Were MH370 Searchers Unlucky, or Duped?

Yesterday, officials responsible for locating missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 announced that their two-year, $150 million search has come to an end. Having searched an area the size of Pennsylvania and three miles deep, they’ve found no trace of the plane.

The effort’s dismal conclusion stands in marked contrast to the optimism that officials displayed throughout earlier phases of the search. In August, 2015, Australia’s deputy prime minister Warren Truss declared, “The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in [the designated search] area.”

So why did the search come up empty? Did investigators get unlucky, and the plane happened to wind up in the unsearched 3 percent? Or did something more nefarious occur?

To sort it all out, we need to go back to why officials thought they knew where the plane went.

Early on the morning of March 8, 2014, MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. Forty minutes passed the last navigational waypoint in Malaysian airspace. Six seconds after that it went electronically dark. In the brief gap between air-control zones, when no one was officially keeping an eye on it, the plane pulled a U-turn, crossed back through Malaysian airspace, and then vanished from military radar screens.

At that point the plane was completely invisible. Its hijackers could have flown it anywhere in the world without fear of discovery. But lo and behold, three minutes later a piece of equipment called the Satellite Data Unit, or SDU, rebooted and initiated a log-on with an Inmarsat communications satellite orbiting high overhead. An SDU reboot is not something that can happen accidentally, or that airline captains generally know how to do, or that indeed there would be any logical reason for anyone to carry out. Yet somehow it happened. Over the course of the next six hours, the SDU sent seven automated signals before going silent for good. Later, Inmarsat scientists poring over the data made a remarkable discovery: due to an unusual combination of peculiarities, a signal could be teased from this data that indicated where the plane went.

With much hard work, search officials were able to wring from the data quite a detailed picture of what must have happened. Soon after the SDU reboot, the plane turned south, flew fast and straight until in ran out of fuel, then dived into the sea. Using this information, officials were able to generate a probabilistic “heat map” of where the plane most likely ended up. The subsequent seabed search began under unprecedented circumstances. Never before had a plane been declared lost, and its location subsequently deduced, on the basis of mathematics alone.

Now, obviously, we know that that effort was doomed. The plane is not where the models said it would most likely be. Indeed, I would go further than that. Based on the signal data, aircraft performance parameters, and the available autopilot modes, there is a finite range of places where the plane could plausibly have fetched up. Search vessels have now scanned all of them. If the data is good, and the analysis is good, the plane should have been found.

I am convinced that the analysis is good. And the data? It seems to me that the scientists who defined the search area overlooked a step that even the greenest rookie of a criminal investigator would not have missed. They failed to ascertain whether the data could have been tampered with.

I’ve asked both Inmarsat scientists and the Australian mathematicians who defined the search area how they knew that the satellite communications system hadn’t been tampered with. Both teams told me that they worked with the data they were given. Neither viewed it as their job to question the soundness of their evidence.

This strikes me as a major oversight, since the very same peculiar set of coincidences that made it possible to tease a signal from the Inmarsat data also make it possible that a sophisticated hijacker could have entered the plane’s electronics bay (which lies beneath an unsecured hatch at the front of the business class cabin) and altered the data fed to the Satellite Data Unit.

A vulnerability existed.

The only question is: Was it exploited? If it was, then the plane did not fly south over the ocean, but north toward land. For search officials, this possibility was erased when a piece of aircraft debris washed ashore on Réunion Island in July of 2015. Subsequently, more pieces turned up elsewhere in the western Indian Ocean.

However, as with the satellite data, officials have failed to explore the provenance of the debris. If they did, they would have noticed some striking inconsistencies. Most notably, the Réunion debris was coated completely in goose barnacles, a species that grows only immersed in the water. When officials tested the debris in a flotation tank, they noted that it floated half out of the water. There’s no way barnacles could grow on the exposed areas—a conundrum officials have been unable to reconcile. The only conclusion I can reach is that the piece did not arrive on Réunion by natural means, a suspicion reinforced by a chemical analysis of one of the barnacles by Australian scientist Patrick DeDeckker, who found that the barnacle grew in water temperatures that no naturally drifting piece of debris would have encountered.

