Earlier this morning a South African radio station posted a story about a local family that found a piece of aircraft debris while on vacation in Mozambique in December.
18-year-old Liam Lotter has told East Coast Radio Newswatch while they were on holiday in Inhambane in December – he and his cousin came across what he describes as the “shiny object” while walking on the beach. They brought it back to KwaZulu-Natal. Lotter says it was only after seeing news reports last week about another piece of debris found on a sandbank off Mozambique that his family saw a possible link. Liam’s mother Candace Lotter has since been in contact with South African and Australian authorities.
The story included a couple of pictures:
UPDATE: On Friday, March 11 Reuters published more photos:
Here’s an image that provides a sense of scale:
The code “676EB” in the top photograph refers to an access panel hatch in the right-hand outboard flap of a 777. The images below show the equivalent structures on the left-hand side.
Given that no other 777 has gone missing at sea, and that the Réunion flaperon has been conclusively identified as coming from the missing flight, then it’s very hard to imagine that this part didn’t come MH370.
Given that after nearly two years only a single piece of debris had heretofore been found, it’s extraordinary that in the span of less than two weeks three pieces of possible MH370 debris have come to light.
First, of course, was the piece found by Blaine Alan Gibson on a Mozambique sand bar in late February:
Followed a few days later by reports that Johnny Begue, who found the flaperon later linked to MH370 in July of 2015, had found what might be another part of the plane:
One striking feature of these three latest finds, that many people have commented on, is the striking absence of barnacles, algae, or other forms of sea life. That’s in striking contrast to the flaperon:
Some have suggested that the pieces might have been grazed clean by crabs after making landfall, or scoured clean by the action of waves and sand. According to IB Times, one Mozambique official believes that Blaine’s piece probably did not come from MH370 for this reason:
Abreu was also quoted Friday by state news agency AIM, saying that any claim that the debris belonged to the missing Flight MH370 was “premature” and “speculative,” according to All Africa. He also expressed doubts that the debris may not be from the missing Boeing 777 as the object was too clean to have been in the ocean for the past two years. However, he reportedly said that “no aircraft which has overflown Mozambican airspace has reported losing a panel of this nature,” First Post reported, citing AIM.
Hopefully a thorough investigation by the authorities will clarify the issue.
Worth noting that the second Mozambique piece was found 125 miles south of the first one, while both of the Réunion pieces were found on the same beach.
This has somewhat always been a problem with MH370 facebook groups, Victor. If questions are asked that others dislike then it results in being ‘evicted’. Also groups which claim to be searching for the truth but make the group ‘private’? If I was seeking the truth then anyone and everyone would be welcome. I am very surprised to read that Mr Gibson would block you for asking questions, he is a trained lawyer? This is MH370 in question, is it not? Surely we are not expected to accept everything face value?
Lets minus all the automated systems for a second.
Many people can spectulate on what happened on board that plane, but that would be a pure waste of time.
What we know, from what they have found so far, the plane did not hit the ocean at an extremely high speed, the pieces are still in good condition, minus the cracks and seperation marks, looks like a controlled decent into terrain to me.
One question remains, what on earth went on in that cockpit on that morning?
From The Australian:
A South African teenager vacationing in Mozambique may have found part of a wing from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which his family dismissed as “rubbish” and his mother nearly threw away, he said Friday.
On December 30, Liam Lotter was strolling on a beach in southern Mozambique, near the resort town of Xai Xai, when he spotted a grey piece of debris washed up on the sand, he recalled. It had rivet holes along the edge and the number 676EB stamped on it, convincing him he had found a piece of an aircraft. So he dragged the piece back to his family’s vacation home.
“It was so waterlogged at that time, it was quite heavy. I struggled to pick it up,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. The curved piece of debris is about 3.3 feet (one meter) long, and about half that length wide, his father Casper Lotter said.
His parents dismissed it as a “piece of rubbish” that was probably debris from a boat, with his uncle making fun of him for dragging it around, but the 18-year-old insisted on bringing it back to South Africa to research the fragment.
