[Peetwo]

MH370 final report wash-up - Part III

Via Business Insider:

---

The new MH370 report quashed a wild theory that the plane's cargo of fruit and batteries turned it into a giant, flying bomb

SINÉAD BAKER
AUG 2, 2018, 6:15 AM

• FACEBOOKTWITTERREDDITLINKEDINEMAIL

AP; iStock; Skye Gould/Business Insider

• Flight MH370 disappeared four years ago with 239 people on board.
  
• A new report on Monday was meant to be the final word, but essentially admitted that nobody knows what really happened.
  
• It did dismiss some of the more outlandish theories, however.
  
• One had seen people fixate on the plane’s cargo – a shipment of batteries and mangosteen fruit which some believed could have mixed and combusted.
  
• Malaysian government investigators dismissed this as “highly improbable” – not least because the products were wrapped and stored apart from each other.
  

---

A new report on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went out of its way to dismiss a wild theory that a combustible cocktail of lithium ion batteries and several tons of fruit could have brought down the plane.

MH370 had in its cargo hold 5 tons of mangosteens – a sweet tropical fruit about as big as a tangerine – along with 221kg of lithium-ion batteries.

The items were being carried from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, another source of revenue for the flight along with the 239 people it was carrying.

Some experts believed these two items could have mixed together during flight and caught fire, eventually leading to the plane crashing into the sea.

Aviation expert Clive Irving theorised to The Daily Beast in 2015 that batteries on board could have caused a fire in the hold that overwhelmed the plane’s fire suppression system.

US pilot and aviation engineer Bruce Robertson outlined a similar theory to Australian news website News.com.au, suggesting that such a fire would send deadly carbon monoxide into the cabin.

Another theory was that the batteries and mangosteen fruits could have mixed on the flight, creating a reaction that could cause an explosion or fire in the plane, causing it to lose oxygen or crash.

The new report notes: “There were concerns that the mangosteen extracts could have got into contact with the batteries and produced hazardous fumes or in a worst-case scenario caused a short circuit and/or fire.”

The report said that the notion that the two products got into contact is “highly improbable.” The report said the items were in a hold compartment together, but said both the batteries and fruit were wrapped up and in separate containers.

After carrying out tests, Malaysia’s Science & Technology Research Institute for Defence was “convinced that the two items tested could not be the cause in the disappearance of MH370,” the report claims.

The batteries were not registered as dangerous goods as their packaging adhered to guidelines. They went through customs inspection and clearance before the truck was sealed and left the factory, but were not given any additional security screening before loaded onto the plane.

Samantha Lee/Business Insider

The report said that this kind of cargo is realtively ordinary. Between January 2014 and May 2014, it said, there were 99 shipments of lithium-ion batteries on Malaysia Airlines flights to Beijing.

The report also disputed speculation that the mangosteen fruits were out of season during the shipment, which led some to suggest their inclusion in the cargo was suspicious. The report states that they were in season in neighbouring countries, where they were harvested.

The fruit was inspected by the Federal Agriculture Marketing Authority of Malaysia before it was loaded onto the aircraft.

Between January and May 2014 there were 85 shipments of mangosteens to Beijing. The two were carried together on 26 of these flights. At the time of writing, the same company is still exporting the fruits to China, according to the report.

Everyone who handled the cargo was interviewed by the police, as were the suppliers of the fruit and the battery creators.

Monday’s report is the culmination of a search led by the Malaysian government, which covered 112,000 square kilometers (43,243 square miles) in the southern Indian Ocean since January.

This was the second large-scale search for the plane, and followed an earlier, 2-1/2-year search by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The report found little new evidence as to what might have happened to the plane, but it did reject the pervasive theory that also rejected the theory thata suicidal pilot may have crashed the jet on purpose.

The one new and significant piece of information in the report was that the turn made by MH370, which saw it deviate from its route, was made manually.

---

Next from the West Oz 2 days ago:

MH370: Grieving mother says passengers were victims of ‘biggest cover up in aviation history’
Shannon HamptonThe West Australian

Tuesday, 31 July 2018 12:54PM

The mother of Perth man Paul Weeks believes her son was a victim of the “biggest cover up in aviation history”.

Prue Tomblin — whose son was among the 239 people aboard the Boeing 777 when it vanished between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in 2014 — yesterday said she was not surprised a final investigation report failed to explain the disappearance.

Ms Tomblin, who lives in Mount Pleasant, said Malaysian authorities were simply “saying what they need to say”.

“I think they do know (what happened) and all the counties involved do know,” she said

“When you think you can track a balloon on radar, we can certainly track a 777.

