MH-370

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MH-370 – Another Conspiracy Theory?

Posted by George Brown on 08/03/2015
Posted in: Aviation, Crime, Media, News, Opinion, Technology, Transportation, Travel, Views. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

ONE year on from the disappearance Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the world is still no closer to knowing for sure what happened to the ill-fated plane.

Despite the Australian Government committing $89.9 million to the search, a mission to scour the ocean floor west of Perth has failed to uncover any evidence pointing to the location of the passenger jet.

Now, a far-out theory from one of CNN’s chief commentators on the aviation disaster, science journalist Jeff Wise, has been circulated worldwide — and has more credibility than you might think, – or does it?

Wise’s theory is that the Russian government (indirectly) or FSB ordered the hijacking of the Boeing 777 and landed it in Kazakhstan.

Electronic signals or “pings” led investigators to believe that the plane flew south and crashed into the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.  But Wise suggests that the pings detected off the coast of Australia had in fact been tampered with and that the plane instead flew north.  He believes hijackers could have accessed the plane’s electronics and equipment bay (E/E bay) in the first-class cabin and messed with the burst frequency offset (BFO) data to throw investigators off the trail.  “That would require an almost inconceivably sophisticated hijack operation, one so complicated and technically demanding that it would almost certainly require state-level backing,” Wise wrote in a New York magazine piece last week that has been circulated widely online.

Wise explained that a curious part of the plane’s footprint was that its satellite communications system disconnected and then came back online three minutes later, which he suggests was done on purpose by hijackers.  “They turned on the satcom in order to provide a false trail of breadcrumbs leading away from the plane’s true route,” he wrote.

Wise believes the plane ended up in an airstrip in Kazakhstan, which Russia leased for its space program, but he offers no explanation about what happened to the plane after it landed.

He said that Russia had the satellite and aviation technology capabilities to pull off such a feat.

One reason Putin may have wanted to steal the plane would be to hurt the West and its allies, Wise wrote, particularly because the US had imposed punitive sanctions on Russia the day before MH370 disappeared.

“Maybe what he was really after were the secrets of one of the plane’s passengers. Maybe there was something strategically crucial in the hold. Or maybe he wanted the plane to show up unexpectedly somewhere some day, packed with explosives. There’s no way to know,” Wise wrote.

Sound like a crackpot conspiracy theory? Well, even Wise himself admits that he’s an MH370 “obsessive” and that his idea sounds crazy.  He acknowledges in the New York magazine that his idea is “true conspiracy-theory material” and sounds like a “fantasist’s dream”.  “That’s the thing about MH370 theory-making: It’s hard to come up with a plausible motive for an act that has no apparent beneficiaries,” he wrote.  Wise told news.com.au that the positive reaction to his theory had been “mind-boggling”.  “I spent a lot of time researching this topic, boring people to death, there were a lot of rolled eyes but now that the seabed has been searched, it makes sense we would be ready for this,” he said.

“There are two types of theories: The official scenario, which is pretty bare bones and doesn’t tell you why or who did it, and very elaborate conspiracy theories, but they don’t have any data,” Wise told news.com.au.  “I think the appeal of my theory is it has data but it also has that satisfying thing of ‘Here’s who did it, here’s where it went and why’ and all that.

When solving any mystery – if you eliminate the impossible; what ever is left, however implausible, is possible.

While Wise, who is also a pilot, is considered an authority on the disaster, his notions have not necessarily found favour with other experts. He has written two articles on what he proposes could have happened to MH370

Read “The Spoof” here and “What Was Going On at Yubileyniy?” here.

Observations:
After reading these two articles, I believe there are a number of issues with this theory as I see it.  While the circumstances included in the article “The Spoof” may be technically possible, the chance of getting away with it would be slim in the extreme.

However, I consider that there are other physical factors which make this scenario unlikely, and in the main it is around the suggestion that the B777 auto-landed in Yubileyniy Airport Cosmodrome (UAON) north of Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Consider the following if you will:

