Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

MH370: Missing jet 'could be further north'
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
The crashed remains from the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 could be as much as 500km further north than the current search area, say scientists in Italy.

Their assessment is based on the location of confirmed debris items and computer modelling that incorporates ocean and weather data.

They say this has allowed them to determine where the plane most likely hit the water and where future aircraft fragments might wash up.

The MH370 search will soon be halted.

The Malaysia Airlines flight disappeared in March 2014, en route from Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in China, with 239 passengers and crew on board.

Authorities have agreed that "in the absence of new credible evidence" the effort to find the plane on the ocean floor west of Australia

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once a zone covering 120,000 square km has been fully surveyed.

That could happen in the next few weeks.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is co-ordinating the search, has

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it is looking in the most plausible place.

A team led by Eric Jansen, from the

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in Italy, is the latest to try its hand at using modelling to identify the impact site.

The approach relies on two years of high-resolution data that describe the currents and wind conditions across the Indian and Southern oceans.

Multiple simulations were used to predict where objects might drift given different starting points.

These forecasts were then analysed and the greatest weight given to those tracks that best matched the locations of known MH370 debris items.

These are the parts of the Boeing 777, such as an engine cowling and wing flap, that have since washed up on the beaches of Africa and Indian-ocean islands.

The conclusion is that main wreckage of the plane is likely to be in the wide search area between 28 degrees South and 35 degrees South that was designated by crash investigators.

However, only the southern end of this zone - a priority segment between 32 degrees South and 35 degrees South - is currently being surveyed by underwater cameras and detectors.

This still leaves a swathe of ocean floor to the north where Dr Jansen and colleagues say MH370 could possibly be resting today undiscovered.

One of the advantages of the type of model produced by the team is that its solutions can be updated as more debris is found.

"We use the location where debris is found to create a ranking of the different simulations. So, the simulations that cause debris in all of the locations where this material was found - we rank those higher; and the ones that are not as good at predicting the locations of the debris - we rank them lower.

"And then we combine the result. This has the benefit that if new debris is found we only have to repeat the ranking, which is very fast, while the simulations of drift over two years take several hours."

This means also that should more debris come to light, the model will refine its solution for where in the ocean the missing jet is most likely to be found.

And given that the underwater search is about to be suspended, Dr Jansen says perhaps greater effort should now be directed towards finding more washed-up debris.

It is an endeavour that would be low-cost, he argues, but would very much aid the type of research he does, while at the same time possibly yielding additional information on the state of the aircraft in its final moments.

Such inferences can be gleaned by examining materials for tell-tale damage.

Dr Jansen and colleagues have

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.

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MH370 was flown into water, says Canadian air crash expert

A world-leading air crash investigator has said he believes flight MH370 was deliberately flown into the sea.

Larry Vance told Australian news programme

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that erosion along the trailing edge of recovered wing parts indicated a controlled landing.

The Boeing 777 disappeared while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board in March 2014.

The official investigation team has said it is investigating whether the plane was piloted in its final moments.

An Australian-led search for the missing jet has focused on an area of the ocean floor 2,000km (1,242 miles) off Australia's west coast. The zone was selected based on the theory the flight was running on autopilot after veering off course.

But an official co-ordinating the search effort told 60 Minutes the wreckage could be outside that search zone, if someone had been in control of the plane when it crashed.

'Controlled crash'
Mr Vance was formerly investigator-in-charge for the Canadian Aviation Safety Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, and has led more than 200 air crash investigations.

He was the chief author of a report into the 1998 SwissAir Flight 111 crash off Nova Scotia, Canada which killed 229 people. The force of that crash broke the plane into more than two million pieces.

He told 60 Minutes that an absence of such wreckage was one factor suggesting MH370 landed in controlled circumstances.

"Somebody was flying the airplane at the end of its flight," he said.

"Somebody was flying the airplane into the water. There is no other alternate theory that you can follow."

Flaperon extended
Despite the extensive search of the southern Indian Ocean, no trace of the aircraft was found until the discovery of a wing section called a flaperon

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.

According to Mr Vance, photographs of the recovered flaperon show a jagged edge, suggesting high-pressure water erosion that could only be caused if someone had been guiding the plane into the ocean.

"The force of the water is really the only thing that could make that jagged edge that we see. It wasn't broken off. If it was broken off, it would be a clean break. You couldn't even break that thing."

He said the fact the flaperon had apparently been deployed for landing also indicated that someone was piloting the plane when it hit the ocean.

"You cannot get the flaperon to extend any other way than if somebody extended it," he said.

"Somebody would have to select it."

'Looking for evidence'
Mr Vance's theory is the latest to emerge on what has become one of aviation's greatest unsolved mysteries.

The search for MH370 has been combing a 120,000sq km area of seabed using underwater drones and sonar equipment deployed from specialist ships.

It is expected to draw to a close by the end of the year if it does not find credible new evidence.

Peter Foley, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's (ATSB) programme director of the search, told 60 Minutes that the type of damage the flaperon sustained provided evidence for the controlled landing theory.

Mr Foley was asked: "If there was a rogue pilot, isn't it possible that the plane was taken outside the parameters of the search area?"

He replied: "Yeah — if you guided the plane or indeed control-ditched the plane, it has an extended range, potentially."