If the plane didn’t go south, then where did it go? Not all the Inmarsat data, it turns out, was susceptible to spoofing. From the portion that wasn’t, it’s able to generate a narrow band of possible flight paths; they all terminate in Kazakhstan, a close ally of Russia. Intriguingly, three ethnic Russians were aboard MH370, including one who was sitting mere feet from the electronics bay hatch. Four and a half months later, a mobile launcher from a Russian anti-aircraft unit shot down another Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER, MH17. A year after that, the majority of pieces of debris wind up being discovered by a man who had spent the last three decades intimately involved with Russia.

Whether or not the Russians are responsible for MH370, the failure of the seabed search and the inconsistencies in the aircraft debris should undermine complacency about the official narrative. When MH370 disappeared, it possessed an obscure vulnerability that left its Inmarsat data open to tampering. Having spent $150 million and two years on a fruitless investigation, search officials have an obligation to investigate whether or not that vulnerability was exploited.

636 thoughts on “Were MH370 Searchers Unlucky, or Duped?”

  1. @Ventus

    If the searchers (the people writing the checks) were that smart, then they knew all along that they could rely on the Nuremberg Defense, and say they were only searching where they were told by the scientific community, and toss the geeks under the bus.

    That feels pretty good to me, actually.

  2. @DennisW said, “In August, 2015, Australia’s deputy prime minister Warren Truss declared, ‘The experts are telling us that there is a 97% possibility that it is in [the designated search] area.'”

    The probability was accurate if their assumptions about the type and number of manoeuvers were correct. The fact that the plane was not found suggests they were not. Yet, the assumptions are not challenged and the search was deemed unlucky. Very strange.

  3. @VictorI

    Your sensible comment aside the assignment of 97% to a possibility is bizarre. Possibilities are, by definition, 100%. Truss was reading a poorly worded script or else the reporters got it wrong. Who knows?

    We had the Bush years to live through. Every time he opened his mouth in public, I had to hold my breath.

  4. Should anyone still be interested and in spite of DennisW’s warning, I’ve uploaded a snapshot of the source code I use to generate flight paths, along with all supporting data files. I spent a fair bit of time cleaning out all the bits that depend on my local development environment but warts may remain. In case anyone wants to take a look or even give it a spin. Heck, for anyone who has taken leave of their senses, it can even generate an optimized route to Kazakhstan. YMMV. As usual, here’s my index page – the tarball and a README are at the top.

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/14hleZyx1pUPL44yaeHKt6jnSQ3DbgRq2zibbKkFLq2c/edit?pref=2&pli=1

  5. @VictorI
    Looking at FS9 PSS discontinuity behavior, and it seems to be magnetic heading at discontinuity, even if True is selected. If True is selected, the True heading value slowly drifts.

    The following waypoints get the plane going straight @180S right down the 92E line:
    NIXUL
    NISOK
    SELSU
    KETIV
    After KETIV discontinuity you can watch the drift off the longitude line.

    @SK999
    Thanks for re-posting the index

  6. @sk999 – did you run your code to tests optimal flight paths to Kazakhstan yourself? If so what might be these results or end point location ?

  7. @DennisW

    I don’t find your post “off the wall” at all. I find it truly encouraging – that we “egos-ex-post-facto” over here in “what-happenedville” might be considering the need to call in (and FUND) some ACTUAL experts. I’ve felt since mid-2015 that it was time to call in the cavalry as far as sonar (and many other variables) were concerned.

    So…

    …if the $75 million you mention – or any figure on that order – became available to the most qualified bidder, I wish to convey my sense that this mystery would be solved in (relatively) short order.

    I am thrilled to see on this forum the beginnings of a focus on fundraising for a new search with more experienced theorists and better equipment. Just thrilled.

  8. @sk999

    Thank you for sharing your valuable work as source code. Could you maybe host it on Github? Can I rewrite some of it as open-source Python modules? I’m trying to stitch IR imagery together and also do acoustic data analysis, and could use a path library.