MORE: Debris may be from MH370
MORE: MH370 mystery still unsolved
MORE: Wreckage unlikely to be MH370
“He was adamant he wanted to bring it home because it had a number on it,” said Casper Lotter, adding that his son is not an aviation enthusiast but was simply drawn to the piece of debris. “It just grabbed him for some weird reason,” the father said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
Back home in Wartburg in KwaZulu-Natal province, the piece was stored with the family’s angling gear and almost forgotten as Lotter focused on his final year in high school. His mother even tried to throw it out, he said.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jet vanished with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. It was only when Lotter read about another piece of possible debris from the missing airliner also found in Mozambique, about 186 miles (300 kilometres) from where he had made his discovery, that he resumed his probe.
“I was very shocked – Mozambique, similar colour, similar area,” the teen said of the piece discovered by an American man. “He described it similarly to what I’m looking at right now.” Last week, Lotter’s mother Candace contacted Australian aviation authorities and they said the number on the part indicates it may belong to a Boeing 777, according to Casper Lotter. Australian authorities contacted South African counterparts to have the part examined by experts.
The honeycomb structure indicates it is either the leading edge of a wing, or a horizontal stabiliser “We have arranged for collection of the part, which will be sent to Australia as they are the ones appointed by Malaysia to identify parts found,” Kabelo Ledwaba, spokesman South African Civil Aviation Authority, wrote in a text message to the AP.
Last month, Blaine Gibson, a Seattle lawyer and part-time adventurer, found what could be a piece of tail section from the missing Malaysian airlines flight. The piece Gibson found had “NO STEP” written on it.
The 58-year-old’s search for the missing jet has taken him to beaches in the Maldives, Mauritius, Cambodia, Myanmar and the French island of Reunion, he told The Associated Press. Gibson also travelled to Malaysia to attend a commemorative ceremony held on Sunday by the families of passengers on board the airliner.
The South African teenager hopes his find will help the grieving families, and inspire others who may have found fragments of the missing plane to hand them over to authorities.
He said he would be pleased “just for them to know that we’re finding evidence, finding out how it happened, where it happened, just to give them some closure.”
Oleksandr – I guess there is no way to know where the towelette came from. But as a local boy it does seem unlikely that it’s all we got out of 200 tonnes. My mum still has MAS bits and pieces in her bathroom from flights many years ago. I suppose if we found a bunch of them. With the debris in general though I feel we might be getting somewhere, very slowly.
I think that the aircraft had no living persons on board when it crashed into the sea, and certainly none who could exercise control of the craft. To me the most likely crash scenario is that it hit so hard that there were very few pieces with any structural integrity sufficient to float, and that the expectation that any coherent “wreck” will be found on the sea floor is folly. We are probably looking at a debris field 100 miles on a side and average debris size of less than a meter. This will never be found.
@Brock
>If paths were deemed to be strongly correlated to each other, then zero debris discovery during France’s Réunion area air search alone was astronomically improbable.
Nonsense. Correlated on not, the number of potential debris pieces in the Réunion area at the instant of search was made was still small, from any of the studies. The debris patch covered 10million square kilometres by mid-2015 so even a few thousand parts are enormously scattered (one part per thousand square kilometres). In any case the French sent up a single aircraft that flew for a couple of hours, not really a serious search.
>The correct correlation is surely somewhere in between: the ocean tends to greatly disperse debris, but if it starts at EXACTLY the same spot, it stands to reason the debris will tend to follow paths more similar than would be indicated by random chance.
Not random, but still enormously chaotic. The literature shows that buoys deployed from the same boat at the same time end up thousands of kilometres apart. That’s why the modelled debris patch is so large.
> …then thousands of debris pieces – by coincidence – evaded all satellite, air, ship, shoreline, and subsea searches.
A year ago the complaint was that no debris had been found, at all. Then it was that only piece had been found. Now that many pieces are located, that complaint is at an end. The pieces to date are tiny, way below any available satellite image resolution and probably below what an air search could have found, but there were precious few flights in decent weather. The air search was not looking for small fragments, crew members with field-glasses were only going to pick up oil slicks and big pieces. The ship searches covered a tiny amount of sea. The lack of debris identified on the Australian coast is more interesting, but the recent discovery by the diligent lad in Mozambique could have been lost at a number of points given the reported pressures from his relatives. I wonder what fraction of the people on Australian beaches picking up debris were sensitive the MH370 situation, now or two years ago.
@sk999,
Sorry, I misunderstood your statement that ” Efficiency increases for lower altitudes”. That is correct if you compare 35,000 ft to 20,000 ft at the weights you mention.
