MH370: why is the ATSB blind to pilot’s deliberate, calculated action?

Pilot Byron Bailey says the ATSB’s initial decision on the MH370 pilots was wrong

ATSB spokesman Peter Foley, who is a mariner not a pilot, recently released a statement saying the wing flap belonging to the MH370 was in the retracted position when it was torn from its parent wing upon high-speed impact with the southern Indian Ocean.

This, if correct, negates the theory of an attempted slow-speed ditching at ­250km/h with the flap lowered so as to lessen the ditching speed.

What it does point to is the probability of Captain Zaharie Shah flying the aircraft in cruise at 900km/h at high level to maximise range, deep into the southern Indian Ocean, until both engines flamed out because of fuel exhaustion.

He then would have glided the aircraft at about 400km/h for a further 200km in the “clean configuration’’ (with flap retracted). This would fit with the assumed intent of Shah to hide the aircraft in as remote a location as possible.

Limited hydraulic and electrical power would be available via the automatically deployed ram air turbine for powering the flight controls and manual flying (no autopilot) but Shah, as an experienced and competent pilot, would not find this difficult. It would fit in with the doppler shift associated with the last satellite ping, as Shah may have needed to dive briefly on final engine flame-out to ensure the turbine was providing full output, which is speed-dependent to an extent.

I have done a couple of test flights with a ram air turbine deployed to test functionality. The auxiliary power unit would try for an autostart passing 22,000 feet in descent but would shut down due to fuel shortage. Shah would then have faced the scenario of “ ditching’’ the plane at about 350km/h in the clean configuration, because without engine-driven hydraulic power the flap could not be lowered.

The subsequent massive impact with the ocean would wreck the aircraft and kill the pilot but, since it appears Shah was intent on suicide, this would be part of the plan.

The ATSB is suggesting that on fuel exhaustion (autopilot disconnect) and dead pilot the aircraft would have crashed into the sea, but a vertical dive from 35,000 feet at 1200km/h would smash the aircraft into smithereens, producing hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris and flotsam which would have floated for a long time. The ATSB members, who are not pilots, are still pushing an unresponsive (dead) pilot theory to fit in with their initial March 2014 absurd decision of the pilots being rendered “unresponsive’’. If that were so, the aircraft would have flown on to Beijing or, if the autopilot disconnected, would have crashed at 1200km/h in a vertical dive. Instead, as pointed out by the Malaysian PM seven days after the disappearance, it appears to have been “deliberate action by someone to control the aircraft”.

It appears to me that the taxpayer-funded ATSB members should be more focused on having an open, transparent and truthful inquiry into MH370.

Byron Bailey is a former Emirates Boeing 777 captain with 45 years’ flying experience.