  • The Boeing B777-200ER has a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of 656,000 lbs./297,550 kg.
  • A B772’s maximum fuel load is 302,974lbs./135,660 kg. For it’s flight to Beijing, a distance of 2,500 miles, the fuel load is likely to be in the vicinity of 124,671 lbs./56,670 kg. with a duration of just over 7 hours.
  • The zero fuel weight (ZFW) of a B772 is 304,500lbs./138,100kg. I will get to why these weights are mentioned here shortly.
  • The flight to Kazakhstan would be just on or near the duration offered by it’s fuel load in Kuala Lumpur.
  • An instrument landing system (ILS) is a ground-based instrument approach system that provides precise lateral and vertical guidance to an aircraft approaching and landing on a runway, using a combination of radio signals and, in many cases, high-intensity lighting arrays to enable a safe landing during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), such as low ceilings or reduced visibility due to fog, rain, or blowing snow.
  • Auto-land may be used for any suitably approved Instrument Landing System (ILS) or Microwave Landing System (MLS) approach, and is sometimes used to maintain currency of the aircraft and crew, as well as for its main purpose of assisting an aircraft landing in low visibility and/or bad weather. Yubileyniy is not so rated.  Auto-land also needs to be supervised by pilots should anything go wrong.
  • Yubileyniy Airport has no ILS facilities, no runway side lighting, no runway centre line lighting and no approach lighting.  The airport has not been used since the demise of the Russian space shuttle program in 1989.
  • Wise postulates that MH370 was hijacked and flown to Kazakhstan and landed at Yubileyniy at night, using the aircraft’s auto-land facility.  Clearly, with no ground based ILS facilities, an ILS approach, and thus auto-land cannot be used.
  • Without runway lighting available, any approach at night is suicidal.  But is that a consideration?
  • A visual approach, if possible, would need to be carried out by qualified pilots.
  • The surface of the runway at UAON is equally dilapidated, rough and uneven and even if a landing had been attempted, the ability to use the runway is questionable.
  • Supposing that the B772 did land, there is one final consideration.  The location were Wise states that bulldozing had been carried out, and the aircraft possibly “hidden”, is 3km from the runway. This area is accessed by narrow roads of dubious quality and road surface, which would appear to be not wide enough or able to support a aircraft weighing in excess of 140,000 kg.
  • Burying a Boeing 777 would be an enormous undertaking and not something that can be done in a couple of days.  Any hole in which to bury the aircraft would need to be 60ft./20m deep to hide the tail – unless it was removed!
  • Surely somebody located or serving at the nearby Gagarin Space Port would have seen something?  How do you keep any number of people quiet? To keep a secret, the less people who know, the better!
  • This leads me to my last observation.  If the aircraft was hijacked and flown to Yubileyniy; how was it auto-landed without ground based ILS equipment, without lighting, on a runway not used for over 25 years.
  • Then, on an area as open and barren as Yubileyniy, where was the aircraft “hidden”?
  • Lastly, who benefitted from this? And why? And what is the point of carrying off an incident like this if you can’t gloat or claim responsibility for it?
  • As I’ve stated before, the simplest causes and explanations are the most likely!

Source: news.com.au

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MH370 – Malaysian PM Speaks Out

Posted by George Brown on 15/05/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Humanity, News, Politics, Safety, Technology, Transportation. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

“The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight on March 8 has been one of the most extraordinary events ever to befall Malaysia – and one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries,” Mr Najib said.

Najik Razak

Najib Razak

Mr Najib said one of the most astonishing things about the tragedy is the revelation that an airliner the size of a Boeing 777 could vanish, almost without trace.

“In an age of smartphones and mobile internet, real-time tracking of commercial airplanes is long overdue,” he said.

Mr Najib, writing in the Wall Street Journal, urged the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which has been meeting in Montreal, to act on a Malaysian recommendation to implement real-time tracking of aircraft.

He said the communication systems on aircraft such as transponders and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting Systems (ACARS) should be changed so they cannot be disabled mid-air.

Mr Najib said the systems on board the missing plane “were deliberately disabled. MH370 went dark.”

He said that policy makers need to reconsider the capabilities of airliners’ black box recording devices.

“At the moment, the location pingers – which are activated if a plane crashes – last for only 30 days. This should be increased to at least 90 days, as the European Union has proposed,” he said.

Mr Najib said it was “wholly inadequate” that today’s black boxes only record the last two hours of cockpit conversations, meaning the important minutes and hours after the plane vanished will not be available.

“Given that a standard iPhone can record 24 hours of audio (Unlikely, Ed,), surely the black box should have sufficient memory to record cockpit conversations for the full duration of any flight,” he said.

Mr Najib also said that airliners’ emergency locator transmitters – which emit a distress signal when the plane is in trouble – could be improved.

“Currently they don’t work very well under water and their mandated battery life is just 24 hours.”

Mr Najib said the aviation industry failed to implement changes after Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 and the changes need to be made to help reassure the travelling public and reduce the chances of such a drawn-out disaster reoccurring.

He said experts have identified that MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean, discounting dozens of other theories and reported sightings.

“Yet, despite the efforts of the world’s brightest minds and best militaries, the search area remains huge,” he said.

“Finding the plane will be neither quick nor easy.”

Mr Najib said without physical evidence or a clear explanation for what happened, people’s attentions turned to the authorities – and Malaysia has borne the brunt of the criticism.

But he said in the passage of time he believes Malaysia will be credited for doing its best under near-impossible circumstances that involved overcoming diplomatic and military sensitivities to bring together 26 countries to conduct one of the world’s largest peacetime operations.

“But we didn’t get everything right. In the first few days after the plane disappeared we were so focused on trying to find the plane we did not prioritize our communications,” he said.  “Also, it took air-traffic controllers four hours to launch the search-and-rescue operation.”

But Mr Najib said the plane vanished at a moment between the air-traffic controls of Malaysia and Vietnam, causing maximum confusion.

“Nevertheless, the response time should and will be investigated,” he said.

Mr Najib said none of this could have altered MH370’s fate.

“Instead of heading to Beijing, the plane made a sharp turn across Peninsula Malaysia, travelled north up the Straits of Malacca, made a U-turn over the coast of Sumatra and ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” he said.

