Debris confirms MH370 crash zone in Indian Ocean

MH370 search ship, Fugro Equator, returns to Australia after six months at sea.

Time is running out for the search vessels to locate MH370 before the search is terminated next month after enormous cost to the Australian taxpayer.

We know the plane is in the southern Indian Ocean. Generally, airline pilots and other genuine aviation experts believe captain Zaharie Shah hijacked his own Boeing 777 in a planned suicide mission.

Self-appointed armchair experts are often referred to as “aviation experts” by broadcasters, rather than the aviation consultants they actually are. Such people express opinions that may sound plausible to the non-pilot fraternity but are often rubbish.

This search appears to have been conducted in the wrong area, based on the Australian Transport Safety Bureau unresponsive pilot scenario. Yet we know from the National Geographic recent Air Crash Investigations documentary, which held Shah responsible, that only three minutes elapsed from when he said goodnight to Kuala Lumpur air traffic control to when he disappeared electronically and turned southwest.

If there was no pilot involvement the aircraft just would have flown itself to the programmed destination of Beijing. It was still under control 90 minutes later when it turned south just north of Sumatra.

If, as generally believed, Shah was trying to hide the aircraft in as remote a location as possible to hide his crime then he would endeavour to fly as far as possible before the fuel ran out. As an experienced Boeing 777 captain, this is how I would manage this. Fly at long-range cruise speed mach 0.83 at as high an altitude as possible for maximum range. As the first engine flamed out due to fuel starvation I would start a slow-speed descent at 220 knots indicated airspeed with the second engine at idle. Just before second engine flame-out, I would select flap while still having hydraulic pressure to ensure my sea impact speed would not be so severe as to cause massive amounts of debris. Passing 5000 feet and flying on limited flight control hydraulic pressure from the automatically deployed air driven generator I would turn into wind and try to judge a ditching at low speed so that the aircraft would not break up into pieces. This speed would be still in the order of 250km/h or greater.

I recently was well out to sea and observed how big the sea state can be, with very large waves in a 50km/h wind. In the latitudes south of 40 degrees the winds and sea state is even greater.

Some pieces of debris — confirmed as coming from MH370 — have been turning up. The first was a right flaperon that I suspect was due to the right engine being shorn off, as they are designed to do, in a heavy impact with the sea.

Later an associated piece turned up, also from the area immediately behind the right engine. And then a piece from the horizontal stabiliser (tailplane) leading edge, which also would support the shearing off of the right engine. The weakest part of the fuselage is at the juncture of the body and the wing. It appears to me that during the ditching the aircraft broke at this juncture and this is generally, depending on the seating configuration, where the partition between business class and economy occurs, so some panelling was dislodged.

All this does not answer the question of why the ATSB did not listen to experts who would have placed the search area at least 400km farther south and west. That is why MH370 has not been found.

Byron Bailey, a veteran commercial pilot with more than 45 years’ experience and 26,000 flying hours, is a former RAAF fighter pilot and trainer, and was a senior captain with Emirates for 15 years, during which he flew the same model Boeing 777 passenger jet as Malaysia Airlines MH370.