In the piece of debris found by Mr Gibson there is a surprising survival. While not visible here, it is quite clear in a CNN video close-up. There is a fastener still in situ with the head marks HL1013-6 VS. This is a titanium 3/16″ dia HiLok, and the VS stands for Voi Shan. I know this because I worked for that company as a planner in their Chatsworth mfg facility in the early 1990s.
What is interesting to me is that the VS logo disappeared not long after I started working there. The troubled company was purchased by Fairchild and later by Banner A/C. This HiLok must date from prior to that change of ownership.
The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 (MH370) was delivered to that airline in May 2002. Is it possible that Boeing retained HiLok inventory over a decade old? It is conceivable, but I can tell you that Boeing orders these parts in huge quantities as they are used on many of their aircraft. They are also made by many other manufacturers.
It seems remarkable that this HiLok would be used in an aircraft built at least a decade after it was made.
Brock,
The original statement with regard to the towelette was (as per your link):
“It is unlikely, however, that such a common item with no unique identifier could be conclusively linked with MH 370,”
You changed it into:
“Australian officials say it is very unlikely that a towelette that washed up on the country’s west coast last summer had been on board the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370”.
Do you feel the difference between these two statements? I totally agree with the former: how can the towelette be conclusively linked with mh370? But I certainly disagree with the latter statement. Please show that it is unlikely. The Australian police might be lucky to find a person, who dropped it on the beach, for example by fingerprints. But I have not seen such reports. Any other basis to conclude that it is unlikely?
Re: “I would also point out that landfall was expected in the August to October, 2014 range – March 2015”.
Assuming that the crash site was at 38-40S, correct? Take a look at p.17 of your report. Deltares model hits the towelette location for both 25S and 35S origins before September 1, 2014. Basically you can conclude that the towelette location/timing is not compatible with the current search area. The next “either/or” logical conclusion is obvious.
Matty,
“I guess there is no way to know where the towelette came from”.
Indeed. Unless police finds fingerprints, which survive on the bag (there is one case when police found fingerprints on a bullet, it seems 9 years after murder, but that was due to fingerprint-pattern oxidation of bullet as opposite to plastic), and finds a person, who held that bag in hands.
“But as a local boy it does seem unlikely that it’s all we got out of 200 tonnes.”
Well, Reunion got a bit more. It depends on many things. A lot of stuff goes to the seabed immediately. In addition, we don’t know if it was the only piece. Some debris could be considered as usual rubbish and disposed into waste bins; some could be collected by locals as souvenirs. I don’t think it is applicable to Mozambique only – most of people are simply not aware of mh370.
Cheryl,
I like the phrase from ATSB report referenced by RetiredF4:
“the crew experienced a situation that had previously been considered not possible.”
Note, ATSB used term “impossible”. Not “improbable”.
Does this answer your questions?
Richard Cole – “I wonder what fraction of the people on Australian beaches picking up debris were sensitive the MH370 situation, now or two years ago.”
Everyone pretty much was anticipating debris reaching our shores. The search zone happens to be our backyard and the Intl focus was right here. It was a very big deal in these parts. Imagine it was on your doorstep?
Okeksandr – “I don’t think it is applicable to Mozambique only – most of people are simply not aware of mh370.”
Same reply. Awareness was extremely high and MH370 has remained a talking point here. Australia is the most coastaly urbanized country on earth – we are fixated on the damn beach and spend a chunk of our lives there. We gaze out towards Africa and Antarctica routinely and I for one can’t do that without thinking about the plane. Around here debris was thought to be inevitable and I think ATSB were encumbered with all the red herrings if anything. Suspect items made the news often. The media was leaping on it.
Warren,
Thanks, very much appreciated.
Some obvious cautions of course with the drifter data :
– it is not clear how an un-drogued buoy would drift in comparison to aircraft debris, though the latter would presumably have a wide range of behaviours
– it is not clear how representative drift patterns reviewed over a 20yr history might be of the current and weather characteristics since March 2014
Nevertheless I think it is a useful ground truthing. I will post more shortly with improved graphics and consideration of drifter movements in the SIO in the last 2 years.
Richard – very well said!