  9. @TBill @VictorI

    Still noise about the kind of heading after an end-of-route or route discontinuity?
    Can you make this finally clear?

    Is it a constant true heading with switch to TRUE or not or a magnetic heading anyway whatever the TRUE/NORM switch position?

  10. @Ge Rijn: In the PMDG 777 model, the navigation system maintains a true heading after a route discontinuity, independent of the position of the HDG REF switch. There is no guarantee that this is also true for the real plane, although the model has been proven to be very accurate in modeling other aspects of automatic flight.

    I think it is more likely the plane was flown towards a distant waypoint beyond the point of fuel exhaustion, in which case it really doesn’t matter what the behavior is at a discontinuity.

  11. @VictorI

    Thank you. So it most probably is a constant TRUE heading after an EOR or RD.
    So a magnetic heading and consequently a curved flight path after an early (FMT?) EOR/RD won’t happen.
    Consequently I conclude all possible flight paths can only be (straight) flight paths not disturbed by magnetic variation.

    Then I also conclude there is no way to discriminate by this information if there was a consious pilot at the controls after an (early) EOR/RD.

    I rationalize that if a magnetic heading was what would happen after an (early) EOR/RD and the plane started drifting according the magnatic variations on the route to the SIO, this would be a clear indication no pilot inputs where made after EOR/RD so probably no consious pilot would be at the controls anymore.
    Now there is no way to tell I argue.
    Even in case of an entered distant waypoint which could have been done before FMT or some time after.

    But this information excludes magnetic headings and with it curved flight paths by magnetic variation after FMT.
    Is this correct?

  12. @Ge Rijn: If the simulator behavior is accurate, a magnetic heading or track would have to be selected by the pilot.

  13. @Ge Rijn
    MattM recently got an email note from Honeywell that suggested it could be Mag or True. That conflicts with the PMDG FSX simulator which suggests True Heading after discontinuity. So its an open issue as far as I know.

  14. @TBill: Unfortunately, the Honeywell source has been wrong before. Unless they either have access to the source code, have access to the detailed design specifications, or actually simulate a flight past a route discontinuity and look at the response as the wind and magnetic variation changes, I won’t put a lot of faith in the response. So I agree that the issue is still open.

  15. @Jeff @ VictorI
    What data does the RR engines transmit, via satellite? Very important at first turn back! Electronic control code: What circuits shut down with what abnormalities,even alternator exciter currents would be to prevent fire. The Doppler derived data is extracted ghost data, however the ” oil pressure, temperature, rpm,fuel consumption, etc is also contained within the handshake. I maintain the last desperate handshake was reporting final failure,fuel starvation. Why can’t we have the real data?

  16. @VictorI @TBill

    But then, how could the ATSB and partners ever decide it could only have been straight flight paths?
    Is it because no pilot would select a magnetic heading on a long distance flight to the South?
    Can we conclude by this one way or the other there was no magnetic heading after an EOR/RD?
    So no curved flight path occured after an (early) EOR/RD?

    I mean if the normal reaction of the FMC/AP would be a TRUE constant heading after EOR/RD and a (abnormal) magnetic heading had to be selected by a pilot, the latter is highly unlikely both by pilot logic and FMC/AP logic (yet still unknown) choice.

    I think this is very important to get absolutely clear. For it could mean the difference between quite some degrees in longitude where the plane could have crashed.

  17. kprostyakov,

    Feel free to do whatever you want with the code (fold, spindle multilate, or rewrite in Python.) The only part I didn’t write is the “plotchart” code, which I copied unaltered from the tklib package, just to save people the bother of having to fetch it themselves. (There may be a few other bits I grabbed from someone else, not sure.)

    I am not inclined to put it on Github since I already maintain it in a private code repository. I did just tag this particular version as 1.0, in case there is a need to distinguish from future versions.

  18. @Dave Opperman: The engine data is transmitted using the ACARS protocol over the SATCOM link. There were no ACARS data sets after 17:07 UTC.