“Little wonder the words commonly used to describe MH370 include ‘bizarre’ and ‘unprecedented’.”

Mr Najib said the lack of definite proof – such as wreckage from the plane – has made the disappearance more difficult to bear for the families of those on board.

“I pledge that Malaysia will keep searching for the plane as long as it takes,” he said.

Source: http://www.smh.com.au

MH370 – Nothing Found in Bay of Bengal

Posted by George Brown on 05/05/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Crime, Media, Opinion, Safety, Technology, Transportation, Views. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

As Malaysia, China and Australia prepare for talks in Canberra on the next phase of the MH370 search the GeoResonance tip off that it may have found it in the Bay of Bengal has lead to nothing.

Then again, this is also true of the much more soundly based Australia led search of likely impact zones in the Indian Ocean around 1600 kms west to north west of Perth.

Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister and Minister of Defence Hishammuddin Hussein, who will be at the Canberra talks which officially begin tomorrow, has tweeted that vessels from the Bangladeshi Navy have found nothing.

It needs to be said at the outset that the GeoResonance press campaign, which also promoted its capabilities to find missing sunken H-bombs in unquestioning media outlets, raised some interesting implications.

One would be that the Inmarsat satellite traces of the Malaysia Airlines 777, which vanished from normal ATC radars on 8 March, with 239 people on board, were variously fictitious or hopelessly misinterpreted, since they showed that MH370 was airborne for seven hours 38 minutes and eventually flew south into the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

To have come down where GeoResonance claimed to have found mineral traces that might have come from MH370, it either crashed much sooner than that interval, or circled around for hours in what is a fairly busy area for air traffic.

Which in turn might have meant that the unique identifiers for each engine which were transmitting standby signals from the jet to the Inmarsat satellite parked over the east Indian Ocean, in case data from them was to be sent to the maker Rolls-Royce, all had to be faked, or spoofed, or whatever.

Source: http://www.crikey.com

MH370 – Malaysian PM to Release Report

Posted by George Brown on 02/05/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Media, News, Safety. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Facing anger from families of Flight 370 passengers, Malaysia’s Prime Minister said Thursday his government will release its preliminary report on the plane’s disappearance.

Najik Razak

Najib Razak

In a TV exclusive, Najib Razak told CNN the report will be available to the public next week.

“I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report,” Najib said. Later in the interview with CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest, he gave a more definitive statement, saying the report will be released next week.

He also asked an internal investigation team to look into what other information may be released publicly next week, his office said.  In the CNN interview, Najib discussed why he is not yet officially declaring the flight — and the 239 people on board — lost.

The report has already been sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the U.N. body for global aviation, but not made available to the public.

The ICAO told CNN about a safety recommendation in the report: Malaysia said the aviation world needs to look at real-time tracking of commercial aircraft. It’s the same recommendation that was made after the Air France Flight 447 disaster in 2009.

The Prime Minister’s comments didn’t convince Sarah Bajc, whose partner, Philip Wood, was a passenger on the plane. She accused Najib of “political manoeuvring,” shirking responsibility and deflecting blame in his interview with CNN.

“I spent most of the morning with my jaw basically scraping the floor,” Bajc told CNN’s “AC360.” “I’m just so astounded by this new shift that the Prime Minister is taking. … He’s reading from a script sheet that some qualified, professional PR person has put together for him.”

Malaysian authorities need to do a better job of communicating with the families and answering their questions during briefings, she said, rather than treating passengers’ loved ones “as if we are the enemy, as opposed to an interested party in helping to solve this mystery.”

“Actions speak louder than words,” she said. “The briefings are a joke. … The patience level of the families group is just gone.”

Malaysia has insisted it has nothing to hide and is working to find answers.

A committee representing some of the Chinese families have posted 26 questions on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

Families plan to demand answers from Boeing

The missing flight is a Boeing 777.

While pushing Malaysian authorities for answers, “we’re also extending our reach now,” Bajc said. Some of the questions the families have, including technical questions, “we will be bringing directly to Boeing. Boeing has a shareholders meeting next week. And if we’re not getting information directly from Malaysia Airlines and from the Malaysian government, we might as well try to go directly to the source.

“Boeing is a publicly traded company in the United States, and that puts them in a position of a little bit more fiduciary responsibility,” she said.

Asked for a response, Boeing sent CNN a written statement: “Our thoughts and deepest sympathies continue to be with the families and loved ones of those aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Boeing continues to serve as a technical adviser to the U.S. National Transportation (Safety) Board, and in that role we have been an active and engaged party to the investigation.”

Ongoing search

As an underwater drone keeps going up and back down, so do hopes that evidence of the plane may be found.

A metal object that washed ashore in Western Australia and sparked the curiosity of investigators Wednesday turned out to be unrelated.

And while the Bluefin-21 plunged into the Indian Ocean for its 13th mission Friday, no one was certain the drone would find anything new.

The underwater probe has already scanned 95% of the designated search area, with no significant results.

Friday marks day 49 of the search for the plane, which disappeared on March 8 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing.

What’s next?