Matty – Perth beaches maybe, but all those hundreds and hundreds of miles of rocky inlets, nooks and crannies, all patrolled so thoroughly that we are confident that no aircraft debris has washed up among all the other junk? I’m really struggling with that one. Drift studies do suggest that the Oz coast is not a favoured location, but if a few bits did wash up I’m not sure we would know it?
Brock – re your point about the importance of ‘location and TIMING’ of the debris, I fear you may be over-estimating the precision of these models. Surely the error bands are too large to conclusively favour one 7th arc starting location over another for the debris we are seeing now?
How about we try a quick test. If I were to give you the starting locations of 5 SIO un-drogued drifter buoys in March 2014, chosen to reflect different crash locations as close as possible to the 7th arc (assuming I can find suitable candidates), could you predict for me using any model(s) you prefer the regions of highest probability where they should be 15 months later? (Or at some intermediate time). I assume from what you say that these should be discernible from one another? Feel free to use a range of leeways. We can then compare these terminal zones with the observed behaviour of the real objects?
Obviously only one observed data point per starting location but interesting nevertheless?
If these debris finds get confirmed, we have to go back to the high-speed unpiloted impact scenario of ALSM, because the pattern of the debris pieces is consistent with a violent impact, tearing the aircraft in millions of small pieces.
@ M Pat: your caveats are well taken, but the main point is that debris originating in the most likely search area would most likely wind up in the west Indian Ocean, places like Mozambique and Reunion, rather than Australia.
@ Matty: that said, we should not be surprised if some debris eventually turns up in Australia. Sorry, but I do not buy the places like the Great Australian Bight are regularly patrolled for debris from MH370. I was just looking at it on Google Earth, and that place is remote. 1500 km. There are no real towns, and a lot of it looks accessible only by boat. Only now do we really have a good idea about what to look for (light colored panels sandwiching a honeycomb core). And who is actually going out there expressly looking for such debris? Are you?
@ CosmicAcademy: What do you mean “go back to the high-speed, unpiloted impact scenario”? I thought that was the main working hypothesis of the ATSB. Of the two out of 4 pieces we can definitively locate, they are both from control surfaces near the right engine, and would likely be dislodged if the flaps were extended, and the engine was broken off. Recall the flaperon: most of the damage is on the trailing edge, consistent with that being the first part to hit the water.
@Warren Platts, agreed. A high-impact scenario where the plane got more or less pulverized – except for the flaperon which separated before impact – becomes less likely with each new piece of debris. If the new debris is indeed authentic.
@Warren,
IMHO YMMV: Does that translate into:
In my humble opinion your mileage may vary?
I-m not so well versed with English short lingo. I just mastered very few so far.
@Warren
I tend to agree with you. The composition of the debris suggests a “soft” impact. So far nothing from the interior of the aircraft – cushions, personal floatation devices,…
@all
How different people interpret the drift studies is the strongest example of confirmation bias I have seen in my lifetime. I readily admit that I am guilty as well. Where is Nate Silver when you need him?
@Littlefoot: LMAO! Yes, you are correct: IMHO = in my humble (or honest) opinion; YMMV = your mileage my vary that simply means that other interpretations are valid.
@DennisW: We need more data points though. Hey man, if you got the money, I got the time. Let’s organize an expedition to Mozambique! A crew of 3 or 4 guys could spread out and cover at least 15 miles a day. Go sun up to sun down; camp right on the beach. Walking on beaches isn’t the best footing, and it’d probably be hot, but at least it’d be flat. We could cover the 125 miles between the two discoveries in a week or so. $1400 r/t from NYC to Maputo in 18 hours. Guarantee we would find something! And once we do, WE perform a scientific analysis and description of it first–including the taking of tiny subsamples for independent chemical analysis–before turning it over to the “authorities”.
Re: Nate Silver: He hasn’t been doing so hot lately! Not feeling the Bern! 😉
@Matty: I will of course take your advice on the local state of awareness of the MH370 situation. Two caveats, 1) if 30% of the people (anywhere) are fully aware of a particular news story that counts as a very well publicised event, and leaves 70% who are not, and 2) from my limited experience there is a small group of (very) locals who are the first or most frequent visitors to a beach and it is their state of awareness that is the most relevant since they will pick up the interesting items, most likely.
However, the lack of identified debris on the Oz coast is interesting. The recent modelling from IPRC Hawaii shows the debris field against the coast from Sept to Dec 2014.
