MH370 in catastrophic death dive, says analysis

Exhaustive analysis has revealed that missing flight MH370 fell very fast as it crashed into the Indian Ocean.

Search director Peter Foley and Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood. Picture: Kym Smith

Exhaustive analysis by Defence scientists of automated signals ­received from Flight MH370 in its final moments has revealed that the Malaysia Airlines jet fell very fast — up to 20,000 feet a minute — as it crashed into the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.

The scientists have found that happened at 8.19am (WA time) on March 9, 2014, after the aircraft ran out of fuel and the two giant engines flamed out, the left engine first and then the right about 15 minutes later.

The Australian has been told in a series of briefings that simulations by Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, indicate that once engine power was lost, MH370 would have slowed and lost lift. Its nose would have dropped and it would have descended in what the scientists call a fugoid motion in a series of downward swoops.

As it gathered speed, it would have gained lift and climbed again. As that speed fell off, its nose would have dropped rapidly once more, the aircraft falling into ­another steep dive.

That process is likely to have been repeated until it hit the water, probably with one wing down.

The impact would have been catastrophic. That fits with new analysis of sets of brief signals sent automatically between the aircraft and a satellite.

While the aircraft has not been found, the discovery of some ­pieces of its interior indicate it broke up on impact. Critics of the search strategy have suggested that the pilot could have landed MH370 ­intact on the ocean well outside the current search area. But Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood said analysis of the signals most closely matched a scenario in which there was no pilot at the controls at the end of the flight.

Mr Hood said the new data ­extracted from the signals reinforced the view of those leading the search for MH370 and its 239 passengers and crew that it was likely to have crashed in the 120,000sq km area now being searched.

He said extensive testing by Boeing indicated that after running out of fuel the aircraft would have dropped from 35,000 feet at a rate of between 12,000 feet a minute and 20,000 feet a minute. That rapid descent was confirmed by the signals data.

An aircraft making a normal landing would descend at 2000 feet a minute.

ATSB specialists in Canberra are examining a wing flap likely to have been torn from MH370 by the impact which drifted for over a year and eventually washed up on the coast of Tanzania.

The flap would have been part of the right wing next to the flap­eron which washed up on Reunion Island.

A 2014 FBI report revealed that MH370 pilot Zaharhie Ahmad Shah had previously plotted a course down into the southern Indian Ocean on a simulator in his home computer, but that ­report does not deal with what happened to MH370 in its final hours.

The Australians leading the search do not doubt that the pilot may well have been responsible for the jet’s disappearance but they say critics of the search strategy are wrong to assume that means they are looking in the wrong place.

There are two distinct questions, they say: who was responsible for the disappearance, and where is the aircraft now?

MH370 search program director Peter Foley told The Australian that with almost no tangible ­evidence, the likely crash area was not defined by investigations of what the pilot might have done but by months of unprecedented examination of signals transmitted by automatic systems on the jet as it made its lonely flight southward and calculations of when it would have run out of fuel.

Crucial to that research was a Defence Science and Technology Group team headed by Neil Gordon, Mr Foley said.

Just after midnight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur as normal and headed for Beijing. The last heard from the crew was a standard radio message bidding KL “goodnight”.

Malaysian military radar picked up the jet making two turns which took it back over the Malaysian Peninsula.

As more evidence emerged it became clear that MH370 made at least one more turn at the northwest tip of Sumatra towards the southern Indian Ocean.

Those three turns would have to have been made by a pilot.

As the plane flew south, equipment fitted to it automatically sent routine signals as a series of “handshakes” with a satellite linked to a ground station in Perth.

That maintenance system was separate from systems controlled by the crew and was designed to provide data, via satellite, about the state of parts such as the ­engines.

Seven such connections were completed, which is how technicians worked out that MH370 was still flying long after ground controllers lost contact with it.

Two satellite phone calls made to MH370 went unanswered but analysis of the signals enabled the Defence scientists to confirm that the jet was then still heading south.

After the six hourly maintenance “handshakes” came a seventh signal from the aircraft which was out of sequence. The investigators believe that was when MH370 started to run out of fuel and the first of its two engines flamed out. That automated signal warned that something was wrong.

Mr Foley said the ATSB had ­always kept an open mind. “Our hypothesis is based on what we know to be hard facts,’’ he said. “We have actively looked at all scenarios and anything that will help us find the aircraft.”