Kharon - Coincidence is a queer thing; most of the famous detectives won't have a bar of it. MOU - Date, timing and wording – but "shadow" arrangements do not, in any way deflect the liability of the 'ultimately' responsible person.
Hmm...so does that mean that our pumpkin headed Mandarin has ultimate carriage of the final outcome of the MH370 search mission...
While on the subject of Beaker & Co and the FAA/ICAO...
The following comment from Confirmed Sceptic to Ben's article - Pel-Air and Seaview anniversaries highlight safety failures - hits the nail on head...
Posted November 19, 2014 at 3:30 pm | Permalink
The NTSB, and now the ATSB are both suffering from underfunding. The ATSB is also suffering from a massive credibility deficit. Don’t get me started on the unspeakable CASA. Among my corespondents in other air regulators CASA is a joke in search of a punchline. There is a small but very real chance that the FAA may find the time to do the unpalatable and find CASA unreliable, and hence impugn all airlines regulated by it.
I think the Abbott government should bitch a little louder about Obama’s words on climate change. It would be fun to see a little diplomatic pissing contest involve CASA, which is very low hanging fruit.
Rumour has it that the FAA definitely have a strong desire to conduct a follow up audit of Australia but are simply under resourced (i.e. cash strapped) to do so. However could that situation drastically change if ICAO were given further evidence of the State aviation safety authorities taking the Mickey bliss to their obligations as a signatory to ICAO...
Moving on for now and back to the subject of Beaker & MH370...
The following is interesting as it is addressed to our infamous muppet:
Brock McEwen
PostedSeptember 24, 2014 at 9:33 AM
Open Letter: Request for Public Disclosure on MH370 Investigation
September 24, 2014
Dear MH370 Search Team Leadership (c/o Martin Dolan, Commissioner, Australian Transport Safety Bureau),
Hundreds of experts – both inside and outside the formal investigation – have been working for 200 days, now, in an effort to determine MH370’s fate. The collective failure even to search properly, let alone find anything, has sparked frustration and finger-pointing, as a baffling lack of consensus on basic data has pitted stakeholders against each other. Families of MH370’s passengers and crew – stretched taut on the rack between hope and grief – deserve better than this.
A more fulsome disclosure of your team’s working assumptions – in support of performance and radar-tracked path analysis in particular – would not only “clear the air”, and dispel growing suspicions concerning the veracity of this search, but is quite likely to expedite search zone refinement: “crowd-sourced” insights stemming from the eventual partial publication of Inmarsat data have already demonstrated clearly the value of such disclosure.
Accordingly, we ask the Search Team Leadership to disclose the following elements of its basic internal working assumptions. For each assumption, please publicly disclose initial (i.e. mid-March), all interim, and current (i.e. mid-September) working best estimate(s), as well as date ranges over which each was effective:
PART A: DATA (all items have already been referenced in public statements, and are thus, we trust, readily available)
1. Full set of Inmarsat ping ring radii (in nmi), and associated satellite position (latitude/longitude in degrees/minutes)
2. Amount by which radar-indicated speeds were judged to reduce post-radar range, as percent of initial post-radar range
2a. for each version of the above: minimum and maximum speeds (in KTAS) outside of which fuel exhaustion was assumed to occur prior to 00:19 UTC (i.e. feasibility limits, expressed in KTAS)
3. Point at which MH370 turned south around/near Sumatra, expressed as a specific coordinate (latitude/longitude in degrees/minutes); where a range was contemplated, please supply the range – but indicate clearly the single coordinate which drove the “highest priority/probability” search location. If a slow turn was modeled, please indicate its north-western extreme.
4. Feasibility ranges derived from the above, expressed as a coordinate pair along the 7th Inmarsat arc (where a range of turn south points informs the feasibility coordinates, please also disclose what these coordinates would be if the “later turn south” assumption were abandoned (i.e. “early turn south only”).
PART B: RECONCILIATION: In addition, please reconcile each of the above to each of the following:
a) Original search zone, based (presumably) on neither “heavier fuel burn” nor “later turn south”
b) Mar.28 ATSB Media Release #2 announcing 600nmi shift NE, expressing confidence in “heavier fuel burn”
c) Apr.1 JIT advice to ATSB causing a further 750nmi shift NE, expressing confidence in “later turn south”
d) May 1 release of maps accompanying MH370 Preliminary Report (especially the “highest probability” path)
e) June shift back SW, (in Jun.24 Malaysia Chronicle interview) retracting confidence in “heavier fuel burn”
f) Jun.26 “MH370 – Definition of Underwater Search Areas” Report: all performance limits and search zones
g) August shift further SW, (in Aug.28 statement by Warren Truss) retracting confidence in “later turn south”
Thank you in advance for your attention. Please be advised that failure to supply PART A by Day 210 (Oct 4) and PART B by Day 225 (Oct 19) will trigger an online petition designed to gauge international public opinion on this matter.
Should evidence of MH370’s fate surface in the interim, the need for this disclosure will remain. If the jet is located, the above documentation will be required to dispel any suspicions of evidence tampering, and will prove vital to what we trust is surely our shared goal: getting to the truth, to offer closure for passengers’ families and friends.
Sincerely,
Brock McEwen, on behalf of a frustrated general public
Not sure if Brock got a satisfactory response from Beaker but if he did I would be inclined to heavily scrutinise the factual content (in amongst the weasel words) of the reply...
I also came across an interesting story from NBC news titled -
Girlfriend of MH370 Passenger: 'Something Is Being Covered Up' - that has many disturbing parallels to the PelAir cover-up...
Examples:
As relatives marked the six month anniversary of the Boeing 777’s disappearance Monday, Sarah Bajc told NBC News she believes that there “are active steps being taken to interfere with finding the plane.”
“Our opinion, the family members’ opinion, has been the same since the very beginning that we need an independent investigating group who has access to all the native information, so including military radar records, to be able to go back and start the investigation from the beginning to see if we can find out what happened,” she said.
“I think that if the existing investigation team is left in charge … we may not ever find the plane. Because I believe there are active steps being taken to interfere with finding the plane,” she said,
Asked what she meant, Bajc said she wasn’t sure. “Failure to release information - whether its obfuscation, you know, actually covering something up - or dishonesty… creating false evidence or just hiding something, right? We don’t know why or what is being covered up, but something is being covered up.”
She said the Australian investigators, who have been working alongside the Malaysian team to find the jet in its presumed location in the southern Indian Ocean, “should be very embarrassed by their behavior so far,” adding: “They pursued a path of underwater pings long after it was very clear they weren’t accurate. They have not had the strength of will to force Malaysia to open up all if its records.”
Hmm...no comment required except to say TICK...TOCK Beaker and the Mandarin providing top cover for him...
MTF...