Malaysian and Australian authorities are mapping out a long-term strategy for the search, which could go on for months or years.

An expanded search area might include the last 370 miles (595 kilometers) of the plane’s flight path, ocean search specialist Rob McCallum said.

“If the idea is to go more strategic and investigate the entire aircraft flight path, maybe 15 miles or so either side, then you need a more strategic tool, and something like a deep-towed sonar that can provide a very large range indeed — at the expense of resolution.”

The use of a deep-towed submersible device called the Orion is overdue, said Geoffrey Thomas, managing director of AirlineRatings.com.

“That should be brought in as quickly as possible, again, from the United States.”

He said it may be time to go back and revisit the calculations of where the plane may be, although officials have already been doing that.

“This is not an exact science,” Thomas said. “We have to understand that.”

Why so private?

Malaysia has not been known as a model of transparency. The same political party has ruled the country for the past 50 years, and the media is not completely free.

For its part, the Malaysian Cabinet has agreed to have an international team investigate the disappearance of Flight 370, the country’s acting transportation minister said.

Hishammuddin Hussein said the names of the members will be announced next week. He also said the team will not be looking into the criminal aspects of the investigation, which remain under the Royal Malaysian Police.

“The main purpose is to evaluate and determine the cause of the accident,” Hishammuddin said.

Source: http://www.cnn.com

MH370 – Found in the Bay of Bengal?

Posted by George Brown on 29/04/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Media, News, Safety, Views. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

GeoResonance says its own research has identified several elements consistent with material from a plane – and they weren’t there before the disappearance.

A graphic from GeoResonance shows images depicting underwater "anomalies" suggesting deposits of various metals in the approximate formation of a passenger airliner on the floor of the Bay of Bengal

A marine exploration company based in Australia claims it may have located the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 – 3,000 miles away from where authorities have been looking.

The aircraft, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.41am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later, while over the South China Sea. It was due to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the plane and analysis by the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluded that Flight MH370’s last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia – an outcome later backed by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

However, According to Australian news Channel 7 News,  the Adelaide-based company GeoResonance says its own private research has identified elements on the ocean floor in the Bay of Bengal consistent with material from a plane.

GeoResonance’s search covered 2million sq km of the possible crash zone, using images obtained from satellites and aircraft.

Scientists focused their efforts north of MH370’s last known location, using more than 20 technologies to analyse the data including a nuclear reactor.

According to company spokesperson David Pope, “The technology that we use was originally designed to find nuclear warheads, submarines. Our team in the Ukraine decided we should try and help.”

GeoResonance experts compared their findings with images taken on March 5, three days before MH370 was reported missing – and they did not find what they had detected at that spot.

“The wreckage wasn’t there prior to the disappearance of MH370.

“We’re not trying to say that it definitely is MH370 – however, it is a lead we feel should be followed up,” said Pope.

See follow-up story here.

Another spokesman, Pavel Kursa, added that several elements found in commercial airliners was detected at the Bay of Bengal spot.

“We identified chemical elements and materials that make up a Boeing 777 … these are aluminium, titanium, copper, steel alloys and other materials.”

Six weeks have now passed since the plane disappeared and extensive searches in the Indian Ocean have failed to locate any wreckage.

Earlier today, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted the chance of finding debris on the surface was ‘slim to none’.

He said efforts will not focus on the ocean floor, but GeoResonance believes authorities have been looking in the wrong place.

It started its own search for the missing aircraft on March 10 and staff said they could not believe what they found in the Bay of Bengal.

“Our team was very excited when we found what we believe to be the wreckage of a commercial airliner,” Mr Pope said.

An initial report was sent to authorities while the aircraft’s black box still had two weeks of battery power.

The full report was delivered on April 15.

Source: http://www.7yahoo.com

 

MH370 – Debris found, What does this Explain?

Posted by George Brown on 28/03/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Emergency Services, Media, News, Opinion, Safety, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

In my previous post I postulated what the discovery of debris in the Ocean meant for MH370. I stated that cause was likely be a catastrophic hull depressursation or on-board fire disabling electronic systems, passengers and crew; or was it deliberate intervention from the pilot(s) or passenger(s). I have always leant toward to the castastrophic systems failure as the most likely cause of the disappearance of MH370. While media outlets have been suggesting improbable and unlikey events, the simple explanations (from pilots) are always the most likely.

9M-MRO

9M-MRO – the B777-200 aircraft involved in the crash

Aviation experts now say that if the 122 objects detected by satellite do turn out to be part of the jet that disappeared 13 days ago, then the most likely cause of a crash would have been a catastrophic malfunction.

Commercial pilot Robert Mark, editor of Aviation International News Safety magazine, said that because the plane deviated off-course in a straight line that it’s most likely passengers on the plane were rendered unconscious by a depressurised cabin and then ran out of oxygen.

Mr Mark said: “What I think is interesting is that if you look at where the plane was last seen on radar and where the debris has been found, it is almost a straight line”.

“I would say it means that once the aircraft turned, it didn’t change course. A mechanical fault or emergency seems more plausible to me.”

