MH370 report: tracking interval too wide to narrow search areas

The mandated 15-minute interval between tracking of commercial aircraft may not be frequent enough to narrow search areas.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s last report in the hunt for MH370 recommends the investigation of new ways “to provide high-rate and/or automatically triggered global position-tracking in existing and future fleets.” Picture: AFP

Air safety investigators in Aus­tralia have warned that mandated tracking of commercial aircraft around the world every 15 minutes may not be frequent enough to narrow a potential search area for missing planes, a finding reached in the final report on the search for mystery Flight MH370.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s last report in the hunt for the doomed Malaysia Airlines flight was released yesterday after a search that lasted more than 1000 days, cost $200 million between three countries and narrowed the potential search area to 25,000sq km just as the mission was suspended in January.

In the final 440-page report, the ATSB says it has actually narrowed the search field even more.

“The understanding of where MH370 may be located is better now than it has ever been,” the report says. “The reasons for the loss of MH370 cannot be established with certainty until the aircraft is found. It is almost inconceivable and certainly societally unacceptable in the modern aviation era with 10 million passengers boarding commercial aircraft every day, for a large commercial aircraft to be missing and for the world not to know with certainty what became of the aircraft and those on board.

“The ATSB expresses our deepest sympathies to the families of the passengers and crew on board MH370 ... and deeply regret that we have not been able to locate the aircraft, nor those 239 souls on board that remain missing.”

Despite long proposing a “ghost flight” theory — that the plane crashed while its pilots were dead, unconscious or otherwise not present — the ATSB said it was sufficiently intrigued by data from the pilot’s home flight simulator that it modelled a potential scenario in which the Boeing 777-200ER ended its flight in a controlled glide or ditch.

This is the first time the pilot-in-command’s home flight simulator data has been mentioned in an official report, although the routes he ran in a similar aircraft did not match those available for MH370 from satellite data.

“Critically, a section of right outboard main flap was found near Tanzania on 20 June, 2016,” the report says. “The item was shipped to the ATSB for analysis. This analysis indicated that the flaps were most likely in a retracted position at the time they separated from the aircraft, making a controlled ditching scenario very unlikely.”

Former Emirates Boeing 777 pilot Byron Bailey told The Australian he believed the ATSB drift modelling was “quite accurate” but rubbished the report for finding a controlled ditching was unlikely.

“I disagree entirely; why would the flap have torn off if it was in the retracted position? There is no way of proving that theory until you find the plane,” he said.

The ATSB suggests the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organisation position-tracking interval of 15 minutes may be too long and recommends “aircraft operators, aircraft manufacturers, and aircraft equipment manufacturers investigate ways to provide high-rate and/or automatically triggered global position-tracking in existing and future fleets.”