Who knows what may have been decided behind the ATSB’s brick wall?

In the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes program about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 a bit over a week ago, the interviewer failed to deliver the coup de grace to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau by not asking the obvious and vital extra question in each sequence.

So Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick failed to break through the stubborn ATSB brick wall in the form of Peter Foley, although he made a fair fist of trying at a Senate estimates hearing yesterday.

Foley, who led the ATSB’s search that cost Australian, Malay­sian and Chinese taxpayers $200 million and failed because he looked in the wrong place the whole time, kept saying he had evidence that showed MH370 had incapacitated pilots at the end and went into a steep dive when it ran out of fuel on ­autopilot.

The fact is, the ATSB has no evidence, except the incorrect ­interpretation of the eight-second doppler shift of the last satellite data transmission, which it claims shows the aircraft was in rapid and accelerating descent.

This is just what a pilot in control of a Boeing 777 would achieve on engine flame-out by making an initial dive to maintain airspeed and avoid a stall.

Does Foley hope he can shut down the discussion so as to avoid the possibility of renewing the search to look where I and other senior pilots think the aircraft is?

That, incidentally, is 70 to 100 nautical miles farther south of 38 degrees south than the ATSB looked, on the satellite data track known as the seventh arc.

That’s where we believe Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah flew the aircraft to the end and ditched it after putting all the passengers and crew to sleep and then to death by depressurising the cabin while he was on the flight crew’s oxygen supply, and then re-­pressurising it.

The ATSB did not look there because they wrongly went with their “ghost flight” and “death dive” theory.

So much circumstantial evidence was forthcoming that the ATSB wilfully chose to ignore, as well as opinions of the aviation industry.

The head of the ATSB at the time was Martin Dolan, a career bureaucrat with a bachelor of arts with honours in French.

Nothing wrong with speaking French but it doesn’t help you understand aviation.

Foley is a marine engineer who spent his early career at sea — an excellent background to guide a search on the ocean.

But it is not the aviation experience needed to work out what happened on the aircraft, and through that, where to look.

Zaharie’s motive may have been to remain undiscovered so his family would get an insurance payout. My airline Emirates has its ­pilots covered for $US1 million.

It is hard to believe that the ATSB could be so incompetent or unbelievably stupid.

Imagine the massive political and financial liability considerations for Malaysia if MH370 was found and the cause was a rogue pilot murdering 238 passengers and crew.

Byron Bailey is a former RAAF fighter pilot and flew Boeing 777s as an airline captain.