@Warren P
I am sure we would find enough debris to do something similar to the link below.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/content/dam/news/photos/000/776/77667.adapt.768.1.jpg
The Boeing engineers would be passing pictures around and scratching their asses wondering if it was a 777. Our, “reconstruction” of course, would be missing the right side flaperon which the French will never give up.
How can the piece with the part identifier not be from a 777? Why are things moving at such a glacial pace?
Bottom line is none of it will do any good. We would be tossing money and time into the toilet. The ATSB would still argue that our reconstruction confirms the current search area, and the IG would still be updating their model to the middle of nowhere.
@Warren, thanks. And I think we may agree here 🙂
Many other scenarios are indeed possible.
@ all
…. If I may be suggest.
It’s not helpful to say that ‘this’ or ‘that’ part hit the water ‘hard’, or ‘soft’.
In a ditching scenario, there are PARTS OF AIRCRAFT WHICH TOUCH the water first, …and then there are parts of the aircraft that THE WATER TOUCHES first.
I believe that in the case of the flaperon, and the 2 pieces discovered in Mozambique, it appears to be the case that the WATER TOUCHES THE PART as a jet spray.
See video below of a Bombardier C Series undergoing water ingestion tests to see what I mean (after 5 minutes):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhtUqsDojRM
@Greg Vozar,
Thank you for the interesting information you provided in your comment from March 12, 04:32am.
@ Dennis: Sadly, you are probably correct about the waste of time and money. There can be no doubt IMO that at least the NO STEP piece and the 676EB piece are from MH370, and the one with the blue cheat line is a highly probable due to the evident honeycombing; yet there continues to be no official confirmation.
@Warren
Even sadder is the fact that official confirmation would have absolutely no impact on the search effort.
Why even bother to look for debris on the beaches of Reunion and Mozambique?
@DennisW:
“How can the piece with the part identifier not be from a 777?”
From the Continental Airlines 777 Training Manual:
I wonder if perhaps a similar system of Access Panel Identification could apply for other Boeing types. Does anyone have acces to relevant documentation for (for example) the B767 ?
@Gysbreght
While looking for Boeing aircraft that have ever crashed near enough to Mozambique to be a source of the debris found there, I came across the 1983 crash of 767
begin cut-paste//
July 23 – Air Canada Flight 143, a Boeing 767, runs out of fuel above Manitoba because of a miscalculation; the crew successfully glides the aircraft to a safe landing at a former Air Force base (and current drag strip) at Gimli, Manitoba; the aircraft becomes known as the Gimli Glider.
end cut-paste//
Maybe running out of fuel and not knowing it is not as bizarre as I led myself to believe after reading Guarded Don’s reference to the fuel gauge system.
BTW, a 767 did disintegrate over Thailand in 1991.
Dennisw said : ”Why even bother to look for debris on the beaches of Reunion and Mozambique?”
Because reconstructing the plane this way… https://s.yimg.com/dh/ap/default/151013/MH17-4.jpg
can help the investigation.
@Dennis, the Gimli Glider incident was one of a kind and it’s impossible to draw from it any conclusions whatsoever why mh370 ran out of fuel.
There’s a documentary of the case on YouTube. It’s a fascinating incident in it’s own right and it ends well. Therefore it’s well worth watching 🙂
Does anyone know if a group of sharks were seen in the area on the south-west side of Australia at the time when the plane had gone missing? I believe the pilots faced an emergency on the plane and that is why it turned back around its course after the first hour possibly trying to land it. is it not possible all the passengers were facing Hypoxia and by the time the plane had gone into the sea everyone was likely dead, but what is strange is that no bodies have been found?
@littlefoot
My point exactly relative to MH370.
@IR1907
I posted (tongue in cheek) a similar picture earlier. My point then was that it would make no difference relative to the search strategy. I stand by that conclusion.
@ Gysbreght
I wonder if perhaps a similar system of Access Panel Identification could apply for other Boeing types. Does anyone have acces to relevant documentation for (for example) the B767 ?
It looks like since year 2003.
Start reading at Page 14.
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/aero_20/configuration.pdf
@Richard: I was describing two book-ending extreme conditions: correlation coefficients of 0, and 1, respectively. I agree with you that, over periods of several months, 0 is much closer to the right answer. This is what makes zero debris discovered on Oz shores so puzzling.
