[Peetwo]

Ocean Infinity gets KL green light -

From 'that man', via the Oz:

MH370 hunt on table for early 2018


Transport Minister Darren Chester.

Ean Higgins
The Australian
12:01AM October 27, 2017
@EanHiggins

The US underwater survey company given the green light to renew the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 could start scouring the seabed early next year, using advanced technology to cover a much reduced target area in a fraction of the time spent by the unsuccessful Australian-led teams.

But a leading international air crash investigator has warned that a new effort could be undermined if it relies on the same assumptions the Australian Transport Safety Bureau used in its $200 million failed search.

MH370 disappeared on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. After some days in which the Malaysian government played down reports it was about to announce a “no find, no fee” agreement with Houston-based marine survey group Ocean Infinity, Transport Minister Darren Chester issued a statement last week declaring a done deal, and Australia would provide technical assistance.

Canadian Larry Vance, who has worked on some of the biggest airliner accidents around the world over the past three decades, told The Australian the US searchers should abandon the ATSB’s theory that the pilots were dead in the latter part of the flight, and that the Boeing 777 crashed down rapidly after it ran out of fuel.

“To establish their previous search areas, they used the incorrect assumption of a ‘ghost aeroplane’, and a high-speed dive into the ocean,” Mr Vance said. “Anyone conducting a search should be aware of the actual scenario, which is a controlled ditching.”

Mr Vance and many other air crash investigators and senior international airline pilots believe the known facts — particularly a control surface section of MH370’s wing area found washed up mostly intact — indicates Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked the aircraft and flew it to the end. Such a scenario would dictate a different search area from that employed by the ATSB.

“I am in the final stages of writing a book about this, and it will provide solid evidence of a controlled ditching,” Mr Vance said.

Ocean Infinity had put a proposal to the Malaysian government some months ago, in which it would take all the financial risk of restarting the search and only charge an agreed fee if it found the plane. Sources said that if a contract were signed soon, Ocean Infinity could get a vessel searching the southern Indian Ocean within a few months, but rather than using one sonar imaging device, it would use several advanced ones.

When its two-year survey of 120,000sq km ended in January, the ATSB said it had identified a new search area just to the north of that already scoured, which had a high probability of being where MH370 came down. Mr Chester said the renewed search by Ocean Infinity would focus on the new target area identified by the ATSB, which is 25,000sq km.

The ships involved in the last search each deployed a single sonar scanning “tow fish”, or alternatively an untethered torpedo-like autonomous underwater vehicle which can be programmed to roam around on its own.

A recent press release from Ocean Infinity said the company had purchased two new AUVs, raising its total to eight.

“The fleet of AUV’s will be operated simultaneously, each AUV programmed with an independent mission plan,” the statement says. “Independence allows the systems to cover huge swaths of seabed quickly and accurately.”

MTF...P2