  19. @Ge Rijn: If I am not mistaken, the DSTG assigned equal probabilities to the 5 roll modes: LNAV, MT, MH, TT, TH. For each mode, a number of manoeuvers was allowed according to an a prior probability distribution. So, all possible roll modes should have been included without making an assumption about whether or not there was pilot input.

    (I maintain the a priori distribution and choice of manoeuver types unrealistically penalized paths with a holding pattern.)

  20. @VictorI
    The whole point of the SAT handshakes is for RR to monitor their product. So the service provider gives us, eventually the ” ghost” offset data, however in-between the log on and log off the engine says? Hey I am number 2475 I have ok oil pressure ok temp ok blah blah log off. With a SAA 747 crash near Madagascar some years ago I got info from the engine manufacturer that ruled out engine failure. Why can’t they provide you with this data?

  21. @Dave Opperman,

    As @VictorI has said,”There were no ACARS data sets after 17:07 UTC”.

    The only reasons for subsequent log-ons occurring, were either SDU rebooting or periodic (~ hourly) GES initiated “Are you still there?” interrogations.

    These hourly interrogations were reset a couple of times due to GES to AES unanswered phone calls, i.e. the GES timer was reset.

  22. @Dave Opperman: In addition to what Barry said, the ACARS was likely manually disabled via the CDU by disabling all media (SATCOM, VHF, HF). What we are left with are the signaling data from the inactivity handshakes and unsuccessful voice calls. If we had the ACARS data, we would be in a much better place today.

  23. @Ge Rijn
    @VictorI

    The First Principles review (p. 16) says that the southern area, the one that has been thoroughly searched and now eliminated from consideration, was based on the assumption of the plane flying on LNAV or true track:

    “The southern portion of the search area which mainly encompasses the CTT and LNAV lateral control mode results has been thoroughly searched with underwater assets”

    It is more likely, however, that the plane was flying on magnetic heading:

    “During the First Principles Review meeting, flight crew with extensive experience on the aircraft type indicated that the aircraft is usually flown in the LNAV or CMH lateral control modes.”

    So, I have two questions:

    Why did the ATSB not get “flight crew advice” before investing the $200 m rather than when reviewing the unsuccessful investment?

    If it was LNAV, then what waypoint where they looking for?

    Essentially, magnetic heading now looks like a safe bet.

  24. @Nederland: I don’t think they were using waypoints in LNAV mode. Rather, they assumed that after each manoeuver, the plane started on a random track and then followed a great circle path until the next random manoeuver.

    If the assumptions used by the ATSB were accurate, there is little chance of finding the plane in the remaining area. It’s simply the next most likely area that has not yet been searched.

    Of course, I maintain that their assumptions, and in particular the type and number of manoeuvers they assumed, were wrong. For instance, throw in the possibility of a hold after 18:22, and the posterior probabilities change significantly. Rather than revisiting the assumptions, they believe they were just very unlucky.

  25. @Kenyon

    Thank you. I only have intermittent access to this blog.

    The lack of a formal report on the flaperon (chemical analysis of the barnacles aside) speaks volumes. It is probably on the same page as the failed SIO search.

    The fact that the French Prosecutor felt the need to travel to Malaysia where they were met by decidedly unco-operative Malaysian authorities is also a worry. Something about 9M-MRO is seriously amiss.

    Clearly the fidelity of criminal investigations is aided by keeping evidence underwraps. However no criminal prosecution has commenced re:9M-MRO. And transparency provided by Bellincat has aided the criminal case with MH17 (9M-MRD).

    I cannot answer your question why critical answers to the 9M-MRO mystery be withheld from the global community.

  26. From the ABC

    Malaysian Minister for Transport Minster Liow said his government had never made a decision about offering a reward.

    Reward retracted

    Last week the Malaysian Deputy (note “deputy”) Transport Minister Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said the Government was open to credible private companies searching for the plane, and would reward any that found its fuselage.

    The size of the reward had not been decided but today, Mr Liow said the statement had been a personal decision of the Deputy Minister.