Experts say that because the flight path would have taken the plane south, a hi-jacking was extremely unlikely.

Mr Mark stated that it was possible for the plane to fly four or five hours on auto-pilot until fuel ehaustion caused the aircraft to crash into the ocean.

The new evidence would also clear pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah from accusations he may have been involved in a plot to steal the plane.

While Australian authorities have said the objects were a “credible lead”, they were careful to say that there was no confirmation that this was the missing plane.

MH370 – Another Plausible Theory

Posted by George Brown on 19/03/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Crime, Emergency Services, Fire, Opinion, Safety, Technology, Uncategorized, Views. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
The loss of MH370 – Here is a different point of view by Chris Goodfellow. He has looked as this conundrum from a pilot point of view and its simplicity makes a lot of sense. I have found that explanations and examinations from pilots have made more sense than the media generated scenarios.
Pulau Langkawi 13,000 foot runway.
A lot of speculation has happened about MH370. Terrorism, hijack, meteors, aliens. I cannot believe the analysis on CNN – almost disturbing. I tend to look for a more simple explanation of this event. A loaded B772 departs midnight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Hot night. Heavy aircraft.  About an hour out across the gulf towards Vietnam the plane goes dark meaning the transponder goes off and secondary radar tracking goes off. Two days later we hear of reports that Malaysian military radar (which is a primary radar meaning the plane is being tracked by its reflection rather than by transponder interrogation response) has tracked the plane on a southwesterly course back across the Malay Peninsula into the straits of Malacca. When I heard this I immediately brought up Google Earth and I searched for airports in proximity to the track towards southwest. The left turn is the key here. This was a very experienced senior Captain with 18,000 hours. Maybe some of the younger pilots interviewed on CNN didn’t pick up on this left turn. We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbour while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us and airports ahead of us. Always in our head. Always. Because if something happens you don’t want to be thinking what are you going to do – you already know what you are going to do. Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport. Actually he was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi with a 13,000 foot strip with an approach over water at night with no obstacles. He did not turn back to Kuala  Lampur because he knew he had 8,000 feet ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier towards Langkawi and also a shorter distance. Take a look on Google Earth at this airport.
WMKL

Langkawi Intl Airport – Google Maps

This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event onboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport. For me the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense if a fire. There was most likely a fire or an electrical fire. In the case of fire the first response if to pull all the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one.   If they pulled the busses the plane indeed would go silent. It was probably a serious event and they simply were occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire. Aviate, Navigate and lastly Communicate.
There are two types of fires. Electrical might not be as fast and furious and there might or might not be incapacitating smoke. However there is the possibility given the timeline that perhaps there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tyres and it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes this happens with underinflated tyres. Remember heavy plane, hot night, sea level, long run takeoff. There was a well known accident in Nigeria of a DC8 that had a landing gear fire on takeoff. A tyre fire once going would produce horrific incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks but this is a no no with fire, as oxygen potentiates fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter but this will only last for a few minutes depending on the smoke level. (I used to carry one of my own in a flight bag and I still carry one in my briefcase today when I fly). What I think happened is that they were overcome by smoke and the plane just continued on  the heading probably on autopilot until either fuel exhaustion or fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. I said four days ago you will find it along that route – looking elsewhere was pointless.
This pilot, as I say, was a hero struggling with an impossible situation trying to get that plane to Langkawi. No doubt in my mind. That’s the reason for the turn and direct route. A hijack would not have made that deliberate left turn with a direct heading for Langkawi. It would probably have weaved around a bit until the hijackers decided on where they were taking it. Surprisingly none of the reporters , officials, other pilots interviewed have looked at this from the pilot’s viewpoint. If something went wrong where would he go? Thanks to Google Earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was and I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport. He had probably flown there many times. I guess we will eventually find out when you help me spread this theory on the net and some reporters finally take a look on Google Earth and put 2 and 2 together.
Also a look at the age and number of cycles on those nose tires might give us a good clue too.   Fire in an aircraft demands one thing – you get the machine on the ground as soon as possible. There are two well remembered experiences in my memory. The AirCanada DC9 which landed I believe in Columbus Ohio in the eighties. That pilot delayed descent and bypassed several airports.   He didn’t instinctively know the closest airports. He got it on the ground eventually but lost 30 odd souls.   In the 1998 crash of Swissair DC-10 off Nova Scotia was another example of heroic pilots. They were 15 minutes out of Halifax but the fire simply  overcame them and they had to ditch in the ocean. Just ran out of time. That fire incidentally started when the aircraft was about an hour out of Kennedy. Guess what?  The transponders and communications were shut off as they pulled the busses.
Get on Google Earth and type in Pulau Langkawi  and then look at it in relation to the radar track heading. 2+2=4  That for me is the  simple explanation why it turned and headed  in that direction.
Smart pilot. Just didn’t have the time.
Source: Chris Goodfellow

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his Flight Simulator

Posted by George Brown on 19/03/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Opinion, Technology. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

It has been publicised that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had an expensive Flight Simulator set up in his home.  This equipment was seized by Malaysian police as part of the ongoing investigation into the loss of MH370.

