[Peetwo]

MH370 & the D-Day - Desperate, disparate, diverging times indeed?? 

Don't believe in coincidences Left field - one day we get the Chinese pitching in with a $20 million dollar shout - Li announces funds for MH370 search, urges implementation of China-Australia FTA.  


The next day we get Malcolm in the middle talking up MH370 search with Najib..

MITM/NAJIB JS "..We discussed in the course of our meeting the tragic loss of MH370 and of course followed by the shocking shooting down of MH17. And we are working together to find out, find the location of MH370. Both Malaysia and Australia are cooperating in that endeavour. It’s a very large ocean of course and the search is taking time and we were both very pleased to see a contribution of a ship plus $20 million from the Chinese government yesterday – Premier Li Keqiang made that commitment. That was very helpful.."

And now today from (err... ) 'that man again'?? - courtesy the Oz:

Pilot says new tack in search will find MH370 ‘within weeks’  

• by: EAN HIGGINS, JAMES GILLESPIE
  
• From: The Australian
  
• November 23, 2015 12:00AM
  

New suspected location. Source: TheAustralian

After 20 months of fruitless search, the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has switched to an area identified by a British pilot who developed a different theory about what happened to the doomed passenger jet.  

Simon Hardy, who has made the prediction based on the ­assumption that the Malaysian jet’s captain made a controlled ditch into the sea, said he ­expected MH370 would be found within the several weeks allocated for the search of the area.

The revelation came as Chin­ese media reports said that, at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur with Malcolm Turnbull at the weekend, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang had offered to commit $20 million to continue the search for the Boeing 777 that vanished in March last year with 239 passengers and crew.

However, a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, whose portfolio covers the search effort for MH370, said “details of the funding contrib­ution have yet to be settled”.

When Captain Hardy, a senior Boeing 777 captain with a commercial airline, revealed his analysis in The Sunday Times in March, the Australian search operat­ion was more than 100 nautical miles from the crash point he identified.

Since producing that analysis, based on his knowledge of the aircraft and a mathematical technique to calculate the plane’s route, Captain Hardy has recreated the final moments of the flight on a simulator.

“I am fairly confident that wreckage will be found within the next four to eight weeks,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, Annette Clark, confirmed that two vessels — Discovery and Equator — had arrived in the area of Captain Hardy’s proposed ­location last week.

“The vessels will be searching in the area of Captain Hardy’s prediction during the November-December period,” Ms Clark said.

The new location was within the overall greater search area, which “takes into account all the credible theories and analyses, ­including the work of Captain Hardy. He has talked with the team … we are now reaching the area he has nominated”, Ms Clark told The Australian yesterday.

The Boeing 777 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing in the early hours of March 8 last year. The last voice heard from the plane was that of the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, not long into the flight, although earlier commun­i­c­ations had been handled by the first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid.

The transponder was turned off and the aircraft turned and flew back along the border between Malaysia and Thailand before ­executing a fly-past of Penang ­Island, the pilot’s home town.

Captain Hardy believes the plane came down in a controlled landing on water, which means the fuselage remained intact and could have drifted some way from the ditching point.

“But there will be some wreckage at that point,” said Captain Hardy.

“There are many movable aerodynamic surfaces on the Boeing 777, some of which will be torn from the aircraft during ditching, in a similar fashion to the flaperon, a wing control surface found at Reunion Island (in the Indian Ocean).”

Additional reporting: The Sunday Times

MH370 search looking in the ‘right place at last’ say Boeing 777 pilots

THE search for MH370 is finally looking in the right place, according to two experienced Boeing 777 pilots.


The deep ocean search co-ordinated by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has moved to an area 100 nautical miles west of the seventh arc, identified by a British commercial airline captain as the most likely final resting place of MH370.
Simon Hardy reached his conclusion based on mathematical calculations and his knowledge of Boeing 777s.


Pinpointed ... MH370’s final resting place according to Captain Simon Hardy. Picture: SuppliedSource:Supplied

His theory that the Malaysia Airlines’ pilot made a deliberate, controlled ditching in the southern Indian Ocean after flying for seven hours, is shared by former Emirates’ pilot Byron Bailey.