    Malaysian Minister for Transport Minster Liow said his government had never made a decision about offering a reward. (ABC News: Briana Shepherd)

    “The Government has not made any decision … it was the Deputy Minister’s personal view, not the Government’s, we are not having any of the such decision,” he said.

    So, so much for that idea. Deputy says one thing – the “boss” says someting else, and Najib ? Who knows, who cares.

  27. @VictorI @all
    Interesting finding: below link shows flying FS9 with real-time monitoring of flight progress on Google Earth. This is done using a common utility program called FlightSim Commander. Flying on DennisW’s McMurdo path variation (COCOS to NZPG) and the Sun is coming up while I contemplate trying to land in the trench beside Batavia Seamount while out of fuel (I missed).

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/12OCy4EyEuJuoNIcXfY4JBlqEtg4yVjHxOETsPulmkZE/edit

    Those of us with specific underwater targets are wondering if there is a way to target Google Earth features while flying, so there you have it. Don’t know if a real aircraft could see this screen somehow on a laptop.

  28. @Ventus

    “Malaysian Minister for Transport Minster Liow said his government had never made a decision about offering a reward.

    Reward retracted”

    No surprise. The Malays do not want the plane to be found.

    Interestingly, my CPA says a reward of this type is taxable (net of expenses) at both the federal level as well as the state of California. No surprise there either. You would end up with less than half of any reward by the time the dust settles.

    About the only rewards that are not currently taxed are credit card rewards which are still considered to be in the rebate category. Maybe instead of ringgits you could have gotten frequent flyer miles from MAS, but now, nada.

  29. @DennisW

    “The Malays do not want the plane to be found”. Yet the French always wanted to find AF447. So it seems something very different is going on.

  30. @DennisW: The retraction of the reward is the most honest thing I have seen them do. Which is why it surprised me.

  31. @David: Your notes are helpful and have given me more to think about. This might be a productive line of inquiry.

    You said, “All AC power would be lost quickly as engine speed decayed, aircraft speed being beneath that for a RR windmilling start, ie 250 knots. FCOMs warn of loss of pitot heat on dual engine failure which is evidence that the backup generators would not stay on line long. This does not gel with [VictorI]s PMDG 777s, backup generators on/off at 7.4/24/195 ie these came off line at 195 knots.

    First, a small point. The 195 knots was based on quasi-steady conditions. At N2=24%, the backup generators cycle on/off. Because of the rotational inertia of the engine, this may not occur at exactly 195 knots.

    But what is in the FCOM is not at odds with what I observed in the PMDG 777 model. With the A/P engaged, the altitude is held constant as the speed bleeds off. This continues until N2 falls below 24% at roughly 195 knots. Then, the backup generators cycle off, the transfer busses go down, the A/P disengages, pitot heating is lost, and the flight control mode goes to Secondary. What happens next is a strong function of where the stabilizer trim goes. If it remains at 195 knots, the plane enters a smooth descent. If it goes to something higher, the nose will go down, the descent increases, and a damped phugoid proceeds, the initial amplitude dependent on the difference between the speed and the stabilizer trim speed.

    An interesting behavior results if the IDGs, the backup generators, and the APU are all not supplying power. When the RAT comes online, it supplies hydraulic pressure only to the Center (C) subsystem. The left and not the right elevator is supplied by the C hydraulics. Similarly, the right flaperon is supplied, but not the left. So depending on the coordination between the elevators and the flaperon in Secondary mode, flying only on RAT power with no pilot input could induce a roll.

    I am trying to reconcile this with the Level D simulations that Mike Exner witnessed. It is possible that the steep banks he saw were not due to residual rudder trim. In one simulation, an engine restart with bleed air from the APU contributed to a steep bank. It is possible that asymmetric elevator action might have also contributed.

    The more I sink into this, the more complicated I find this to be.

  32. @VictorI: “So depending on the coordination between the elevators and the flaperon in Secondary mode, flying only on RAT power with no pilot input could induce a roll. ”

    I have some difficulty understanding that sentence. With no pilot input, what would cause the elevator and flaperon activity? With no pilot input, wouldn’t the flaperon move only to maintain zero roll rate?

