Don’t end MH370 search, says pilots’ chief
The largest union of pilots has called on the federal government to continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.
The largest union of pilots has called on the federal government to continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 based on new evidence that a “rogue pilot” took it down, rather than give up in order to cut costs and avoid embarrassing Malaysia.
“The idea that they are not going to search for the airplane to finality is a serious precedent in all aviation,” David Booth, the president of the Australian Federation of Air Pilots, told The Australian.
“This is critical to me as an aviator … the airplane’s missing, we need to find the airplane.
“Presumably the government doesn’t want to put another $200 million into a search, as well as embarrass the Malaysians.”
The intervention of Captain Booth, a senior serving airline pilot, marks the first foray by the federation, which represents more than 4500 airline and commercial pilots, into the vexatious debate over the search for MH370 since stunning new evidence on the circumstances of its disappearance came to light.
It will add pressure on the government to reconsider the decision, made in conjunction with Malaysia and China, to abandon the search for the Boeing 777 once the present target area of 120,000sq km is covered in coming months.
It will also add weight to the call from Labor’s Anthony Albanese for Transport Minister Darren Chester to come clean on what the government knows about new evidence that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own aircraft on March 8, 2014, on a scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and flew it and 238 passengers and crew to their deaths in the southern Indian Ocean. Late last month evidence suppressed by the Malaysian government and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau confirmed that, as first revealed by pilot Byron Bailey writing in The Weekend Australian in January, the FBI had recovered deleted data on Zaharie’s home flight simulator computer.
It found that less than a month before the flight Zaharie had plotted a course for a route similar to that taken by MH370, backtracking over the Malaysia-Thai border then over the Andaman Sea, before a sharp turn and a long track south to the southern Indian Ocean.
After first refusing to acknowledge it knew about the FBI findings, the ATSB last week downplayed their significance when revealed by New York magazine, saying the simulation did not necessarily show Zaharie had planned such a flight.
But Captain Booth said such a flight path, zigzagging and ending in the middle of a remote part of ocean, could only be a suicide route. “What’s a pilot doing that for, just for fun?” he asked.
He said the pilots’ federation had decided to take a stand after new claims at the weekend that analysis of a wing control surface, known as a flaperon, found on the French Indian Ocean territory of Reunion, and confirmed to be part of MH370, showed it had been in a lowered position.
Aviation analysts have said if the flap were lowered, which can be done only by human action in the cockpit and would normally happen when preparing to land, it would be concrete evidence the aircraft had been piloted right to the end in a controlled ditch.
The ATSB has rejected the controlled ditch or glide theory as “very unlikely”, saying its analysis of satellite tracking data suggests MH370 went down steeply after running out of fuel, and the government agency has consistently tried to avoid giving credence to the “rogue pilot” theory as a whole.
Rather, the ATSB has adopted an end-of-flight type of scenario of “unresponsive crew/hypoxia”, consistent with the pilots being unconscious or dead due to decompression and loss of oxygen — an option which means it does not have to say Zaharie hijacked his own aircraft, which would disturb Malaysia.
That preferred scenario of the ATSB, which is organising the $180m search which involves $60m of Australian taxpayer money, has dictated a much narrower search area than if it had gone with the rogue pilot end-of-flight theory, since Zaharie could have glided the aircraft or flown it to a ditching under power for a much longer distance than if an unpiloted MH370 had crashed after fuel exhaustion.
Captain Booth said the new evidence supporting the controlled glide or powered ditching theory should propel the government to continue the search in an area consistent with that scenario.
“Obviously you can’t spend limitless amounts of money to that end, but where there are reasonable theories pointing to where the aircraft could be, they should be pursued,” Captain Booth said.
ATSB spokesman Tim Dawson and a spokeswoman for Mr Chester refused to answer questions from The Australian, including whether the government had information on whether the claimed findings about the flaperon being lowered were correct.
“There is an enormous amount of data which has been collected in the search for MH370 and the Australian government has already given an undertaking that it will be provided as open source information when possible,’’ Mr Chester said.
“I am confident in the ATSB’s expert analysis and remain hopeful the aircraft will be located in the 120,000sq km highest priority search area.”
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