Two, maybe three things may now help MH370 search
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The typical sea state of the South Indian Ocean in the search area
There are a number of reasons to think the search for missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 may be taking a turn for the better.
The JACC or Joint Agency Coordination Centre has confirmation that the sea bed search is now in the area predicted for the point of impact, if not controlled ditching, by a British pilot Captain Simon Hardy almost a year ago.
China has also agreed, at last, to put a reported $20 million and an extra ship into the search, after it seems watching askance at the Malaysia directed Australia performed effort, which until now has been jointly funded by Kuala Lumpur and Canberra.
And it seems highly likely, but not yet confirmed, that better sonar scanning equipment will soon be deployed to look more closely at suspicious objects seen but not resolved in close detail by current equipment on the ocean floor.
The report of China agreeing to become materially involved came out of the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur. More detail, and perhaps a degree of urgency, would be welcome.
If Captain Hardy is correct, and he has certainly been methodical, logical and persuasive except when it came to getting through to the searchers, then the heavy sunk wreckage of the missing Boeing 777-200ER and the flight recorders and the remains and telephone and tablet chips belong to the 239 people on board flight MH370 should be located before Christmas.
MH370 was operating the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route on 8 March 2014 when it vanished as a transponder identified flight on air traffic control screen while over the Gulf of Thailand.
Success isn’t a certainty. The wreckage may have come to rest just outside the area calculated by Captain Hardy, or the assumptions he has made might in one or more critical elements, be wrong.
There could be a big ‘gotcha’ factor in this perplexing disappearance, something not known to the searchers, that might change the big picture. However nothing seems likely to change the broad satellite signal analysis that says MH370 flew for seven hours 39 minutes (or so) after takeoff, and was only heard by a communications satellite parked over the west Indian Ocean which at the time of the flight’s impact, had to be around 44 degrees elevation above its horizon.
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Unfortunately, another crew member has fallen ill and Discovery is again headed back to port.
It is encouraging that the Chinese are chipping in. What remains to be seen is whether this is part of an ongoing commitment with further funding as required, or, is this just one off or token gesture?
Lets see, 100 million plus spent so far?
Chinese chipping in 14 million, hmmm, big spenders what.
And of course when its not found it was “just outside the area”.
Of course if I knew where it was supposed to be, I could come up with methodology to prove its around there.
Well no I won’t, I don’t have the time and whatever it takes.
Ditched, hmmm
These medical evacuations are delaying the MH370 search.
After the vessel Fugro Discovery completed the six-day journey from Fremantle to the search zone on November 3, the very next day a crew member suffered appendicitis, so the the ship had to return to Fremantle.
No sooner than it resupplied and returned to the search zone, another crew member has fallen ill. The JACC press release only says the latest sick crew member is suffering “severe pain”.
It would pay them to keep a smaller medical evacuation ship in the search zone so the main vessel doesn’t have to abandon search operations.
I thought the Discovery had a helipad.?
Dan Dair,
I believe the problem is range. From the search area the distances, and headwind components, would play havoc with the lower level flying conditions and endurance, and I think in most scenarios, there would need to be several stages via other ships. Add in the time taken to find and set up such a supply line and the time savings and the risks would really add up.
According to the JACC, each journey to or from the search zone takes six days.
This month they’ve made four of those journeys without getting any useful work done. That’s 24 days of journey time wasted.
I assume when they get to Fremantle they won’t leave the following day. All in all, the specialist ship Fugro Discovery has lost about a month of useful service. Its expensive equipment, such as the SeaKing TowFish is out of action.
The cost? I don’t know.
But it can’t cost more than keeping a cheaper non-specialised evacuation ship in the search zone ready for when crew get tummy aches.
Wouldn’t it make most sense to send a rescue-vessel out from Fremantle, to meet Discovery half way.?
Discovery could save its valuable time by only travelling part way back to port.
Indeed, if the rescue-vessel carried a helicopter, it could fly the last ‘safe’ distance to Discovery. There it could re-fuel & return to the rescue-vessel with the patient, thus saving still more of Discovery’s time & speeding-up the transfer of the patient back to land.