  33. @David
    Good comments. Believe the RAT has a button for manual deployment, so that could be planned ahead. Don’t forget of course Gimli glider story so we are not expecting an uncontrollable situation (except if no pilot is alive). Believe Byron Bailey was suggesting dive to get more power, not sure if he was thinking IDG source.

    PSS 777 model does not seem to suggest a problem with cabin depressurization when the engines go out. Someone had speculated that earlier.

  34. @Gysbreght: I shouldn’t have used the word “coordination” because it implies coordination between yaw and roll to minimize slip in a turn. That’s not really what I mean.

    In the PMDG 777 model, when the hydraulic power is only supplied by the RAT, the right elevator, which has no hydraulic pressure, moves down, which raises the right wing and lowers the left, and the plane banks towards the left. I don’t know if this is accurately replicated.

    I am interested in this effect because I am trying to understand what caused the steep banks in the Level D simulations that Mike witnessed. I am not so sure it was only due to rudder trim residual.

  35. From Bloomberg:

    On Monday, the bureau’s chief commissioner expressed confidence that the plane probably lies in that new zone.

    “It’s highly likely that the area now defined by the experts contains the aircraft but that’s not absolutely for certain,” Greg Hood told reporters.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-23/mh370-search-crews-return-to-port-after-fruitless-hunt-ends

    He is smart enough to not recommend that the search be expanded to the new zone. He knows it will likely be just more egg on his face.

    He doesn’t explain why the plane might not be in the new zone. If he did, he would have to concede that the models used by the experts are fundamentally flawed.

  36. @VictorI: “I am interested in this effect because I am trying to understand what caused the steep banks in the Level D simulations that Mike witnessed. I am not so sure it was only due to rudder trim residual.”

    I thought the reason for Mike’s steep banks was settled long ago. If it had been “rudder trim residual”, it would have depended on which engine failed first. That was not the case. The airplane always banked in the direction of the rudder trim, that had been deliberately set to 1 unit right to make sure that the airplane would bank and turn.

    That rudder trim caused the airplane to bank immediately to 30° right, entering a turn that was tighter than any of the 10 Boeing simulations shown in figure 6 of the Nov. 2, 2016 report of the ATSB: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jqb8uufudy59ft7/Schermafdruk%202017-01-22%2011.23.06.png?dl=0

    Note that in the ATSB graph the results have all been aligned to the point two minutes after the loss of power from the engines. This is the theorised time at which the 7th arc transmissions would have been sent.

    That point is marked as a small red open square in the trajectory of Mike’s simulation. Two minutes after the second flame-out Mike had turned through 200°, versus less than 70° in all the Boeing simulations.

  37. @Gysbreght: By rudder trim residual, I mean the difference between the exact rudder trim to cancel the aircraft “bend” and the selected rudder trim, which was only 1/2 of a unit in the Level D simulations. This has nothing to do with TAC and is independent of the order of engine flameout. I suspect this effect is second order compared to other effects that might have caused the steep bank. For instance, we know that attempted engine restarts caused steep banks in some of the Level D simulations.

  38. BBC Singapore article
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38647775

    Has an questionable phrase I’ve been hearing more often lately:

    “Many have speculated about a pilot murder/suicide, but this has been ruled out by most informed observers. There’s no evidence pointing to such intentions, and we know from the fact the plane broke up on impact that it was not being controlled at the time.”

    I heard another version of this statement in the Washington Post recently in a comment section (by a well-known mechanical failure theorist) and I attempted to defend my home turf.

    John Goglia, a safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, had recently been quoted as saying (paraphrasing) many equally possible causes with nothing ruled out including pilot suicide. I’d thought he was being generous since I see intentional diversion as the most likely theory.

  39. @VictorI: A Level D simulator is not “bent”. The EXCEL file clearly states in Cell C10: “1st Eng Flame Out; TAC moves from 1 degree rt to 2 degrees left; fuel flow increases to left eng.”, and after the 2nd flame out in Cell C16 “RAT power up; Instruments back on; TAC indicating 1 deg right”.

