 was lined up on the runway just one minute before takeoff, was included without further explanation in the RMP report. There is no mention of it at all in the Factual Information report released a year later.

Another sticking point for Dr Iannello is the confusion over data recovered from Captain Zaharie Shah's home flight simulator.

He said flight paths with points in the Andaman Sea and the Southern Indian Ocean were found on the simulator. Those details, included in the 2014 RMP report, were inexplicably left out of the Factual Information report published a year later.

Dr Iannello said details about how the data was extracted and analysed was never explained by Malaysian authorities.

MALAYSIA'S LACKLUSTRE RESPONSE

A new 25,000sq km area north of the designated search area on the 'seventh arc' has been identified as likely to contain MH370 but will not be explored in the absence of 'credible evidence'. Photo / Supplied

Malaysia's behaviour over the past three years has been questionable, from its response in the immediate aftermath of the plane's disappearance to the way it has dragged its feet over the collection of suspected debris found off Africa.

Aspects of the nation's response that continue to bother investigators include:

• After MH370 fell off the radar, Malaysia made only two attempts to reach it using SATCOM Voice - a form of long-range communication used by air traffic controllers. These were logged at 2.40am and 7.14am Malaysian local time.
• MH370 was detected by military radar in real time as it turned back and flew across the Malaysian peninsula, yet there was no reported military intercept.
• Malaysian authorities waited four hours after MH370 vanished from radar before initiating search and rescue efforts.

*A secret Royal Malaysia Police (RMP) report related to the investigation of the disappearance of MH370 was completed May 2014. Various French media obtained the complete report in 2016, and major portions of the report are now publicly available.
- news.com.au

{P2 comment - I may just be an ignorant knuckle-dragger but it always troubled me that the 'powers to be' would embark on such an expensive search & recovery mission based on such a dodgy/assumed FMT into the SIO - i.e. how is it possible to find the final "X" marks the spot if you don't actually know, with any reasonable accuracy, where the beginning is?}
MTF...P2