Did MH370 pilot starve passengers of oxygen before ditching into the sea?

[bsteadman]

Deep-Sea Explorers Angle to Solve Mystery of Missing Malaysian Airliner

Wall Street Journal Online
Daniel Stacey
7/31/2014

Excerpt:

In the weeks after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished, most likely in the Indian Ocean, Australian officials said they knew less about the area they were exploring than is known about the surface of the moon.

It's actually even worse than that.

Surveys of Mars and Venus are considered around 250 times more accurate than existing maps of the underwater region where Flight 370 searchers are looking—a lightless, virtually lifeless seabed.

There, the contours of the ocean floor have only been approximated by bouncing satellite radar off the surface of the sea, or by taking low-resolution sonar soundings from boats that passed through the area a generation ago. Research indicates the presence of dramatic vistas, including a volcanic plateau and mountains roughly the height of the Swiss Alps. There is so little bacteria that scientists believe a whale carcass would take decades to decompose down there.

The hunt for Flight 370 has been overshadowed in recent days by the Malaysia Airlines jet shot down in Ukraine, but it remains one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history. Unlike the Ukraine tragedy, which left tons of debris, not even a stray suitcase has been found from Flight 370, which disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 passengers on board, leaving little more than a trail of cryptic satellite transmissions behind as it diverted off course.

Investigators have used those digital handshakes between the plane and an Inmarsat PLC telecommunications satellite to identify an area the size of West Virginia where they think the plane crashed in the water after it ran out of fuel. But an initial effort to probe the depths in a different area using a submersible drone called Bluefin-21 found nothing.

Now, two months after pausing its search, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is ready to reboot the massive probe. It is poised to select among bids from the world's most-advanced deep-water specialists, including offshore oil-and-gas companies, maritime research institutions and treasure hunters eager to use their technologies and experience to solve the Flight 370 riddle—and potentially raise their own profiles in the process. The ATSB is expected to choose one or more of the bidders over the next several weeks before relaunching the search with $56 million in funding in late August. Those costs will be split, in amounts still to be determined, between the Australian and Malaysian governments.

The good news is that the world's deep-sea recovery industry is now more sophisticated than ever, thanks to offshore research by oil-and-gas firms that have gone progressively deeper, as well as militaries and insurance firms. Technologies developed to hunt for everything from the Titanic to lost parts of the Space Shuttle Challenger have further expanded frontiers, allowing investigators to work as deep as about 3.7 miles, or slightly more than the deepest-known area of the Flight 370 search zone.

"It used to be that when a ship sank in the deep sea, we would commit the ship and souls for eternity to the deep—gone forever," said David Gallo, director of special projects at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Massachusetts-based research outfit that helped find Air France Flight 447, which disappeared in the mid-Atlantic Ocean in 2009, and is bidding to participate in the Flight 370 hunt. "That's not true anymore."

But with no hard evidence of where the plane went down, the search will test the recovery industry's abilities like nothing before. In June, Australian authorities shifted the search zone for a third time—by about 600 miles to the southwest—after reanalyzing satellite transmissions. Even then, they said it was impossible to know whether the fresh search area would prove correct.

At stake is the emotional well-being of relatives and friends of the passengers from the plane, left in suspended animation while authorities search for answers. There is also the issue of maintaining public trust in the aviation industry, which rarely experiences unsolved disasters.

For its part, Australia has such a visible role because the waters are in a region it handles under a global civil aviation agreement. Under the bidding process, companies angling to play a role in the search can work alone or bid as part of a consortium. Each signed nondisclosure agreements about their bids with the Australian government, but The Wall Street Journal was able to confirm through people familiar with the process at least eight outfits that are bidding for a role.

Among them: Fugro FUR.AE +1.09% NV, a Dutch oil-and-gas consulting firm that has brought its top subsea sonar guru out of retirement to help with the effort. Others include Oceaneering International Inc., OII -0.01% a Houston oil-services firm that makes space suits and robotically controlled amusement park rides that also helped find the Titanic in 1985.

Then there are the treasure hunters—companies and individuals that make a living exploring the deep for profit. One is Odyssey Marine Explorations Inc., a Florida firm listed on the Nasdaq that a few years ago recovered around $500 million from a Spanish ship sunk off Portugal in 1804.

Others include Williamson & Associates, a Seattle outfit led partly by Art Wright, a well-known underwater explorer who still rows competitively in his 70s. Another is Blue Water Recoveries, a U.K. firm led by bearded oceanographer David Mearns which holds the Guinness World Record for the deepest wreck ever discovered: a German World War II blockade runner known as Rio Grande found in 1996 nearly 18,900 feet below the surface.

