Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost

[WillowRun 6-3]

Four (4) questions, going forward

Soon a full month will have lapsed. The wisdom of the aviators who have populated this forum in its past few years compels not drawing conclusions absent facts. Typically the set of facts which the professionals await are those reduced to published form by one or another of the various national air accident investigation boards (e.g., National Transportation Safety Board, for the United States). It is no small irony that the professionals' "Rumour" message board has yielded up, in this thread, a great deal of technical, scientific, engineering, and flight operations information of a factual nature (some poor fraction of which has been understood here). And some rolls of tin foil (all literally incomprehensible, here).

Thinking about the systemic governance implications presented by the present situation, and in urgent anticipation of facts pronounced by the pertinent official bodies, four questions of material relevance seem worthy of posting. (By "systemic governance" I mean the web, the system, of legal and juridical structures which govern how these processes go forward, such as ICAO annexes, other bilateral and multinational agreements (as in the S&R context (discussed boatloads of posts ago)), operating protocols for INMARSAT resources, and similar 'arrangements' all the way down to interagency operating protocols as between NTSB and FAA.)

1. Is there any precedent for the accident investigation and reporting process to be undertaken on a multi-national basis, jointly and severally shared and operated? Understanding that Malaysia has "first in line" jurisdiction (for lack of a better descriptive term), the locus of facts spans an unprecedented scope of nation-state jurisdiction. And the technical aspects are becoming immensely complex. The INMARSAT analyses alone argue for a "deep bench" of investigatory and fact-finding national air accident board expertise. Would ICAO appear equipped and prepared to innovate and provide an organizational situs for a multi-national inquiry board? (Note: "locus" is legal terminology for "place"; "situs" similarly means place but generally connotes a more specific location (just in case legalese is not your first language).)

2. Posters galore have written, or speculated, about national air defense capabilities, practices, and the like. And such have noted the quite significant reluctance of nations to air this out, even when prompted by the given incident. So: is there precedent, in any air accident inquiry anywhere, for an executive or classified component to be reserved for such sensitive matters? Governing boards of institutions as relatively straight-forward as a municipal public library routinely move to closed session to discuss sensitive matters (such as personnel decisions). What if anything precludes examining all the radar (and even the hypothecated fighter intercept, tin foil wings or not) data in closed session and issuing the ultimate inquiry board report in bifurcated form?

3. The given incident does appear to break new ground (or new space, if you prefer) in the application of satellite orbital dynamics and parameters, and data communications protocols, to a search and rescue situation. The criticisms leveled at the public dissemination of information by the Malaysian government might be better understood if one takes into account SPECIFICALLY what data the Malaysians had received from INMARSAT on a very detailed timeline basis. In other words unless one knows the PRECISE state of information flow from 'Marsat to Malay at a given moment in time, it is not valid to critique Malaysia's pronouncements. It is way too easy to unconsciously impute information to the Malaysians which they actually did not receive until later. Thus: is there precedent for any air accident inquiry board to coordinate closely with the INMARSAT organization so as to acquire an officially validated timeline of information flow to an S&R entity? If this has not been done previously, does it not lend further support to the structuring and convening of a multi-national inquiry board for this incident? (Editorial comment: once more, the roots of the law applicable to international civil aviation and aeronautics - Admiralty Jurisdiction - are plain to see for those who will look - INMARSAT which began operating in orbit in the late 1970s was and is a project of the Int'l Maritime Organization.)

4. The air carrier representative body, IATA, has proclaimed the need to augment data link capacities of certificated air transport category aircraft. Presumably advocates for implementation of such a shift in data link technologies and operations would advocate also for making things change much more rapidly than the way things usually have worked in such matters. Hence: is there any established vehicle for taking the accepted inter-agency coordination of the NTSB and FAA with respect to changes in airworthiness certification stemming from air accident inquiry findings, and "scaling such coordination up" to a more global, at least multi-national level? Presumably ICAO (again) would provide the situs for such an effort of multiple nations and multiple agencies (sovereign as well as multi-national in form).