MH370- ATSB IN DENIAL

[Fantome]

In Friday's "The Australian" (26 May, 2017,) on page 27 there is an exclusive report on an address given to the Institute of Public Administration in Canberra by Dr Neil Gordon, who leads the Data and Information Fusion Group in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Peter Foley, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau's head of underwater research also addressed the gathering.
As the article goes on to explain, there are major failures to agree among the many "experts" . Dr Gordon said "The key thing to remember there is lots of uncertainty feeding into this (investigation) - you're never going to end up with an 'X' marks the spot." His remarks will fuel the debate as to whether or not the ATSB's belief that the aircraft went down in a rapid, unpiloted crash into the sea, can be validated on the evidence.

[MickG0105]

Fantome, have you seen the presentation? It's available online here (https://vimeo.com/217799261).

Contrary to The Australian's beat up there is no suggestion whatsoever of "major failures to agree among the many "experts"". That is simply never raised. The presentation generally focuses on the high levels of collaboration and cooperation between all the players involved in the search; the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the ATSB together with the UK AAIB, the US NTSB, the French BEA, Boeing, Thales, Inmarsat and the Malaysian and Chinese governments.

As for the quote attributed to Dr Gordon, he was speaking quite specifically about the interpretation of the Burst Timing Offset and Burst Frequency Offset from the Inmarsat satellite metadata and the inability to predict an exact location for the airplane from it due to uncertainties, not the investigation per se, when he said;

A key thing to remember is that there's lots of uncertainty feeding into this, it's um inherently um, there's lots of uncertainty, you're never going to end up with an X marks the spot.

He then went on to describe the validation and calibration exercises that were performed using the metadata from 9M-MRO's previous flights and he explained the extensive public and targeted peer review process that all of the DSTG's work on the matter was subjected to.

My advise is to fact check anything that appears in The Australian with regards to MH370. Oh, and just by the bye, that "exclusive" report covers an event that was held nearly two weeks ago, the record of which is freely available in the public domain; how that constitutes an "exclusive" is anyone's guess.

[A0283]

Still waiting for the investigation to present a number of different scenarios that have been reviewed during the investigation. From the outside you could get the impression it still is an 'Inmarsat thread only' show. And that we are going closer to a situation of knowing everything about what may turn out to be nothing.

Alternative scenarios have been suggested. Even including at least one scenario that marks an 'X' (with a proper probability circle drawn around it) that is based on historical accidents precedents.

Amazing.

[onetrack]

ATSB have an emerging problem in that the CSIRO drift-modelling pinpoints a substantially different location for the MH370 wreckage (as compared to the "expected" and "calculated" ATSB location) - and that CSIRO location, the ATSB have always ruled out, from about Day 14 in the search.

The problem is simply that the CSIRO results are modelled on actual wreckage material found - while the ATSB has found precisely nothing, despite the expenditure of around AUD$100M, despite the calculations of many "respected" individuals, in both the aviation and associated fields - and despite some of the best marine assets and marine search capabilities ever assembled under one authority.

The bottom line is, that somewhere along the line, the ATSB has got some calculations seriously wrong, and there were unconsidered factors at play in the movements of MH370, that ATSB have not lent enough weight to.

[MG23]

The only thing we know for certain is that, if the Inmarsat data is correct, the aircraft is somewhere in about a million square kilometre area in the South Indian Ocean. Everything else has been an attempt to reduce that through clever maths to an area that can be searched for a price people are willing to pay. And the highest probability area was then searched. As I understand it, the area predicted by the drift models wasn't far from it.

Where I do somewhat disagree with the ATSB is that there were a few likely candidates that weren't made high priority search areas. I remember early on that someone pointed out you could hit all the arcs at a constant speed if you assumed the autopilot had been set to 180 degrees after the final turn. That would have given a relatively small area to search just to see if it was there.

I understand their reasoning for not doing that, and wanting to take a systematic approach, but I would have looked there if I was in charge.

[huntaluvva]

Is wreckage that may be from MH370 still being found on Indian Ocean beaches? I haven't seen any reports of new discoveries for months.

[MG23]

I believe the guy who was doing much of the searching has returned home?

There was a new report on the debris a few weeks ago, with parts I hadn't seen before. But they may have been found a while back and only recently examined.