Predictably there is a resurgence of interest in the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on its tenth anniversary. I was deeply involved at the beginning of this, ten years ago, and a regular commentator on the search that continued for four years, till 2017, and then with another six-month search in 2018, regrettably both without result. I am qualified to do so as a professional pilot, on rotary and fixed-wing, air traffic controller, and aviation security manager. I have also been CEO of an airport company and a regulator in the Pacific region and other locations including Africa, on ICAO technical assistance projects in recent years. I have been involved, as a pilot, in more than 6 search and rescue operations across the Globe including over vast stretches of the ocean.
Helicopter operations took me to the same region where MH370 is said to have ended its flight in the Southern Ocean. I was the pilot on an Australian ship, en-route from Perth to Heard & McDonald Islands for an Australian Antarctic expedition some years ago. It is a wild and dangerous ocean as any mariner who sails there will tell you. No aircraft would have any chance of survival in a ditching on those waters. Even if it did survive initially, it would be destroyed very quickly thereafter by the turbulent and mountainous waves!!!
This sad anniversary is, of course, also a reminder to all of us of the grief and despair amongst the relatives and friends of the passengers and crew who are no longer with their families. They deserve closure to this painful and long-term event.
So, I have been reluctant to write on the subject again but feel I must make a few points now, having seen some of the totally irresponsible comments and documentaries made by so called “aviation experts” and put to air by media outlets sometimes looking for sensationalism and sometimes responsibly.
I am appalled when I see headlines stating that somebody “knows the location of MH370!!!!
Anyone who claims to positively KNOW the location of the downed aircraft is either delusional or simply attention seeking!!!
The so called “aviation experts” are in fact, often unqualified people with an interest in aviation but, for the most part, are not actually qualified or experienced aviators and, therefore, not experts by any definition!!!!
Even the most skilled of mathematicians and scientists will agree that the scientific data made available by INMARSAT, is at best, not definitive. The INMARSAT people said, themselves, that the calculations done initially were done as an exercise to see what conclusions might be drawn, in case they were asked for any tracking information available. It was, entirely theoretical and the methodology had NEVER been used before. It was, in fact, done by a member of their staff as something of an experiment and he was the first to say that it was not definitive and should be treated with caution.
However, it has become the Holy Gospel upon which everyone relies to establish the position of the missing MH370.
Personally, I have serious doubts about that location in the Southern Ocean, and having been there can guarantee that nobody would have survived on landing in that environment. Call me old fashioned but I would rather take seriously the reports by various eyewitnesses of possible sightings of the aircraft that night, including an oil rig worker and a sailor who reported coincidental sightings of what looked like an aircraft on fire at just about the right time but very much further north of the Southern Ocean. Or the villagers on an island who reported similar sightings of a low-flying airliner. I am told that these reports were all investigated and discounted, but were they really thoroughly evaluated??
I would actually not be even slightly surprised if someone stumbles upon the wreckage of the Boeing 777 to the west of the Malaysian Peninsula in a remote jungle someday!!!
It is not reasonable, by any stretch of the imagination, to say definitively that the pilot did it and the “experts” who are promoting this theory are irresponsible and unprofessional!! There is absolutely zero positive evidence that he was responsible for what has happened. There is ONLY SPECULATION!!! Almost every professional pilot has a flight simulator of some sort!!!!
In fact, if we study the radar tracks shown by the Malaysian military radar, the actions performed by the aircraft at the border of the airspace between Malaysia and Vietnam were precisely what any experienced Captain would have performed in the event of an in-flight emergency that precluded the continuation of his flight.
The aircraft radar track showed that it turned back toward mainland Malaysia and descended in a manner consistent with the pilot’s determination to return to land at the nearest airport because he was in serious trouble!!! This is consistent with aircraft equipment failures, a fire on board, or even a hijacking gone wrong.
We cannot know definitively what has happened without finding the wreckage of MH370. It would be great to find the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder(CVR), although it may not be possible to gain full data from them after 10 years. I shiver everytime I hear of them being referred to as “Black Boxes” by the media! These are boxes containing electronic components and are designed to withstand severe crashes and fire. They are not black but ORANGE to allow them to be more easily found in a wreckage or in a jungle setting. They will never be black and it would be great if the media could stop using this ridiculous description of them. Simple accuracy in reporting!!
I prefer the theory that Captain Zahari was trying to save the aircraft and all on board rather than piloting it to the most remote location on earth to deliberately crash it. There is a certain logic that suggests that if he really had wanted to crash and commit a murder / suicide, he could have simply pointed the nose down in the Gulf of Thailand and ended it there!!! But that did not happen!