“Malaysia is just playing very cautious. “It’s the biggest cover up in aviation history, for what ever reason I don’t know, but I suspect it is something pretty big.”

Ms Tomblin said she agreed that only the discovery of the plane would lead to the truth but said “we are not going to find the plane because they are not wanting to find the plane”.

“That plane is not where they say it is and they are not going to tell us where it is,” she said.

Ms Tomblin said her life was ruined the day her son vanished. She said she will never give up hope that he will be found.

“I have never got over it and I never will either,” she said.

“I am just waiting for him to be found or for him to come home — it has to happen one day or another.

Prue Tomblin’s son Paul Weeks was lost on MH370.Picture:Sharon Smith

Mr Weeks’ wife Danica said she felt “deflated” by the failure of the report to reveal anything new.

“Where does that leave us? We are in the wheel again going around and around. It just keeps on going and it just sucks. You have all these hopes that one day someone is going to tell you where your husband is, but it doesn’t happen,” Ms Weeks said.

A last-minute offer to fly foreign families to Malaysia was slammed by families, including Ms Weeks, who now lives in Queensland.

Ms Weeks was offered a free trip to Malaysia on Friday, far too late for her to make arrangements for her two young sons, now aged five and seven.

“I am infuriated. I would have liked to go,” Ms Weeks said. “I would have liked to have a one-on-one conversation with the investigators and find out what they have been doing for the last four and a half years.”

And from the Oz Larry Vance is at it again - 

‘Fresh eyes needed’ on MH370
EAN HIGGINS
One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for an independent investigation into the loss of MH370.

---

One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for the international aviation watchdog to commission a fresh and independent investi­gation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying the Malaysian government’s inquiry failed to properly assess the evidence.

Canadian Larry Vance, who led some of the biggest inter­national air accident investi­gations over three decades, also said a “comprehensive criminal investigation” was required into the loss of the aircraft, in which 239 people perished in an event a Malaysian government report this week acknowledged involved human intervention.

“An organisation such as the International Civil Aviation ­Organisation should do a thorough inquiry into the circumstances of this occurrence and the investigation that followed,” Mr Vance told The Australian.

“If there is no such inquiry, then aviation safety has taken a step backwards.”

The Malaysian investigation found the aircraft, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was ­deliberately flown off course just as it disappeared from secondary radar with its transponder turned off on March 8, 2014.

Primary radar and automatic satellite “handshakes” determined it flew back over the Thai-Malaysian border and up the Strait of Malacca, before another turn on a long track south to end in the southern Indian Ocean.

The Malaysian report said investigators could not conclude why the aircraft disappeared, but effectively excluded mechanical failure and accidents such as suggestions a cargo of tropical fruit and lithium batteries combined to cause a fire. Mr Vance described these ­aspects as “positive”, saying the report “helps put to rest many of the speculative and far-out-there theories that have circulated about what might have happened”.

“The report also makes it clear that this was the result of human intervention, and not some sort of mechanical event or an intervention from outside the aeroplane.”

Mr Vance disagreed with the statement of chief Malaysian investigator Kok Soo Chon when he in effect excluded the two ­pilots, particularly the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, from the widely held suspicion that one of them hijacked the plane.

Instead, Mr Kok said, it was possible an unknown “third party” had intervened.

Mr Vance and other aviation experts have rejected the “third party” possibility as fanciful, and claim Mr Kok emphasised it to cast doubt on the dominant view that a pilot from the Malaysian government-owned airline had taken 238 other people to their deaths.

Mr Vance said the Malaysian report failed to properly assess the implications of parts of the aircraft found washed up and recovered on the other side of the Indian Ocean, which he said conclusively proved a pilot flew MH370 to the end and ditched it.

Finally from the NYT...

---

No Plane. No Remains. And Now, No Real Answers on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.


Kok Soo Chon, second from right, described a panel’s findings on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 during a news conference on Monday in Putrajaya, Malaysia.CreditFazry Ismail/EPA, via Shutterstock
By Austin Ramzy

• July 30, 2018
  

HONG KONG — One of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time deepened on Monday when the official government inquiry into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 released a 495-page report that gave no definitive answers as to the fate of the airliner.

The plane was heading north from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, when it deviated from its scheduled path, turning west across the Malay Peninsula. It is believed to have turned south after radar contact was lost and crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean after running out of fuel.

No significant pieces of the wreckage of the jetliner, a Boeing 777, have ever been found. Nor have any remains of the 239 people on board.

The absence of definitive answers in the report, which was released at a news conference, devastated families of the victims, who have waited more than four years for the searches and investigations to be concluded.