Mr Bailey said Capt Hardy’s explanation was the only logical conclusion for the aircraft’s disappearance on March 8, 2014.

“Otherwise the aircraft would have flown itself to destination Beijing,” said Mr Bailey.
“(The pilot) reprogrammed the Flight Management System computers after getting the co-pilot to leave the flight deck and locking the door, which is easy enough to do.”

The ATSB confirmed search vessels would be searching in the area of Captain Hardy's prediction during the November/December period.


Tough job ... The weather has not been kind to the MH370 search vessels. Picture: ATSBSource:Supplied

But a spokesman said they were not there because of him.

“The priority search area was determined on the basis of the work of the search strategy working group co-ordinated by the ATSB,” said the spokesman.

“Part of this search area coincides with the area suggested by Captain Hardy.”
He said all “credible theories and analyses including the world of Captain Hardy” were considered by the search strategy working group.

“Captain Hardy has visited the ATSB facilities in Canberra to discuss his work with the MH370 team,” the spokesman said.

“We remain cautiously optimistic (MH370 will be found in this area).”

The area had not been searched before, largely due to poor conditions, the spokesman said.

“Improving weather conditions in the southern portion of the search area means we can now direct our attention to that area.”


Still missing ... A Malaysia Airlines aircraft, similar to the missing MH370. Picture: Getty Images/Greg WoodSource:Getty Images

US-based historian and statistician Mike Chillit who has followed the search very closely since the start, said it appeared to him the ATSB was “humouring Hardy” because they were out of ideas.

“I can’t see any harm in checking the area where Hardy wants them to look,” said Mr Chillit.

“It will slow things down a bit but may give everyone a sense of peace that at least they looked.”

He said he did not subscribe to the theory MH370’s disappearance was the pilot’s doing.

“It is a horrible disservice to his family and everyone else. That kind of speculation has no place in responsible investigations without much more compelling evidence,” Mr Chillit said.

Only one vessel is currently in the search area after Fugro Discovery was forced to head back to Fremantle on Saturday when a crew member experienced severe pain.
It is the second time this month the ship has been forced to return to shore for medical reasons.

 There was also the following from Ben Sandilands (Planetalking), with a far more pragmatic report on the latest MH370 SIO events :

Two, maybe three things may now help MH370 search

Ben Sandilands | Nov 23, 2015 7:20AM


The typical sea state of the South Indian Ocean in the search area

There are a number of reasons to think the search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 may be taking a turn for the better.

The JACC or Joint Agency Coordination Centre has confirmation that the sea bed search is now in the area predicted for the point of impact, if not controlled ditching, by a British pilot Captain Simon Hardy almost a year ago.

China has also agreed, at last, to put a reported $20 million and an extra ship into the search, after it seems watching askance at the Malaysia directed Australia performed effort, which until now has been jointly funded by Kuala Lumpur and Canberra.

And it seems highly likely, but not yet confirmed, that better sonar scanning equipment will soon be deployed to look more closely at suspicious objects seen but not resolved in close detail by current equipment on the ocean floor.

The report of China agreeing to become materially involved came out of the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur. More detail, and perhaps a degree of urgency, would be welcome.

If Captain Hardy is correct, and he has certainly been methodical, logical and persuasive except when it came to getting through to the searchers, then the heavy sunk wreckage of the missing Boeing 777-200ER and the flight recorders and the remains and telephone and tablet chips belong to the 239 people on board flight MH370 should be located before Christmas.

MH370 was operating the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on 8 March 2014 when it vanished as a transponder identified flight on air traffic control screen while over the Gulf of Thailand.

Success isn’t a certainty. The wreckage may have come to rest just outside the area calculated by Captain Hardy, or the assumptions he has made might in one or more critical elements, be wrong.

There could be a big ‘gotcha’ factor in this perplexing disappearance, something not known to the searchers, that might change the big picture. However nothing seems likely to change the broad satellite signal analysis that says MH370 flew for seven hours 39 minutes (or so) after takeoff, and was only heard by a communications satellite parked over the west Indian Ocean which at the time of the flight’s impact, had to be around 44 degrees elevation above its horizon.

MTF...P2