"There is a possibility… somebody [was] in control at the end and we are actively looking for evidence to support that."

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delft said:

Am I the only one still interested in MH370?
Again from the BBC website:

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bluewater2012 said:

I just came across this news today and in that interesting short video interview, someone mentioned near toward the end of the video according to the debris he had found, he did not believed the pilots attempted suicide but rather an high speed forceful impact.

link below:

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B.I.B. said:

I can't get any sound, but surely a forceful high speed impact is most likely going to result in death or injury. Why not attempt a controlled slow ditching like Cpn Sullenburger who landed his plane on the Hudson

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delft said:

If the automatic pilot was flying the plane after the engines quit it would result in a high speed impact. How was that thing programmed?

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B.I.B. said:

I can't get any sound, but surely a forceful high speed impact is most likely going to result in death or injury. Why not attempt a controlled slow ditching like Cpn Sullenburger who landed his plane on the Hudson

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Air Force Brat said:

not necessarily, the auto pilot is designed primarily to hold altitude, attitude, and heading, once the engines quit, the auto pilot would likely, (correct me if I'm wrong), attempt to maintain altitude first, which would necessitate a "pitch increase" to the best glide speed.

If that were the case that would likely be around 150knts clean, actually prolly 165knts or so, and if in fact the autopilot maintained function, it would result in a fairly flat impact onto the water. Now, if as we suspect the pilot, suffocated all the passengers, co-pilot with that zoom climb into the "stratos-phere", by bleeding the pressurization system in the aft cabin, and continued to remain in control of the aircraft, he would have likely allowed the auto-pilot to fly the airplane as long as there were fuel remaining.

That we see the tremendous "trailing edge erosion" on the flapperons, suggest that he deployed the flapperon's to add lift and reduce "touch down" speed, the center fuse/trailing edges of the flaps would contact the water first, at prolly 135knts or so, the pilot cranking on as much "alpha" as possible with-out dragging the tail in the water.

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SYDNEY (AP) — A wing flap that washed ashore on an island off Tanzania has been identified as belonging to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Australian officials said Thursday.

The flap was found in June by residents on Pemba Island off the coast of Tanzania, and officials had previously said it was highly likely to have come from the missing Boeing 777. An analysis by experts at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is heading up the search for the plane, subsequently confirmed the part was indeed from the aircraft, the agency said in a statement.

Several pieces of wreckage suspected to have come from the plane have washed ashore on coastlines around the Indian Ocean since the aircraft vanished with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

The wing flap brings to five the number of pieces of debris the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has determined are almost certainly, or are definitely, from Flight 370. Another piece of wing found a year ago on La Reunion Island, near Madagascar, was positively identified by French officials.

Search officials expect more wreckage to wash up in the months ahead. But so far, none of the debris has helped narrow down the precise location of the main underwater wreckage.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau anticipates search crews will complete their sweep of the 120,000-square kilometer (46,000-square mile) search zone in the Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast by December.

Meanwhile, oceanographers have been analyzing the wing flaps from La Reunion and Tanzania in the hope of identifying a possible new search area through drift modeling. But a new search would require a new funding commitment, with Malaysia, Australia and China agreeing in July that the $160 million hunt will be suspended once the current stretch of ocean is exhausted unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location of the aircraft.

Earlier this week, relatives of some of the passengers on board the plane met with officials from the transport bureau and asked that more potential debris found around the Indian Ocean be examined. The families believe those items may help provide clues to the plane's location.

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​

ibtimes said:

New pieces of airplane debris – suspected to be that of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 – found off the Madagascar coast in Africa show signs of damage due to fire or intense heat. If confirmed to be from the doomed flight, the pieces could prove vital in resolving the mystery, American lawyer Blaine Gibson has said.

He reportedly handed over the pieces to Australian authorities in Canberra on Monday (12 September) for further investigations.

Gibson, a self-funded MH370 investigator, said that the

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most likely belong to a flight's avionics bay, which is located below the cockpit under the main cabin floor. He said that the piece could prove to be the first evidence suggesting a fire on board the Boeing 777 that can be cause of the flight's disappearance.

He handed the pieces of debris to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading investigations into the Beijing-bound flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur, which disappeared on 8 March 2014 with 239 passengers and crew members on board. Australian authorities are searching for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean, but have discovered nothing as yet in the past two years.

"I am bringing these [new pieces of debris] over to ATSB, which will give the absolute best forensic analysis and investigation possible," Blaine told the

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.

"There are two that have burned and singe marks on them, and if those are found to be from Malaysia 370 and if it is discovered that the fire took place before the crash, then this is a real game changer that could help identify what was the cause of the planes demise," he noted.

The latest pieces of debris have a honeycomb pattern, which resembles some of the unique panelling used in the Boeing 777 avionics bay. The pieces were found by three residents of the town of Saint Luce on the south east coast of Madagascar.

When asked why he wanted to hand over the parts to Australian authorities instead of Malaysian authorities, Blaine said that authorities in the Asian country have not yet collected pieces that he had

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.

"Malaysia is yet to pick up five pieces I found there three months ago," Gibson told

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on Sunday (11 September) night after reaching Australia. Among those five, is a piece that resembles an aircraft seat part that he suspects could have come off following the plane's sudden and powerful impact with the ocean.

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