Many will know that the Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack has proposed a legislative change in Parliament which reinforces the unique Civil Aviation Act and the words “CASA must regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration.”

Of course, this means that safety is more important than anything else, including cost.

If that is true, can I ask a simple question? Why isn’t the Deputy Prime Minister pushing for the search to be reinstated for MH370?

You got it! Because the powers that be have decided that the extra cost is more important than the extra safety they may gained by finding out what actually happened!

It is clear that not only were eight Australians killed, but Australians are flying all the time on the Boeing 777, which could have an inherent fault. Only yesterday, a Qantas pilot said to me that he does not believe in the murder/suicide theory and believes there is an airworthiness problem with the aircraft – it is tied up with an oxygen cylinder that could blow up.

Of course, we see the utter hypocrisy of Canberra – not one word from Mr Carmody (the Director of Aviation Safety) and not one word from the Deputy Prime Minister or his Chief of Staff, or his head of PR.

I have called for a small levy to be put on air tickets. Ten cents would raise $270 million from the 2.7 billion passengers, so the search could continue and the aircraft to be found. After all, small fortunes were spent in finding the African Airways 747 in the Indian Ocean and the Air France Airbus A330 in the Atlantic.

Once the flight data recorders were found, safety was improved. It is unlikely that form of accident would happen again.

Yes, I know, lots of readers here believe it was a simple (if you could call it that) murder/suicide and nothing will be learnt from finding the aircraft. However, anyone who flies, and anyone who has relatives who fly, should be very wary. There is a chance that the Qantas pilot is correct and there is a problem with the aircraft.

I ask everyone to support me in a campaign to get the search going again (this time probably in the correct area would be a good idea), find the flight data recorders, and show that we are really interested in passenger safety.

No, of course! I have suddenly realised – this won’t be paid for by general aviation. Ten cents on an air ticket could mean ten cents less profit per air ticket by the airlines, so they will completely stop this from happening.

I wonder if the Minister will stand up to the powerful and truely put safety as the most important consideration ?

A Qantas pilot with extensive knowledge of B777 ! Thats an aircraft we only ever dreamed of getting near fit the last 15 years, let alone any knowledge of.

On a more serious note, I think passenger safety is foremost in every pilots mind. There has been so much money thrown at this investigation and so many theories regarding the aircraft’s fate that I believe even when it is found the truth may be a long time coming.

The B777 is one of the safest aircraft ever built, if it had a design fault, even with its oxygen system, wouldn’t the fact that it has such a long history have identified this fault, and been raised by investigators?

Hey but what what would I know, apparently they are old technology anyway!

Banjo. Sounds for a second that you actually understand “affordable safety”

So if we raise $270 million and go searching for the aircraft again and it’s not found, what then? Do we keep looking?

Should we spend a billion dollars on the search?

Is it your position that if safety is the number one consideration we should spend unlimited sums of money searching for an aircraft which could possibly have no safety benefit?

Dick is pointing out the hypocrisy of CASA claiming safety is everything when ignoring the cost imposts on the GA industry and then wailing about costs when it comes to MH370. Cost is either important or it isn’t but CASA wants it both ways.

Beer Baron. My position is that I want the CASA act to tell the truth. Despite the fact that it states that safety must be the most important consideration there are many times that CASA clearly considers that cost is clearly more important than the safety improvement that can be made.

The Deputy Prime Minister is going down a risky path supporting “ the lie”

Traffic. The flying public should contribute for self interest.

There is is a small chance that the Qantas pilot is correct and there is a problem with the aircraft.

Personally I would pay $10 extra a ticket to find the real answer and get some closure on this.

Sydney Olympics spend = A$ 6.0 Billion

NBN = A$ 60 Billion

Submarines = A$ 40 Billion

Should I keep going?

Just look at the known flight track of the aircraft after they went NINC. What failure would cause an aircraft to fly accurately along FIR boundaries and lose transponder functions?

Get real.

Unlike the B747 the oxygen bottles on the B777 aren't arrayed vertically in a cargo compartment, they are stacked horizontally in the main equipment centre. Directly ahead of the bottles in the MEC is the E3 rack on which you will find, inter alia, the left AIMS cabinet and the ADIRU. Directly behind the bottles is the E1 rack on which you will find, inter alia, the left VHF XCVR, the left transponder, the left Generator Control Unit, the left Primary Flight Computer and the Audio Management Unit.

If a bottle fails in a B777 it won't simply punch a hole in the aircraft, it will almost certainly take out a stack of fairly important systems that includes items like comms and transponder.

The other big difference is that those bottles are connected to the flight crew, not the passenger, emergency oxygen system. If one fails you would expect to loose the whole system. We know that it took QF30 38 seconds to start their emergency descent after their bottle failed (35 seconds after the cabin pressure warning commenced). If there was a bottle failure on MH370 and the damage punctured the hull, when the crew donned their masks they would not have been getting oxygen. Under those circumstances a hypoxic crew would not inconceivable.

I'm not going to play hypotheticals on every aspect of the flight but suffice to say that the oxygen bottle theory is, as I've noted, not without some merit.