"It is definitely the search of my generation," said Colleen Keller, a senior analyst at Metron Inc., a Virginia-based scientific consulting firm that also has joined a consortium competing for the Flight 370 contract. Her firm assisted with the Air France search and has also worked with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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View the complete article, including map image, photos and links, at:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/world...ner-1406833389

[bsteadman]

MH370: Australia to announce next phase of search for missing Malaysia plane

CNN
David Molko
8/5/2014

Excerpt:

(CNN) -- Australian authorities are poised to announce the next phase of the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 this week, five months after the plane vanished without a trace.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the search for the missing plane at the Malaysian government's request, is expected to engage a single, private contractor to search for the Boeing 777-200ER, and if successfully located, to positively identify and map the wreckage.

The operation, which the ATSB says is likely to begin in early September and will last up to a year, will include a number of underwater vehicles that will slowly scan some 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) of the southern Indian Ocean, looking for any sign of aircraft debris.

It's not yet clear exactly how the deep-sea search, which Australia has estimated will cost $56 million, will play out. While the ATSB has developed the overall search strategy, the independent contractor will be responsible for day-to-day operations in the search zone.

"We have the shape of a plan based on information we have available to us," says Martin Dolan, the ATSB's Chief Commissioner. "It's a concept we need to test out with the operation experts and come up with the detailed plan... for the conduct of the search."

Mapping the ocean floor

Some 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) off the coast of Western Australia, a pair of survey ships continue their efforts to give search teams a better understanding of what lies thousands of meters below the surface in one of the most uncharted, remote places on the planet.

The Chinese Navy's Zhu Kezhen and the Australian-contracted Fugro Equator have covered roughly half of the priority search area, which the ATSB says is the most likely resting place of MH370. A Malaysian survey ship is on schedule to join them in August, and underwater mapping is expected to wrap up in September.

According to the ATSB, the data collected by survey ships is being converted into detailed topographical maps. Dolan says so far those maps show ocean depths ranging from 1,500 meters to nearly 5,000 meters (roughly one to three miles), and wide-ranging terrain that includes everything from flat, sloping surfaces, to rugged terrain like mountains, ridges, and cliffs.

David Gallo, an oceanographer and director of special projects at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who was involved in the search for Air France Flight 447, says that a high level of detail is critical to make sure the search is carried out effectively and safely.

"You have to know where you're going or you'll end up impacting the bottom," Gallo says. "We're looking at less than a handful of tools that can work in this depth and that are available, so you really don't want to risk anything."

One of the most challenging spots, Gallo points out, is at the southern end of the search area, where he expects to see pockets of terrain up to 7,000 meters deep (four miles).

"The south side of that Broken Ridge is a monstrous wall... almost two miles top to bottom, almost vertical," Gallo explains, adding that there are only a few pieces of equipment worldwide that would even have a chance of reaching such extreme depths.

A slow, painstaking search

According to the ATSB's tender request, the contractor chosen to lead the search for MH370 will be required to begin the search no later than one month after signing the contract, and will be required to search all 60,000 square kilometers within 300 days.

Gallo says he expects a variety of different search assets to be used in the operation, including towed side-scan sonar devices, which are attached to a ship with a cable and can transmit data to the surface in real-time.

Robots known as underwater autonomous vehicles (UAVs) could also be used. They scan the ocean floor with similar acoustic technology but have to be brought in and out of the water, much like the Bluefin-21, which was deployed in April after search teams thought they had located pings from the plane's black boxes.

Each type of system has its strengths and weaknesses, Gallo says, noting that towed systems work well on flat terrain and cover ground quicker, while in more rugged areas, a drone which hugs the bottom will likely do a better job, albeit at a slower pace of around 65 square kilometers a day (25 square miles). For the most extreme terrain, Gallo says, search teams may need a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), steered from a surface ship with a tether.

Malaysia has already partnered with American and Australian contractors to supply additional search equipment, including a towed side-scan sonar and ROV. It's not yet clear how these will be integrated into the larger, Australian-run operation.

Where to start?

Where the search teams begin their work will depend on what the underwater maps show. "If there's a chunk of fairly smooth terrain and fairly shallow, you could get a lot of ground covered early on, which raises spirits a little bit," Gallo says.

But there's a lot of ground to cover. The area search teams hope to tackle over the next year is four times the size of the search zone for Air France 447, which went down in the mid-Atlantic in June 2009.

