Fuel, temperature wreck MH370 search theory

There are critical problems to Byron Bailey’s theory on where the search for the missing MH370 should focus.

Mick Gilbert in a Boeing 737 simulator. The amateur aviation enthusiast has compiled a meticulous theory of what may have happened to MH370.

MH370’s final resting place is and will remain a topic of much debate until the aircraft is found. On this page Captain Byron Bailey has offered the far south location 39 10S, 88 15E as the site where the Boeing 777 ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean. I beg to differ.

The first and most critical problem is that MH370 didn’t have anywhere near enough fuel to get within gliding distance of that ­location. As MH370 left radar coverage in the Strait of Malacca, it had 34 tonnes of fuel on board, give or take 500kg. On paper, all things being equal, had the aircraft been flown absolutely optimally, there may have just been enough fuel to get MH370 to that far south terminus. However, in aviation, all things are rarely if ever equal. Two inescapable factors would have driven fuel consumption up that evening — the age of the engines and the warmer conditions.

From the day they leave the factory, the performance of jet ­engines, the thrust delivered for fuel consumed, declines. It is a known and measured factor called the performance deterioration allowance (PDA). The PDAs for the MH370 aircraft’s engines were 0.74 per cent for the left engine and 2.26 per cent for the right. Those PDAs meant that the aircraft was burning at least 1.5 per cent more fuel than the manufacturer’s published fuel consumption model.

A further and more serious issue was the much higher than standard air temperatures at cruising altitudes along the aircraft’s path that evening. Those temperatures would have driven fuel consumption up by 3 per cent.

Together, the PDAs and temperature meant that over the nearly six-hour flight into the southern Indian Ocean, the aircraft would have burned over 1.5 tonnes more fuel than the “on paper” values.

However, even if we were to leave the chemistry and physics of fuel consumption aside, Captain Bailey’s location still has some major problems.

The first of those happened 11 days after MH370 went down, on March 19, 2014. That was the second day of the Australian-run search effort and it was the day that three aircraft — two P-3 Orions together with a RAAF P-8 ­Poseidon — searched the area surrounding Captain Bailey’s 39 10S, 88 15E site. In the 11 days from the crash the floating wreckage would have drifted east-north-east but certainly not beyond that day’s search area. If a floating debris field was there it would have been overflown by one of those sophisticated maritime surveillance/anti-submarine aircraft.

But if we were to accept that maybe those pieces were missed, within a further six months another problem arises. Captain Bailey’s location is on the northern edge of the Antarctic Circumpolar Surface Current. All the drift modelling shows that at least some of the wreckage from that site would have been coming ashore on West Australian beaches by November 2014 and on South Australian, Victorian and/or Tasmanian beaches in the months after that.

Despite numerous beach clean-up and coastal survey groups being placed on alert to look out for aircraft wreckage, nothing from MH370 was ever found.

Aviation safety is a field where it is wise to never say never, but it is difficult to reconcile Captain Bailey’s bet with the realities.

Mick Gilbert is a former RAAF supply officer, and an aviation enthusiast and researcher.