Intan Maizura Othaman, whose husband, Mohd Hazrin Mohamed Hasnan, was a steward on the flight, told reporters after a briefing for family members that she was angered by the absence of answers.

“It is so frustrating, as nobody during the briefing can answer our questions,” Bernama, the Malaysian state news agency, quoted her as saying.

The long-awaited report offered no conclusion on what caused the plane with 239 people aboard to veer off course, cease radio communications and vanish.

The head of the safety investigation team, Kok Soo Chon, said the available evidence — including the plane’s deviation from its flight course, which tests showed was done manually rather than by autopilot, and the switching off of a transponder — “irresistibly point” to “unlawful interference,” which could mean that the plane was hijacked.

But he added that the panel found no indication of who might have interfered or why, and that any criminal inquiry would be the responsibility of law enforcement authorities, not safety investigators.

While Mr. Kok did not directly address theories that the disappearance was the result of pilot suicide, he said investigators were “not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”

Background checks on the passengers by local law enforcement agencies also revealed “a clean bill of health for everybody,” he added.

The disappearance of Flight 370 led to numerous conspiracy theories. And the report, by offering no final conclusion, will do little to settle the matter.

But the investigators did dampen some of the most provocative theories. The possibility that a member of the flight crew intentionally downed the plane, as with Germanwings Flight 9525, which investigators say the co-pilot intentionally crashed in 2015, has been pushed by some experts.

The report detailed an extensive examination of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid, including their financial status, health, tone of voice on radio communications and even their gait as they walked to work on the day the plane disappeared. The investigators “could not detect any abnormality,” Mr. Kok said.

Investigators also considered data saved on a flight simulator at Mr. Zaharie’s home, which showed seven coordinates that would create a flight path from Kuala Lumpur to the southern Indian Ocean. The manner in which those points were saved made it impossible to draw any conclusions, Mr. Kok said.

A police investigation “concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations,” the report said.

While Mr. Kok suggested the possibility of “unlawful interference by a third party,” investigators could not establish that anyone except the pilot had flown the plane.

Mr. Kok said there had been no threats or credible claims of responsibility for the plane’s disappearance, which might have been expected as part of a plan to take it down intentionally.

Technology that would allow someone to pilot the aircraft remotely had not been installed on this plane, the report said. No mechanical issues that would affect the plane’s airworthiness were identified either.

“The aircraft was well-maintained,” Mr. Kok said.

Other possible factors — like lithium-ion batteries that could have caught fire and the presence of mangosteen fruit in the plane’s cargo, which was considered unusual — were considered. But such materials had been carried dozens of times before on the same route without incident, the report said.

The panel said it would disband, but declined to call the report final.

“It is too presumptuous of us to say this is the final report,” said Mr. Kok, a former director general of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Department. “No wreckage has been found. The victims have not been found. How could this be final?”

Families of the 239 people who disappeared with the plane had expected clearer answers in the report, and were left disappointed.

“1,605 days of roller coaster, families still have no closure with the release of the latest 495 pages safety investigation report,” Voice370, a group of family members, said on its Facebook page. “The team concluded that they were unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of #mh370. Simply unacceptable as a ‘final’ report. How can we prevent another MH370 incident in future?”

Most of the passengers were from China, followed by Malaysian citizens.

After the aircraft disappeared, an air search of nearly two months was carried out, followed by an underwater search, primarily by private contractors.

Investigators tried to determine where the plane went down by overlapping its fuel estimates with a 400-mile arc along which its final satellite communication was made. Ships scoured a zone of more than 46,000 square miles before calling off an official search last year that cost a total of $150 million.

Another search carried out by an American company with support from the Malaysian government ended in May after covering an additional 43,000 square miles, also without finding the plane.

The Malaysian safety investigators said on Monday that they had waited to release their report until after the search was concluded.

A small amount of debris from the plane has been found, including what was thought to be a part of its wing, discovered on the French island of Réunion, east of Madagascar, in 2015. An American lawyer found another piece, a gray triangle of fiberglass composite and aluminum with the words “No Step” stenciled on one side, in Mozambique in February 2016.

The discovery of those objects supports the theory that the plane broke apart upon entering the southern Indian Ocean, and that pieces that stayed afloat then traveled west on currents that run from Australia to Africa.

The investigators said on Monday that they had found several shortcomings in procedure among various bodies responsible for the flight’s safety.

The handover of responsibility for the flight from air traffic control in Malaysia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was premature by three minutes, and the Vietnamese authorities were late in recognizing that the plane had vanished, the report said.

But Mr. Kok said none of these factors were responsible for the plane’s disappearance.

---

MTF...P2