And with more ground to search, and potentially up to half-a-dozen search assets involved, Gallo says, the operation becomes far more complex.

"The worst thing that we could do is have a ship show up with technology, have them go over the spot...and you write that spot off forever."

But Gallo adds that he is completely confident in the ATSB's ability to manage the overall operation and says that if the wreckage of MH370 is in the designated search zone, it will be found.
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View the complete article, including map image, at:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/05/world/...irlines-mh370/

[bsteadman]

Did MH370 pilot starve passengers of oxygen before ditching into the sea? Shock claim from air investigator after ruling out 'every conceivable alternative scenario'

• Book claims pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately depressurised cabin
• Oxygen masks would only have given passengers 20 minutes' supply
• Authors claim Shah was mentally ill and locked his co-pilot out of cockpit
• Shah 'then landed on water so plane sank in one piece with no debris'

The Daily Mail / Mail Online
Simon Tomlinson
8/19/2014

Excerpt:

Passengers on flight MH370 died of oxygen starvation hours before the pilot performed a controlled ditching in the Indian Ocean, according to a new study into the disaster.

Analysis by a veteran air accident investigator suggests that all 239 people lost consciousness up to four hours before the Boeing 777 disappeared beneath the waves.

The most likely scenario is that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately depressurised the cabin, thereby depriving those on board of air, the research concludes.

Although oxygen masks would have dropped down automatically from above the seats, their supply was limited to just 20 minutes.

Those unable to grab a mask, including sleeping passengers, would have passed out within the space of a few minutes.

The entire 'ghost plane' - including her cabin crew whose air supply is only marginally longer, would have slipped into a coma and died shortly after from oxygen starvation.

Ahmad Shah, who locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit, survived long enough - either by repressurising the aircraft or from breathing his own, more extensive air supply - to evade radar and 'execute his master plan', researchers have concluded.

He then performed a controlled ditching in the sea, which would explain why no debris has been found because the plane landed and sank in one piece.

The theory is the result of the first independent study into March's disaster by the New Zealand-based air accident investigator, Ewan Wilson.

Wilson, the founder of Kiwi Airlines and a commercial pilot himself, arrived at the shocking conclusion after considering 'every conceivable alternative scenario'.

However, he has not been able to provide any conclusive evidence to support his theory.

An earlier report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) also concluded that passengers may have died from hypoxia.

And Malaysian authorities previously named Ahmad Shah as their prime suspect.

The remarkable claims are made in the book 'Goodnight Malaysian 370', the culmination of a four-month study into the incident, which Wilson co-wrote with the New Zealand broadsheet journalist, Geoff Taylor.

Wilson, a qualified transport safety investigator, said: 'One of our objectives in writing this book was, in some small way, to convey the human stories of the tragedy.

'Our other, more important task was to pursue the truth about what really happened; that is one small contribution we felt we could make to this whole, terrible affair.

'We could never have foreseen the information we uncovered, or their implications.

'Neither could we have imagined the horrific scenario that our research suggests took place on board that fateful plane.'

Wilson and Taylor's entire scenario makes for difficult reading.

They believe that Ahmad Shah, who they have concluded was suffering from mental illness, tricked his co-pilot Fariq Hamid into taking a break about 40 minutes after take-off.

After locking Hamid out of the cockpit, Ahmad Shah made his last broadcast to air traffic control - 'Goodnight, Malaysian 370' - before switching off the aircraft's air-to-ground communication links.

Alone at the controls, he took MH370 up to 39,000 feet and de-pressurised the aircraft, giving passengers and crew less than 60 seconds of Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC).

Ahmad Shah could not have prevented the plane's oxygen masks from automatically dropping down or an automated emergency announcement in English.

But Flight 370 was a night flight and, with the cabin lights off, the majority of passengers would have been asleep, or close to it.

And for 227 of the 239 passengers, English was not their first language.

Cabin crew would have tried to help those on board, but would have had to have donned their own facemasks first.

'It would have been a frightening and confusing time throughout the cabin,' Taylor said.

'By the time some of the passengers had woken up groggy, heard the commotion and looked around in confusion, it would have been too late for them.

'Those passengers who did not react within 60 seconds or less would have lapsed into unconsciousness and death would have followed within four to six minutes.'
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View the complete article,including map image, photos and videos, at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ching-sea.html

[Lucas Daniel Smith]

Thanks for posting the above regarding pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

Very interesting.