There are many other things that did not happen that night which would have resolved the question right then and there.
• The aircraft should have transferred from Malaysian control to Vietnamese Air Traffic Control at the airspace boundary position (IGARI). But this did not happen and the radar return actually disappeared from the radar screens of both the Malaysian and the Vietnamese controllers at the same moment (17.21 UTC). However, neither controller took any action and it was 17.39 UTC before the Vietnamese controller asked the Malaysian controller about the position of MH370. A full 18 minutes of lost time during which action should have commenced to find the aircraft.
• This was pure negligence as the international standard and protocol requires that the controller accepting the transfer of responsibility should have started looking for it within 2 minutes of the transfer time!!!
• This was only the start of a series of incidents that added up to a tragedy of monumental proportions. These included inaccurate reports of the aircraft having entered Cambodian airspace and the airline being in contact via satellite phone. That never happened!! But people started to believe it because they wanted to.
• Then we discovered about 4 days later that the Malaysian military had been tracking an unidentified aircraft flying in its airspace from the northern transfer point (IGARI) and heading directly for Penang. It became clear that this had been MH370 in later analysis, but the opportunity was lost to ascertain what the problem was.
• The aircraft track toward Penang was, again, a completely logical decision on the part of the pilot if the aircraft was in trouble. Penang has a long runway and emergency services which would have been entirely suitable for an emergency landing of an aircraft in distress. Even the orbit or turns that are reported to have occurred as the aircraft passed Penang can be logically described as that of an aircraft in difficulty and attempting to make contact with the Penang authorities or even of trying to set the aircraft up in a landing configuration whilst battling control difficulties. I do not give any credence to the idea that the first officer was trying to contact friends with his mobile phone to say goodbye. What rubbish!!!!
• However, the Malaysians ignored the aircraft and decided that it was of no concern. Really ??? An unknown aircraft tracking somewhat erratically toward the most sensitive HQ of the RMAF which also happens to be the location for the highly secret Five Eyes Defence surveillance HQ operation in the Region. It is incredible that they decided there was no threat without an interception!!!!
• They could have sent up an interceptor aircraft to examine the unknown radar return! International procedures, well known to all international pilots, are that if they lose communications, or stray off their designated track in foreign airspace, they may be intercepted by a military aircraft for the purpose of identification. This is a standard procedure, non-threatening and fully accepted by all nations for the protection of their airspace and nation.
• The Malaysian Acting Minister for Transport later quipped, in a BBC interview, that they did not send up a fighter aircraft to intercept the unknown aircraft on their radar as he would have been in “more trouble than I am now if they had shot it down”!! Unbelievable statement from a Minister of Government in which he revealed a total disregard for his nations security and a lack of care or interest in what may have been happening with an unknown aircraft in his airspace!! Or was it just total incompetence!
• So, the aircraft on radar, later known to be MH370, continued to fly west and out into the Andaman Sea.
• If the military air defence officer in charge of the military radar and the civil air traffic controller had coordinated with each other and discussed the unexpected and unidentified radar return they would quickly ( I hope ) have realised that it was MH370 which had gone missing at IGARI and was clearly heading back toward the Malaysian mainland. None of this is reported as having happened!!!!
• If action had been taken immediately and particularly if an intercept had taken place, MH370 would NOT have been lost!! It may still have crashed but its fate would be known and there may have been some survivors because rescue teams would have arrived very quickly!!
So, the aircraft continued to fly and within days the World was convinced that it had turned south toward the Southern Ocean where it is said to have crashed, but we had several eye-witness reports that do not agree with this hypothesis.
Everyone has agreed that the aircraft could have turned north, rather than south or perhaps ended up in the Andaman Sea or the Bay of Bengal. It may be in the jungles of Myanmar or Thailand.
I do not believe anything should be ruled out and do believe it will be found someday but maybe not where the search has been focussed.
Part Two of this article can be found HERE.
Desmond Ross is a highly experienced international aviation expert with professional pilot and air traffic control qualifications. He was also CEO of an airport company and founding GM of the Pacific Aviation Safety Office, a regulatory office based on the same ICAO model as the European Aviation Safety Agency. Over the last 40 years, he has worked mainly in developing countries, in conflict or post-conflict, including the South Pacific, South East Asia, Middle East, Afghanistan, East and Southern Africa. He can be found on Linked In.
