PM makes it clear, MH370 search cannot continue at current costs
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After a somewhat untidy handling of its attitude to the search for MH370 this week, Australia’s PM Tony Abbott has made it clear the government will wind it back rather than abandon it should nothing be found in the near future.
In an address to Parliament marking the first anniversary of the airliner’s disappearance Mr Abbott said “the search cannot continue at its current intensity forever.”
However he underlined the hope that the current search, investigating a priority search area in the southern Indian Ocean, would succeed in finding the lost Malaysia Airlines 7770-200ER which vanished while flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing with 239 people on board on 8 March last year.
Shortly before he spoke the Joint Agency Coordination Centre released examples of the sightings of objects of interest on the sea floor that were being picked up by side scanning sonar devices. The top of page image is of a category three finding, of objects that stood out from their surroundings but need not necessarily be man made, and the more enigmatic category two image below is of an object (or objects) that appears to be man made.
No additional explanation of both images is immediately available, but the category system was outlined in more detail before a Senate Estimates hearing last week by Peter Foley, the ATSB crash investigator directing the Australian led search operation.
Both images were made in complete darkness by synthetic aperture sonar scanning devices towed by GO Phoenix one of four vessels engaged in the deep sea search.
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The most plausible theory, by 777 pilot Captain Simon Hardy, says the aircraft is only 20 nautical miles from the area already searched.
If Abbott stopped the search now, he would make Australia the laughing stock of the world. As soon as the Australian search stopped, someone else would move in and quickly locate the wreckage.
Abbott might cut back the Australian search effort until it’s no longer effective. He could turn leave a token search vessel out there, making it a Clayton’s search… The search you have when you’re not having a search, avoiding harsh international headlines.
Captain Simon Hardy’s theory matches up so well mathematically that its the best lead yet. Australia can’t give up the search now.
And does a pilot have a better take than the rest or just another guess?
Flight global
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/analysis-the-state-of-the-search-for-mh370-on-the-anniversary-of-its-409822/
Report in our paper that the former chief pilot of MA thinks it was done by the crew and specifically the pilot.
I just looked at location of Penang Island, Hardy has an interesting point in that regard.
I don’t know that it gives us any insight into his other calculation as to where MH370 may have wound up
I felt it was pilot hi-jack after day 2 when the sequence of shutdown on the ACARs and Transponder was revealed but that gives me no special understanding on what happened after.
While Penang certainly has a resonance, that in turn does not lead to any logic of what he would have done next as he would have been a mass murderer and that has no logic.
You can’t build logic out of illogical actions.
And for those who continue to think he set it down, the ELTs would have gone off (two) and those he could not disable (short of accessing and pulling the batteries , they are automatic set off by G force. You can trigger them off manually from the cockpit I believe but no other control.
ELTs have failed to go off in all hard crashes as they are not intended to work in that mode, set down has to be under some semblance of control to both trigger and have structure left that has the antennae leads intact.
Upside down, various vertical even as they trigger the system is ripped apart and you get nothing. There are satellites in the right orbit to pick up anything.
AF447 had nothing, Egypt Air had nothing as were all the other catastrophic crashes I know of.
Of course that lets the question what good are they?
they work in light aircraft but not for heavy (or where they trigger we know where they are)
Having lost the Air France Flight 447 in the ocean, MH370 in the ocean and now Air Asia QZ8501 in the ocean.
I doubt anyone can argue that we should not have live streaming of data from black boxes to satellites when flying over ocean.
Automatically turn off the streaming to satellites when flying over land to save costs and that fact that anything crashing over land will be found quite easily.
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