All at sea

The Malaysian government has done its aviation industry enormous damage with its handling of the investigation and this was on show in a 60 Minutes program that aired on July 31 that detailed the alleged FBI repoart into the captain’s flight simulator program. It also detailed Canadian investigator Larry Vance’s contention that a lack of debris – particularly from inside the 777 – showed that the aircraft made a controlled ditching.

How the 777 hit the water – controlled or uncontrolled – makes a significant difference to where it might be.

However, American lawyer and MH370 sleuth Blaine Gibson, who has recovered 10 pieces of debris from the doomed jet, questions reports about the nature of debris that has been recovered.

Gibson told Contrails from Seattle that the 60 Minutes program had errors of fact relating to debris being found from inside the 777.

“One of their experts claimed that no debris had been recovered from the interior cabin of MH370, and that ‘fact’ therefore supported the controlled glide intact ditching pilot suicide theory,” he said “The fact is that pieces of MH370 cabin debris have been recovered,” Gibson said. He added that one cabin piece was recovered on Rodrigues Island and confirmed by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and Malaysia to be “almost certainly” from MH 370.

“I found at least two pieces of cabin debris in Madagascar. . . a TV monitor casing and part of an interior wall,” said Gibson.

On the 60 Minutes program Vance said that the lack of floating debris meant that the aircraft had made a controlled landing onto the sea.

The program cast doubts on the ATSB’s search methodology and assumptions suggesting it was ignoring the controlled scenario.

However, the initial search for MH370 did not look in the suspected crash area for almost eight days after MH370 disappeared and the weather at the time, with 5m swells, would have broken up the debris trail in a matter of hours.

In late July the ATSB revealed to Australian Aviation that satellite analysis showed that the 777 was plummeting at up to 20,000ft a minute just before it impacted the ocean.

A spokesman for 60 Minutes said that off camera “Mr Vance did acknowledge…that he knew about the few pieces of debris that are suspected of being from the MH370 interior. ” The program also highlights that it has “been swamped with responses from scientists and other experts who agree that the current explanation of a high speed crash into the ocean does not fit with the evidence. ” However, it is the condition of the pieces from inside the cabin that Gibson says shows that it is likely the 777 was destroyed in a high impact scenario.

“All the pieces I have found are small, demonstrating the plane and the cabin shattered on impact,” said Gibson. “Other private citizens have found about 10 pieces of floating debris, one of which is confirmed to be from the MH370 cabin. ” “The fact that 20 pieces of debris have washed ashore in the southwest Indian Ocean, and none in Australia or Tanzania, prove the plane crashed north of 39 ° S. The debris evidence points to a high speed forceful impact that shattered the plane. ” The ATSB is sticking with the current search area based on satellite data and says the uncontrolled ditching is still the hypothesis that bests fits the few available facts.

These include an analysis of frequency differences that indicated the aircraft was descending between 1,800m per minute and 3,000m per minute during its final log-on request to a geostationary satellite over the Indian Ocean and at up to 6,700m per minute eight seconds later when it receives an acknowledgment from ground station in Perth.

Another piece of key evidence is sitting in the ATSB laboratories in Canberra. Failure analysts are looking a large piece of the aircraft’s right main wing flap to see if it was extended on impact.

If this proves not to be the case – as insiders tell Contrails – it will serious blow to the controlled landing theory.

The debris evidence points to a high speed forceful impact.BLAINE GIBSON