Malaysian police later revealed that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah had stored simulated flights into airports in the Indian Ocean with short runways. Of course, the way this was reported by the media would lead a person to think that must be what he did to his RW aircraft.

To me this means nothing of the sort.

Captain Shah’s personal flight simulator. Source: Facebook

Captain Shah’s personal flight simulator. Source: Facebook

I too use Flight Simulator for my hobby. I too fly into remote Indian Ocean destinations.  These destinations have included:

  • Diego Garcia
  • The Maldives
  • Cocos (Keeling) Island
  • Christmas Island
  • Seychelles
  • Mauritius
  • Reunion Island

Why? These exotic locations are those that I am unlikely to ever see in real-life. Simple as that!

Nothing more should be read into Captain Zaharie’s Indian Ocean destinations on his flight simulator, other than a man pursuing his hobby!

MH370 – Terrorism Less Likely

Posted by George Brown on 18/03/2014
Posted in: Aviation, Crime. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

I have stated all the way through the mystery that MH370 has become, that terrorism was unlikely.  I still maintain that view.  That’s not to say that human intervention is written all over this incident.  I had initially believed that explosive decompression or gross mechanical failure of power plants and possible consequent damage to control surfaces was likely to be the cause of the loss of MH370, but the longer the aircraft remains unlocated the less likely hull or mechanical failure are the cause of the loss.

Then the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the ACARS and transponders on flight  MH370 had been deliberately disabled and the plane diverted off its published FP towards the southern  Indian Ocean off the West Australian coast or north-west towards Kazakhstan, which suggests influence or action one or both of the  pilots, or with  a cockpit incursion by one or more of the passengers was responsible for the loss of the  aircraft.

This new Malaysian information release again raised the possiblity of terrorism.  Terrorism still cannot be completely ruled out, but seems less likely than other possibilities. Terrorism is always politically motivated with a specific or strategic outcome sought.  One would expect if terrorism was involved, that the  perpetrators would have claimed responsibility and already used the plane as a weapon against a possible target immediately. One would expect that political demands would have been made, or there would have been an attempt  to put pressure on their  selected target government.

It has been suggested that terrorist groups do not always claim responsibility for  their acts, but that is more likely to be true when there is little doubt about who the perpetrators are and what they want.  There seems little point in terrorists hijacking MH370 if no one knows why they did it or what they are seeking to achieve by doing so.

Since the Oslo  Accord in 1993 there has been a radical decline in the number of terrorist aircraft  hijacks or attempted hijacks.  Internationally, since 2000 there have been only 18 hijacks or attempted  hijacks of large commercial aircraft. Seven were by individuals wanting  to get to a destination to seek political asylum, one was a criminal action to steal  the cargo. Six were by mentally ill persons, and four were politically motivated .  Mental health seem to account for most of the lone-perpetrator hijacks and  attempted hijacks.  This is certainly true of Australia where since 1960 there have been 11 attempts to hijack aircraft, some of which have been successful. None was  terrorism related, none involved fatalities. All were by lone perpetrators, most of whom seemed to be  suffering from mental illness.

I would appear that the most likely cause for the MH370 diversion  seems to be a mental illness on the part of one of the pilots, or perhaps a passenger as a result of a sucessfulcockpit incursion and was able to force a pilot to fly a  particular direction to a pre-planned destination – or indeed was able to fly the aircraft himself. But what became of the pilots if the aircraft was taken over by another.

The MH370 incident highlights a number of aviation security problems that will  need to be addressed.

  1. Airport security – Lax passport checking against the Interpol  stolen passport database allowed two persons with stolen passports to board the aircraft.  These person were probably seeking illegal entry into Europe so are probably innocent in respect of the takeover of the aircraft itself. All passports must be checked against Interpol stolen passport lists.
  2. Management of the incident information was poor. The lack of a central command centre or spokesperson allowed many agencies to release erronious information which raised hopes of family members then dashed them again, which led to confusion about what could be believed and what could not. For  example, for several days it was publicised by Malaysian Airlines that there were a number of no-shows for flight, and whose baggage had been offloaded. Malaysian police stated later this was incorrect and there were no no-shows. The Malaysian government withheld the vital loss of ACARS and transponder information, that could have helped the  countries searching for the aircraft. International media did not assist efforts by continually publicising advice from technical experts, academics, leaks  from inside the investigation, and their attempts to make news when there was no news.
  3. The security of cockpit door. Reinforcing the door was good to prevent hijackers entering the flight deck, but is diminished by the door needing to be opened for personal, refreshment and crew handover needs in flight.  Perhaps personal and refreshment facilities need to be located on the cockpit side of the door for added security.  It is possible for somebody on the cockpit side of the door to keep out  a returning pilot/co-pilot from regaining access to the cockpit area. On  the 17/02/2014  the co-pilot of an Ethiopian Airlines  plane flying from Addis Ababa to Rome locked the pilot out of the cockpit and then flew the plane to Switzerland on his own to seek asylum.
  4. Diversion from FP – unauthorised and unexpected diversions from a published FP should identified and investigated immediately.
  5. Air security officers  or flight marshals. Many governments, including  Australia’s,  have been reducing funding in this area and it is probable now that not more than 5 per cent of international flights have air security officers on board. This is due in part to the vast reduction in hijacking and attempted hijecking world-wide.  An  officer  on  Flight MH370 may have made a difference – provided of course he or she was able to open the cockpit door, and was not incapicitated during the climb to FL450 in a possible depresurisation attempt to overcome the passengers.
  6. Pilot mental health. This needs to be regularly reviewed. Long haul flying can be extremely boring and  mind-numbing which can lead to stress problems. Flying has been described as 99% boredom and 1% sheer terrror!  Are there current studies into the effects on mental health of frequent long-haul flights on pilots and flight crew?
  7. Transponders, ACARS and communications equipment. No one on an aircraft should be able to disable the ACARS or  transponder whilst the aircraft is in flight.  This equipment must be fitted in a secure area.
  8. Ground crew. Ground crew screening needs to be more thorough as they have complete and often unsupervised access to all areas of the airport and to aircraft.  A respondent to one of my earlier posts an ATP pilot (thank you, Ingrid) suggested persons could be secreted into a hold container, loaded into the aircraft in a full forward position, from where upon exiting the container, they would have full access to the main electronics bay (MEB) below the flight deck – and to the flight deck itself.  Once in the MEB, the intruders would have full access to the communications systems of the B777-2H6 and thus be able to disable them.