    Then you write: “For instance, we know that attempted engine restarts caused steep banks in some of the Level D simulations.” How do you restart a main engine with both main tanks dry? I’m aware of only one of Mike’s simulations which sounded more like an operator error than an engine restart.

  40. @TBill

    “John Goglia, a safety consultant and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, had recently been quoted as saying (paraphrasing) many equally possible causes”

    The NTSB is a joke. This is the agency that was completely bamboozled by the auto manufacturers into mandating an expensive and profitable add-on, ABS, that study after study shows does not work.

    As a general rule when I see government employment on a person’s resume, my immediate reaction is that they are probably not very smart.

  41. @TBill

    quote from your link:

    “And this view is shared by many in Canberra who say that the Australian government has waned in its enthusiasm because of the unfair criticism of the ATSB’s efforts by local media.”

    Unfair criticism???

    The simple truth is a leadership vacuum within the ATSB that extends all the way to the PM of Australia. Malaysia has been demonstratively uncooperative and deceitful as a search partner, and the Aussies have done nothing to remedy it.

    My own opinion is that the Australian media has cut the ATSB far more slack than it deserves.

    The decision to suspend the search, while correct, is logically inconsistent with having started the search. It is simply not possible to predict what the ATSB will or will not do.

  42. @Gysbreght: I understand that a simulator is not “bent”. In the simulations, there was one-half unit of manual trim added. This represents an out-of-trim of one-half unit, which would correspond to either an under-trim or over-trim of one-half unit for a real plane. The TAC correction is automatically applied in addition to the manual trim. In the simulation you cite, the TAC correction is 3 units, and is removed after the second engine flameout, returning the rudder trim to what was manually selected before the first flameout.

    In the Level D simulations, there were clearly automatic restarts attempted using APU bleed air for which thrust was produced, and this caused the bank angle to increase. The restarts failed, and the APU stopped soon after.

  43. @TBill

    quote from linked article:
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-23/mh370-higly-likely-to-be-north-of-search-zone-atsb-says/8205412

    But Mr Chester said the decision to suspend the search was not just about money.

    “This is not primarily about cost at all, it’s about a whole range of factors — we certainly don’t want to raise false hope amongst the next of kin.”

    end-quote//

    Guess what? It is about the money, and not wanting to look even more dumb that you are already perceived to be. Blaming it on not wanting to raise false hope is an unbelievably lame thing to say, and an insult to anyone’s intelligence.

    Why not just “man up” and tell the truth – “hey, we made a bad decision, and we are not going to let sunk cost distort our judgement going forward.”

  44. @SteveBarratt

    France was highly motivated to find AF447 because the A330 aircraft was manufactured by Airbus. There was a known issue with pitot tube icing in the A330 and ACARS maintenance messages sent at the time of the upset of AF447 indicated this problem happened. What was not clear was why this resulted in a crash, which turned out to be caused by the crew holding the aircraft in a deep stall until impact. This was a recoverable upset. It was clear from the ACARS data that this would be a problem for Airbus and Air France. France is a global leader in aviation and committed to finding the root cause. Very professional.

    MH370 has different motivation or lack there of. ICAO regulations make Malaysian Airlines responsible for the loss to certain coverage limits per person. They are insured for this. If a crew suicide was proved by a FDR this would void insurance and be a huge liability for MY – best never to know.

    The fact that MH370 flew for 7 hours after going dark somewhat protects Boeing from any liability – if FDR data showed a mechanical cause, it would be best for Boeing to not have this confirmed. Victims families would love to sue Boeing in a U.S. court – but hard to do with no data.

    China contributed to search to show their own people they care, even if they don’t.

    Australia really stepped up to ICAO responsibilities with money and leadership. But enough is enough when they have no actual stake in the outcome.

    So it really doesn’t matter to Malaysia, China, or Boeing if Russia flew it to Kazakhstan or if it fell into the SIO.

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