This could be further improved, if necessary, by flying the patient directly to hospital, once the rescue-vessel was close-enough.?
Dan,
Perth isn’t just a long way from alternate airports for flight planning purposes, but potentially weeks away from any additional shipping resources that might happen to be suddenly available.
It isn’t a centre of the universe. It is, in manner of speaking, a rather small city in the middle of nowhere, in world terms, adjacent to a sea which is vast, and largely unsurveyed despite the comparatively minuscule efforts of the MH370 search.
I think if this was a North Atlantic maritime search what you propose would be a given and have been easily accomplished. I tried to do a rough calculation, and I think a time saving for the types of helicopters around here would amount to maybe 18 hours over sailing all the way.
The usual way to get helicopters to Australia by the way is to either put them inside a large air freighter, or in the hold of a ship. Choppers rarely do long distance flights, and then only with auxiliary tanks, not fitted out with medical support modules.
Ben,
That’s a reasonable point,
on the other hand, as Comet has suggested, the costs of Discovery not being on-station must be enormous & of course the associated lack-of-progress must have a value of some description too.?
Perhaps it would prove to be ‘cost-effective’ to have an ocean-going rescue-vessel stationed in Fremantle to mitigate future similar problems with any of the vessels involved in the ocean-floor search.?
@ Tango
Officially $180m spent so far. Presumably AUD?
@ Ben
And if not found by Christmas, about 11 days away as I write, what then?
I don’t think people have put 2+2 together yet.
The ATSB report dated 26 June 2014 concluded the later stages of flight were characteristic of hypoxic unresponsive crew.
The more recent report of 3 December 2015 concluded double flame out from fuel starvation, also characteristic of terminal hypoxic flight.
The latest report also postulates prolonged electrical failure before 18:25.
Attempted SAT phone calls to MH370 at 18:29 received responses with Power Management error codes. The second call did not connect by the way to the IFE, it connected to the CCS (Crew Communications System) or flight attendant position in plain English.
If the SDU could not connect to the cockpit because of failure to the forward power relay, then it would automatically try to redirect to the Cabin Crew.
Back to the Main Point:
If the flight is bracketed either end by massive electrical failure at the start & flame out after hypoxic flight, then the alleged detour through the Straits of Malacca and all the satellite signal values inferring a flight west may just be no more than an electrical failure.
The report of 3 December 2015 also dismisses the famed Lido Hotel radar image previously treated as Gospel Truth. In light of which there is no radar evidence at all, just Malaysian hearsay, which is about as credible as cheese on the Moon.
I gather you have a view on this Ben that ATSB are still looking in the right place?
If they find nothing by Christmas Ben please tell us your next position then?
Simon,
Not only is the search dragging on, but so is your electrical fire/decompression scenario, which remains totally lacking in any convincing specifics.
To be capable of analysis surely you need to link the disconnection of the main ACARS data prior to the flight diverting.
(Was the burn through related to that, if so how?)
Then you have to relate it to the actual diversion of the flight, which occurred well before a brief SDU event at the same time the last claim of a radar trace is made by the Malaysia air force.
(If the burn through occurred then it can’t have been related to the diversion).
Then we have the final electrical system anomalies associated it is thought with the flameout of each engine around 15 minutes apart. That sequence of events doesn’t need to be related to anything else, although it may be, as it is hard wired so to speak in the programmed responses of a 777 to a massive mechanical crisis upon the loss of power generation by both engines.
Whatever the merits of the suppositions you make, they are vague, the timing is all over the shop, there is no explanation as which part burned through and how it then affected anything, and it seems inconsistent or unlinked to the earlier events, even though it may be.
This lack of precision and timing on your part makes it very difficult to take it seriously, even though the flight may well have been a zombie flight as the tabloids call it, leaving open the simpler explanation that someone who knew how to fly a 777 determined when the cabin would have been depressurised and then turned the jet on its course to oblivion.
Why should we believe your more complex and vaguer scenario? Is there a single piece of evidence of a fire on board?
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