MH 370 – What has Happened?

Posted by George Brown on 10/03/2014
Posted in: Aviation, News, Opinion, Safety. Tagged: , , , , . 4 Comments

The final outcome of what has happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370 will not be revealed until the aircraft is actually found and the CVR and FDR located and the data read. Meticulous salvage and rebuilding of the aircraft will also assist is determining the cause of the incident.

Flight MH-370, a Boeing 777-200ER – 9M-MRO (cn28420/404) which first flew on 14/05/2002, disappeared off radar at 02:40 on the 8/03/2014 90Nm north-east of Kota Bharu at position 6 55.15N 103 34.43E after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport (WMKK) at 12:43 MYT. Malaysian authorities have confirmed that no signs of any wreckage have been found so far, despite numerous rumours that the Boeing B777-200 aircraft had crashed off the coast of southern Vietnam.

Location of the Aircraft
The tracking website FlightAware (http://www.flightaware.com) reports loss of contact with the aircraft near Kota Bharu.  This is a curious situation as 9M-MRO departed WMKK at 12:43,  and disappeared at 02:40 while cruising at 35,000ft. Travelling at 428 nmph the location of the aircraft 2 hours later should have placed it nearly 860 nautical miles from Kuala Lumpur. This would locate the aircraft in the vicinity of Vung Tau in Vietnam. Reports however suggest that 9M-MRO never entered Vietnamese ATC controlled airspace. Radar data suggests a steep and sudden descent of the aircraft, during which the track of the aircraft changed from 024 degrees to 333 degrees.

9M-MRO

9M-MRO – Flight tracking

The aircraft would have run out of fuel by now, and there is no report of a landing of this Boeing 777 on any airport in the area. Search and rescue teams from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam are trying to locate the aircraft.

So what would cause a safe aircraft flying straight and level at 35,000 feet to diasppear from radar, without allowing the pilot to alert authorities to their situation?  There are only four scenarios that come to mind.

Catastrophic decompression
The crash of JAL Flight 123 in August, 1985 in Japan was caused by the failure of the aft pressure bulkhead which resulted in the explosive decompression of the aircraft resulting in a crash 34 minutes later.

United Airlines Flight 811 experienced a cargo door failure in flight on Friday, February 24, 1989, after its stopover at Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii. The resulting decompression blew out several rows of seats, resulting in the deaths of 9 passengers.  This aircraft did land safely after returning to Honolulu.

A loss of pressurisation could put the crew and passengers to sleep, as happened with a Learjet, which crashed in October 1999 in South Dakota after the six occupants became incapacitated. However, a loss of pressurisation would cause alarms to sound in the cockpit and allow flight crew to take corrective action. Furthermore, a pressurisation loss would not cause the aircraft to crash immediately.  Theoretically, the aircraft could continue on autopilot, following a programmed route, until the fuel ran out before crashing.  This did not happen.

To suggest this, or something like this, is the cause of the demise of MH-370 is highly speculative at this point and the actual cause will not be confirmed until the aircraft is found.

Mechanical failure
Since its introduction in 1995, there are 1,544 Boeing 777-200s in service, with the ER version introduced in 1997.  It is a remarkably safe aircraft with little history of incidents. Wikipedia reveals that as of March 2014, the 777 has been in only 10 aviation accidents and incidents, which include three confirmed hull-loss accidents. Before 2013, the only fatality involving the B772 occurred in a refueling fire during which a ground worker sustained fatal burns. The aircraft, operated by British Airways, suffered fire damage to the lower wing panels and engine housing and it was later repaired and returned to service.