You are right to label as absurd the “correlation coefficient of 1” case, where all debris follows roughly the same path as the flaperon. I use this silly hypothetical merely to forestall the spurious objection that “all debris missed Oz because the flaperon missed it” – by demonstrating that, even in the absurd high correlation case, we still run into a paradox.
I have prebutted your odd claim that these pieces should end all debate. Yes, scenarios which require planted debris now must add the non-hoaxes among these new pieces to the list – it conceded that this raises the stakes. But if the IG is right to conclude the size of these latest pieces predicts 1,000+ pieces – and if you are right to claim the ocean dispersed them greatly – then it is statistically unlikely that the Fall, 2014 searches of Tangeroa Blue, et al, would all come up empty. These pieces incrementally complicate the official line, as well.
The “complaint”, Richard, is actually that 1) the official story is full of holes and coincidences, of which surface debris is but one bizarre subset, and 2) public perceptions of the MH370 mystery are seeming to be cleverly manipulated – in the first few weeks, at every major shift in the search location, and in both anniversary news cycles. The goal seems to be to cement in our minds the perception that the plane impacted the waters of the remote SIO – and careful research reveals that the TRUTH hasn’t imposed much of a restriction on the tactics used to achieve this goal.
So if it’s all the same to you, I am going to continue to view each piece of breaking news with a critical eye. I won’t stand in the way of anyone’s determination to believe everything authorities push is authentic, and that everything they downplay is bunk; but neither will I be shamed into pretending this whole investigation doesn’t smell bad.
@Oleksandr: the quote you accuse me of manufacturing was the thesis statement of the Time reporter – as I clearly cited – in the article I linked. But thanks for responding, because it gives me the chance to clarify something about the towelette’s interesting history:
From reading the March 10, 2015 Time article, I’d assumed the towelette had just been discovered. But from reading contemporary articles, I learned it was discovered on a beach north of Perth on July 2, 2014, and turned in to authorities immediately.
So let’s now place some key events in proper sequence:
July 2, 2014: towelette turned in to authorities
Aug-Nov, 2014: a priori expected debris season for Oz shores, by expert consensus
Oct 22, 2014: authorities say they’ve taken all submitted debris seriously, but have thus far ruled it all out, grow weary of all the beach junk people are sending them, and are pretty darn sure we should be focusing on Sumatra.
March 10, 2014: towelette story leaked to press. Authenticity officially downplayed: Reputable editors deem it unrelated; disreputable editors behave predictably, teasing the general public with manufactured ramifications.
Observations:
– July 2, 2014 is a pretty early date to expect landfall
– Eight months is a pretty long time for authorities to sit on evidence you now hail as vital to search zone determination
– if the ATSB didn’t like the article’s thesis, it is hard to imagine how they could stay silent about Time’s misrepresentation of its views – the Réunion debacle proves they were desperate for any corroboration of their search box, whether sensible or not.
@ Dennis “Why even bother to look for debris on the beaches of Reunion and Mozambique?”
Of course the theoretical answer is that certain found parts could settle the question of whether the 9M-MRO ended its flight in an uncontrolled dive, or whether a piloted ditching was attempted. If the former, then the ATSB search strategy is pretty much the correct one; if the latter, then a search more to the south and west such as proposed by Byron Bailey and many others would be more appropriate.
Of course a good bureaucracy will never let facts on the ground disturb a highly inertial trajectory.
Still… It would be an adventure. I would go myself just for the fun of it and the satisfaction of personal vainglory. But unfortunately, as you know, the oil industry is undergoing the worst bust since the purge of ’86 and I currently don’t have a pot to piss that I can call my own.
However, if a patron were to step up to the plate–or maybe even a kickstarter campaign–the task could be accomplished relatively inexpensively. You’d want to have about 4 guys: a “VP” to be the expedition leader and kayak guy (you); geologist/fishery biologist to identify and preserve tissue samples with 10% formalin and EDTA (me) and make tactical recommendations about the best shorelines to search; an aviation expert/journalist to analyze any found parts and to document the expedition (Mr. Wise); and someone who can speak both Portuguese and English who can talk to the natives.
Budget off the top of my head: $6000 r/t travel from USA; travel in country $1000; living expenses for 4 guys for 10 days $1600; petty cash $400; total = $9000
😉
@Warren P
Need to add some money for women and booze. My “sitting around the campfire at night” days are over. Not to imply that the conversations would be boring.
