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MH370: How long will the search continue?



 
 
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Old June 16th, 2014, 01:17 PM posted to rec.travel.air
nam sak
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Posts: 29
Default MH370: How long will the search continue?

A long article with not much if anything new. But David Soucie's point
that "Once the aircraft is found -- if it is -- at that point the
Australians will be pretty much done with their part and the
Malaysians will conduct the investigation" is something I had not
really given enough thought to. What is the point of finding the
aircraft if we are just going to go back to square 1 with Malaysia
lying it's ass off?

Even air craft investigations in the west have been accused for good
reasons of coming up with false findings to suit the purposes of
governments and manufacturers e.g. TWA 800. Some of these have only
been overturned by subsequent investigations by interested parties
e.g. United 811 and action by the courts e.g. Silk Air 185.

If investigations of relatively straightforward accidents are flawed
in the west what earthly chance does an investigation of MH370 by
Malaysia have of coming up with the truth?

I think the relatives' whistle blower fund idea has the best chance.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/16/wo...arch-continue/

MH370: How long will the search continue?
By Sophie Brown, CNN
June 16, 2014 -- Updated 0836 GMT (1636 HKT)

(CNN) -- When authorities confirmed last month that four "pings" heard
in the southern Indian Ocean had nothing to do with Malaysia Airlines
Flight 370, it was a devastating blow for those involved in the
investigation, the families of those on board the missing jet, and the
countless number of people around the world who had become captivated
by the mystery surrounding the plane's disappearance. What was
described as "the most promising lead" in the search had proved
fruitless. The investigation into the ill-fated flight is already the
most expensive in aviation history. Malaysia has spent $8.6 million so
far, Australia is expecting to spend around $84 million, and other
countries involved in the search have reportedly set aside sizable
sums. Meanwhile, families of the missing passengers are working to
raise $5 million to encourage anyone with information about the
plane's whereabouts to come forward. Monday marks 100 days since the
Boeing 777 disappeared. To the frustration and disappointment of many,
no tangible evidence has been found. How long will authorities keep
working to solve this expensive mystery and what are their reasons for
doing so? CNN speaks to aviation experts for their views.

Aviation safety and security
Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of
Transportation, says there's a tremendous need to find the plane,
particularly if mechanical failure, and not foul play, is to blame.
"The longer time that goes on, the more it appears it was not
terrorism, hijacking, sabotage, (or) suicide, and it does appear that
something else happened -- something mechanical, some kind of a
catastrophic failure, an explosion, something that debilitated the
persons on board; and they really need to solve that mystery because
until we solve it we can't improve air safety," Schiavo says.
Some improvements have already begun. Malaysia Airlines has changed
its cockpit regulations. International aviation bodies such as the
International Air Transport Association (IATA) have called on the
aviation industry to change aircraft tracking systems. But convincing
the industry to implement safety measures before an accident happens
remains a challenge, Schiavo adds.
"In the United States and in many other countries, we legislate by
counting bodies. We don't make something the law until someone has
died, and that's just awful and unacceptable but that's the way our
regulations work," she says.
Maintaining the political will to implement the changes is part of the
problem, said David Soucie, a former safety inspector at the U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration and author of "Why Planes Crash."

Findings can come years after an accident by which time the sense of
urgency has subsided. "Knowing what happened and knowing what could be
done to improve a crash investigation, while that's extremely
important, often civil aviation authorities make a particular
recommendation and it falls on deaf ears because our memories are so
short," says Soucie.

In the case of Air France Flight 447, which crashed en route to Paris
in June 2009 with 228 people on board, the plane's black boxes weren't
recovered until May 2011. French authorities made a series of
recommendations, including that the flight recorders' pinger duration
should be increased from 30 days to 90 days, but by that time the
motivation to do something had dwindled, Soucie says. Since then, some
carriers have implemented those adjustments voluntarily but they
haven't become mandatory across the industry. Still, the accident did
prompt changes in pilot training and Airbus tweaked a key cockpit
sensor. "I'm worried about that with this accident as well -- that the
longer we take to find it, the less passionate people are about doing
something about what it is that we find," Soucie says.

David Gallo, an oceanographer and Director of Special Projects at the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was involved in the search for
Air France Flight 447. He says it's critical to find the wreck soon to
prevent a similar accident occurring again, and that the amount of
money being set aside for the search is trivial in this context.

"If it happened at one time it can happen again," says Gallo. "We can
(find out what happened) and I'm confident that we will," he adds.
But it requires certain things: "It takes the right technology because
it's at the bottom of the ocean which is deep and vast. It takes the
right team because at the depths where the plane may be -- at some of
the greatest depths of the sea -- the club is very small of people
that know how to go to those depths and work. Most importantly, it
takes the right operational plan. And then on top of that, it takes a
bit of luck and a lot of prayer," he says.