In an “airfield incursion” at the Shanghai Pudong airport in September 2012, the MAS plane with the registration 9M-MRO collided with a China Eastern Airlines’ Airbus A340-600, registration B-6050, according to the French Office of Investigations and Analysis for the Safety of Civil Aviation (BEA). An “airfield incursion” is the aviation term used to describe an unauthorized aircraft, vehicle or person on the airfield, which can affect runway safety.

The type’s first hull-loss occurred on January 17, 2008, when British Airways Flight 38, a 777-200ER with Rolls-Royce Trent 895 engines flying from Beijing to London, crash-landed approximately 1,000 feet (300 m) short of Heathrow Airport’s runway 27L and slid onto the runway’s threshold. There were 47 injuries and no fatalities. The impact damaged the landing gear, wing roots and engines. The aircraft was written off. Upon investigation, the accident was blamed on ice crystals from the fuel system clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger. In 2009, air accident investigators called for a redesign of this component on the Trent 800 series engine. Redesigned fuel oil heat exchangers were installed in British Airways’ 777s by October 2009

The type’s second hull-loss occurred on July 29, 2011, when an an EgyptAir 777-200ER, SU-GBP suffered a cockpit fire while parked at the gate at Cairo International Airport. The plane was successfully evacuated without injuries, and airport fire teams extinguished the fire. The aircraft sustained structural, heat and smoke damage. This aircraft was also written off. Investigators focused on a possible electrical fault with a supply hose in the cockpit crew oxygen system

The type’s third hull loss and first involving fatalities occurred on July 6, 2013, when Asiana Airlines Flight 214, 777-200ER HL7742, crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport after touching down short of the runway. Surviving passengers and crew evacuated before fire destroyed the aircraft. The crash led to the death of three of the 307 people on board. These were the first fatalities in a crash involving a 777.  An accident investigation by the NTSB is underway with its initial focus on the aircraft’s low landing speed.

Given the safety record of this aircraft and being involved in so few accidents and incidents, it would seem that mechanical failure is an unlikely cause of this incident.  Given that the flight crew had no time to send a distress call or “mayday”, it seems likely that whatever ocurred inflight did so with rapid, unrecoverable results.

Oil slick

Oil Slick near Tho Chu Island, Vietnam

Pilot Error
The flight crew have between them 21,130 hours flying time and were long time employees of Malaysia Airlines.  The captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, is a 53-year-old with 18,365 flying hours experience who joined Malaysian Airlines in 1981. The first officer, Fariq Bin Ab Hamid, is a 27-year-old with 2,763 flying hours, and he has been an employee of Malaysia Airlines since 2007.

In 2009, a Airbus A330-203 flying in straight and level flight unexpectedly crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. The final report stated that the aircraft crashed after temporary inconsistencies between the airspeed measurements which were likely due to the aircraft’s pitot tubes being obstructed by ice crystals. This then caused the autopilot to disconnect, after which the crew reacted incorrectly and ultimately led the aircraft to an aerodynamic stall from which they did not recover.  The Air France Airbus A-330 Flight 447, signaled flight errors to the manufacturer’s headquarters in France. The equipment reported problems with height and airspeed as they were happening in a storm, in fact dozens of warnings in the flight’s final minutes which helped locate where it went down.

This example is by no means suggested as the cause of this incident, but included rather to illustrate that incidents can occur in straight and level flight with fatal outcomes if pilots fail to carry out the correct recovery procedures.

9M-MRO was being flown by a senior and respected flight crew, and nothing written here should be contrued as suggesting that pilot error occurred in this flight, rather than to indicate that pilot error can be a cause of air crashes.

Terrorism
Terrorist activities can result in a rapid and catastrophic loss of airframe. An example is the loss of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland in 1988, when an onboard bomb detonated and destroyed the aircraft.

In the case of Flight MH-370, and number of anomolies have occurred with the bonafides of the passengers.  Officials are currently investigating the possibility of terrorism. Four passengers are confirmed to have been flying with false IDs. Two of these passengers are suspected to have boarded the aircraft using Austrian and Italian passports stolen in Thailand, and Malaysian authorities are also checking the identity of the two other passengers. This may be unrelated to the the aircraft loss, but rather a visa avoidance strategy to enter China. US officials said they were checking into passenger manifests and going back through intelligence. The FBI has sent a number of technical experts to Malaysia to assist with the investigation of the disappearance of the aircraft.

Summary
When considering the possible causes of this Malaysian aircraft loss, I had considered that the most likely cause was explosive, catastrophic loss of hull integrity. Aircraft do not just disappear with a trace, with no distress calls from the flight deck as MH-370 has done.

The relative good safety record of this aircraft and it’s senior and experienced flight crew leads me to believe that mechanical failure and pilot error are unlikely.

I had considered that terrorism, while possible, was unlikely, but considering the lack of a distress call suggested the plane either suffered an explosive decompression or was destroyed by an explosive device has led me to reconsider this possibility.

Of course, this is all speculative.  Only the location and recovery of the aircraft and subsequent investigation by authorities will determine the actual cause of the incident. Time will tell.

My thoughts and prayers are with those who have lost loved ones in this incident.