New MH370 analysis suggests no one at controls during crash

A REPORT released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau seems to support one theory about what happened to the missing flight.

Three pieces of aircraft wreckage found off the east African coast of Mozambique are displayed at Mozambique's Civil Aviation Institute (IACM) in Maputo on September 5, 2016. Picture: Adrien Barbier

A FRESH analysis of the final moments of doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 suggests no one was controlling the plane when it plunged into the ocean, according to a report released by investigators.

As experts hunting for the aircraft gathered in Australia’s capital to discuss the fading search effort, a technical report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which leads the search, seems to support the theory investigators have long favoured: that no one was at the controls of the Boeing 777 when it ran out of fuel and dived at high speed into a remote patch of the Indian Ocean off Western Australia in 2014.

#MH370 Report: Search and debris examination update . https://t.co/BpauQTcsRm

— ATSB (@atsbinfo) November 1, 2016

It comes as the ABC reports the search for MH370 will be extended north, beyond the 120,000-square kilometre search zone in the Southern Indian Ocean.

It’s believed the search will move on to new areas next year at an estimated cost of $30 million.

In recent months, critics have increasingly been pushing the alternate theory that someone was still controlling the plane at the end of its flight. If that was the case, the aircraft could have glided much farther, tripling in size the possible area where it could have crashed and further complicating the already hugely complex effort to find it.

But Wednesday’s report shows that the latest analysis of satellite data is consistent with the plane being in a “high and increasing rate of descent” in its final moments. The report also said an analysis of a wing flap that washed ashore in Tanzania indicates the flap was likely not deployed when it broke off the plane.

A pilot would typically extend the flaps during a controlled ditching.

The report also revealed the falling pattern of the aircraft, detailing how it descended in a number of different directions.

“In an electrical configuration where the loss of engine power from one engine resulted in the loss of autopilot (AP), the aircraft descended in both clockwise and anti-clockwise directions.”

Visiting aviation and air safety experts examine the right outboard main wing flap from MH370 at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) in Canberra.

A trailing edge section of Boeing 777. The piece of debris, found in Mauritius, is from MH370, Australia said, with the wing part the latest fragment discovered along western Indian Ocean shorelines that has been linked to the missing passenger jet.

Peter Foley, the bureau’s director of Flight 370 search operations, has previously said that if the flap was not deployed, it would almost certainly rule out the theory that the plane entered the water in a controlled ditch and would effectively validate that searchers are looking in the right place for the wreckage.

“(It) means the aircraft wasn’t configured for a landing or a ditching — you can draw your own conclusions as to whether that means someone was in control,” Foley told reporters in Canberra.

“You can never be 100 per cent. We are very reluctant to express absolute certainty.”

Debris, thought to be that of MH370, discovered off the Mozambique coast.

Possible debris from missing passenger jet MH370 handed over by a US amateur investigator, which was not "exposed to heat or fire", Australian authorities said, amid speculation it was blackened by flames.

The report’s release comes as a team of international and Australian experts begin a three-day summit in Canberra to re-examine all the data associated with the hunt for the plane, which vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board.

More than 20 items of debris suspected or confirmed to be from the plane have washed ashore on coastlines throughout the Indian Ocean. But a deep-sea sonar search for the main underwater wreckage has found nothing.

MH370 families have posted pictures of personal items found on the beach at Madagascar, near where other possible aircraft debris was located. Picture: Facebook

A deep-sea sonar search for the main underwater wreckage has found nothing.

Crews are expect to complete their sweep of the 120,000-square kilometre search zone by early next year and officials have said there are no plans to extend the hunt unless new evidence emerges that would pinpoint a specific location of the aircraft.

Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said experts involved in this week’s summit will be working on guidance for any potential future search operations.

Experts have been pre-emptively trying to define a new search area by studying where in the Indian Ocean the first piece of wreckage recovered from the plane — a wing flap known as a flaperon — most likely drifted from after the plane crashed.

aircraft debris, suspected to be part of the missing MH370 Malaysian airlines plane, found at the Gris Gris public beach near Souillac, in the southern part of Mauritius Island on May 24.

Several replica flaperons were set adrift to see whether it is the wind or the currents that primarily affect how they move across the water. The results of that experiment have been factored into a fresh drift analysis of the debris.

The preliminary results of that analysis, published in the report, suggest the debris may have originated in the current search area, or to its north. The transport bureau cautioned that the analysis is ongoing and those results are likely to be refined.

The Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight disappeared with 239 passengers and crew shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur in March 2014. Six Australians and 153 Chinese nationals were on board.

Authorities won’t finish scouring the final 10,000 square kilometres of the 120,000sq/km search zone area until January because of difficult weather conditions.

Malaysia, China and Australia agreed in July that, in the absence of credible new evidence pointing to the plane’s location, the search would be suspended after that.