Who's responsible?
Under an international pact between aviation nations, there's a
pecking order of who takes charge of a crash investigation. At the top
in this case is Malaysia, but Malaysia is allowed, and in fact
encouraged, to bring in other countries or hand off the task to other
countries that can do the job. In early April, Australia accepted an
invitation from Malaysia to lead the search for the missing aircraft
and participate in the investigation as an accredited representative.

"I think it was very sensible that (Malaysia) did that. I really think
that Australia is doing all that they can... and it's a very big and
expensive task," says Schiavo.
But there's a precedent for that kind of expenditure, she adds. The
two-year search for Air France Flight 447 cost around $40 million,
according to French authorities, while the investigation into the
Trans World Airline 800 crash into the Atlantic in 1996 cost in excess
of $50 million.
Although Malaysia has delegated the responsibility for the search to
Australia, it is still responsible for the accident investigation.
That's something that concerns Soucie.

"Once the aircraft is found -- if it is -- at that point the
Australians will be pretty much done with their part and the
Malaysians will conduct the investigation, which concerns me a great
deal because there are going to be a lot of unknowns, even when we
have the aircraft in hand. What we're really trying to do is get to
the bottom of what happened, and that doesn't come from the search;
that comes from the investigation following the search," Soucie says.

Closure for families
More than three months since they last saw their loved ones, the
families of those on board MH370 still live in a state of limbo.
"For us this is frustrating, and befuddling, and at the end of the day
I go to sleep disappointed, but for the families it's a nightmare that
never ends," says David Gallo. "It's not something that they can just
turn off for a while. I speak to several of them on a fairly routine
basis and it's just absolutely horrible what they're going through."
Beyond the emotional closure that would come from finding out what
happened to the flight, there's the question of compensation.
"When this plane fell out of the sky, it fell into the murky world of
airline liability insurance litigation," says Schiavo. Officially, no
one involved in the crash has been declared dead. Malaysia Airlines
has begun to give families an initial compensation payment of $50,000
with the final amount to be determined "when the issue of the tragedy"
is over, Malaysian authorities said last week.
But Schiavo says this is a fraction of the $176,000 carriers are
liable to pay under an international aviation treaty, even before any
evidence is found. Under the Montreal Convention, carriers are
automatically liable to their passengers unless the airline can prove
somebody else is responsible -- which Schiavo believes won't be
possible in this case, so they're going to have to pay.
"The fact that they're telling people they're going to give them
$50,000 is really an outrage because the treaty itself sets forth the
initial automatic amount they are responsible for, without any
evidence whatsoever," Schiavo says. The aviation lawyer calls the
airline's payment outrageous but "they're not alone....carriers always
wait to be sued," she says.


Lack of trust?
As new leads have emerged and been discredited, the public's faith in
authorities has waned, says Soucie.
"I think that trust in the investigation has faltered, but I hope that
people would understand that when there's little or no information at
all, there's not a whole lot (authorities) can do," he said.
All clues, no matter how trivial must be examined. For instance, one
of the latest leads is an underwater sound that could possibly be
related to the final moments of the missing plane. A scientist
assisting the investigation into the noise admits it's a long shot:
"We consider it's extremely unlikely," says Curtin University's Alec
Duncan, but "the chance of (the sound) being related to MH370 is not
zero."
Sarah Bajc, whose husband Paul was on the flight, says that she and
other families are "beyond frustrated," at this point.
"We're just totally fed up," Bajc said in a recent interview with
CNN's Ashleigh Banfield. "The authorities have completely failed the
families in this case. They've failed the flying public. The
authorities have allowed a jumbo jet to just disappear and to stay
missing, and that's just not acceptable."
Angus Houston, who heads the Australian search efforts understands
their frustration. "I think the families are in a very difficult
position at the moment. They've got no closure. They want to find the
aircraft and they will do whatever it takes to find the aircraft... If
I were in their shoes, I'd probably feel exactly the same way,"
Houston told CNN's Andrew Stevens.

When investigation ends, quest for answers will continue
The search is taking place in very deep and vast waters, but David
Gallo believes it may not be so long before the plane is found, and
experts mostly agree that attention is focused on the right area.
But if the wreck isn't located, funds will be exhausted at some point
and authorities will have to end their investigation. They will be
required by the International Civil Aviation Organization to make
their work public, even if there is no cause or concrete findings,
says Schiavo.
"At that point I suspect that various groups and organizations and the
families themselves will then take that information and try to keep
searching. It will remain to be seen whether (the authorities) will be
truly open and make all of (their data) public," she says.
As officials prepare for the next stage of the search, David Gallo
stresses the need to find the aircraft as soon as possible to obtain
any evidence before it's worn away by the action of the sea.
"We have to understand what happened for the sake of the families of
those passengers, for the sake of the flying public, for the tens of
thousands of people that fly every day, and for the sake of the
aircraft industry," he says.
"We need to find that plane, because the plane itself may be a mobile
crime scene. The only witnesses to what happened that night are those
black boxes that are inside the plane."
 




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