If it makes you feel any better, I took a real beating on some energy/pipeline MLP’s in tax year 2015. I regret not selling them in December, and booking the loss. Another example of allowing “sunk cost” to corrupt your thinking.
@DennisW
“The ATSB would still argue that our reconstruction confirms the current search area, and the IG would still be updating their model to the middle of nowhere.”
I have the feeling they’d continue doing so even if the whole plane is found out of their preferred area.
@Warren
“Of the two out of 4 pieces we can definitively locate, they are both from control surfaces near the right engine, and would likely be dislodged if the flaps were extended, and the engine was broken off. Recall the flaperon: most of the damage is on the trailing edge, consistent with that being the first part to hit the water.”
Exactly…however soft landing doesn’t bode well for ATSB search area and they aren’t known for confessing mistakes.
Others here are making some very valid points which I hope won’t be lost on the ATSB, namely that the pieces recovered point to a relatively soft impact, at a shallow angle, which in my book can mean only one thing – a controlled ditching. With any other scenario, we would have pieces from every area of the plane, including the interior, anything that would float. The flaperon trailing edge is telling us that the flaps were extended when it hit, which again would only happen if there was someone at the controls. It’s time that some people faced up to the sad truth that a professional pilot is capable of committing such an unspeakable act. If that can be generally accepted, then there might be a chance of actually finding the plane. I also cannot understand why the flaperon analysis hasn’t been made public, these people are supposed to be skilled at interpreting damage. All it does is stoke the fires of conspiracy, one could be excused for thinking that’s their intention!
@ROB
I have resisted associating the flaperon edge damage with water impact. Exner had a very plausible alternative explanation related to aerodynamic flutter. I think the French know the answer. Why it has not been made publicly available is exasperating.
Brock,
I am not accusing you; I am just following your advice to verify original sources of information. In this particular case I found’your’ formulation illogical (‘your’ = the formulation you cited): how such a conclusion could be made? In addition, I could not recall I previously read it, and that is why I checked what the original statement was.
Re: “Aug-Nov, 2014: a priori expected debris season for Oz shores, by expert consensus”.
Do you mean that you suspect “ATSB and Co.” intentionally deferred release of the information about the towelette because it was incompatible with the suggested by them search area?
@ Dennis W: “Need to add some money for women and booze.”
lol! You’re the boss!
But yes, the oil patch has been brutal. Just heard the other day that Aubrey McClendon committed hari kari. Never actually worked for Chesapeake, but they had a huge presence out here in Pennsylvania. Bid rigging doesn’t surprise me. They were quietly scooping up drilling rights in 2007 for $25/acre that were later going for $6000/acre…
Re: relation of flaperon to 676EB, by looking at the task description of for the internal inspection of the (middle) fairing seemed to imply that the flaps must be extended in order to gain access to the access panel. Thus, if the flaps were extended at the time of impact, then 676EB panel would be exposed and vulnerable to getting torn off. Of course, a high speed impact a la Exner could also tear the panel off, but in that case, presumably the fuselage would be shattered, and we should expect to find stuff from the interior of the aircraft. However, it looks like only control surfaces, and possibly a piece of body-to-wing fairing have been found so far….
@Oleksandr
Speaking only for myself here, I find the delayed disclosure to be suspicious in the context of the ensemble of other behaviors associated with the release of information. If it were a singularity it would be easy to overlook it,
@Dennis: thank you for your last two posts.
Interesting that both camps – soft ditch and hard spiral – are telling us that the pieces STRONGLY indicate that their scenario must be correct. Wake me up when you reach consensus on what the actual science says.
Speaking of which: I’m going to turn to the IPRC data now. Off line. Cheers.
@Jeff @all
related on unrelated, by conincidence, on aniversary of one related email I sent you, there is released yet another very long and comprehensive FI report worth to read carefully start-finish; as we got only 3 new pages this year till now from ATSB, I hope its possible to deep dive here too;
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/#9
(my favorite quote “He is, by nature, Spockian.” – but, “significantly diminished”? … good or bad?? – and there is something like ISIS on (not only) your soil already – the scientology…)
thanks RT (yeah, I’m not one of us) for quite compact summary…
https://www.rt.com/usa/335378-interview-obama-china-russia/