The Hunt for MH370

by Ean Higgins

  ‘I wanted to be there, to be briefed on the report, I’ve been waiting to see what is in it,’ Danica told the ABC. ‘I’m very angry, that this offer came with only 48 hours to get over there. I would have jumped at the chance to ask questions.’

  Quite a few families did head to the Malaysian administrative capital Putrajaya on 30 July to accept the government’s offer to be briefed on the report in the morning, ahead of its public release and media briefing in the afternoon. It was a long briefing – two-and-a-half hours – but at the end of it the 35 families who attended told journalists they felt let down, still had a burning gap of not knowing what had happened to their loved ones, and were angry. Some family members left the briefing in tears.

  It turned out that while Kok had said early on in the investigation he wanted to ‘find whatever truth we can’, the truth had ultimately eluded him. Despite a massive effort, Kok told the families he had been unable to work out what exactly happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

  K. S. Narendran, whose wife Chandrika Sharma was on the ill-fated flight, told The Australian after the briefing there was ‘absolutely nothing new as far as I can tell’ from the report.

  ‘The plane took off, it turned back and then disappeared. We don’t know where it went or where it is – that is essentially a summary of this report,’ said Narendran, who flew from the southern Indian city of Chennai to attend the briefing.

  Journalists and MH370 club members around the world got their look at the investigation report an hour or so later when the Malaysian government put it up on the web. It comprised a main document of about 500 pages, and another 1000 pages of appendices. But it all boiled down to one sentence.

  ‘In conclusion, the Team is unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of MH370,’ the report said.

  And there was no way of determining the real cause, the report said, unless the aircraft were found: ‘Without the benefit of the examination of the aircraft wreckage and recorded flight data information, the investigation is unable to determine any plausible aircraft or systems failure mode that would lead to the observed systems deactivation, diversion from the filed flight plan route and the subsequent flight path taken by the aircraft.’

  The next-of-kin in Australia got a copy of the report around the same time it was publicly released. Danica dived into it, and told me a few hours later what she thought of it.

  ‘Let’s just say I’m totally deflated . . . the report has come to no conclusion, it is merely a mix of words that gives no new information on the possible location of our loved ones,’ she said. ‘As the report itself states, the fact there are 239 persons still missing lays bare that Malaysia is still responsible for those missing [and] has a legal and moral right to continue to search for MH370.’

  Kok’s report did not say nothing, though – even if it did not come to a conclusion about what happened, it did make some adverse comments and recommendations.

  The investigators were highly critical of the air traffic controller for the sector in question for not reacting faster to a clear and present danger. The report said as soon as the Ho Chi Minh controllers said they had lost all contact with the aircraft, the controller in Kuala Lumpur ‘should have realised that MH370 could be experiencing an emergency situation’.

  ‘This was especially so after he had tried to establish radio communication with MH370 by making a “blind transmission” . . . without success.’

  The controller should have immediately informed the watch supervisor, and search and rescue service, Kok’s team said. When the watch supervisor was eventually woken up, he rang Malaysia Airlines operations, was told all was well because Flight Explorer showed MH370 was over Cambodia (which was never part of the flight plan), and, satisfied, went back to the rest area.

  The report made one absolutely undeniable observation: the disappearance of a big commercial jetliner should not be allowed to happen again.

  ‘In this technological epoch, the international aviation community needs to provide assurance to the travelling public that the location of current-generation commercial aircraft is always known. It is unacceptable to do otherwise.’

  The final report did, in fact, exhibit that a lot of hard work had been done, and the findings had effectively excluded a number of possible causes.

  There had been a lot of speculation that the two main items of cargo, the lifetime supply of delectable mangosteens and the lithium-ion batteries, had somehow found a way between them to start a catastrophic fire. There are scores of cases where lithium-ion batteries have caused fires of various sizes on aircraft. They are the chief suspect, though not convicted beyond reasonable doubt, of taking down a Boeing 747 cargo plane in 2011.

  On 28 July that year, Asiana Airlines Flight 991 departed Seoul-Incheon International Airport on a flight to Shanghai. Just under an hour later, the co-pilot radioed in. ‘Shanghai control, Shanghai control, AAR991 request emergency descent, emergency, declare emergency due to fire main deck. Request descent, and descent to one-zero thousand.’ This request was approved, but the aircraft never made it. Like Swissair 111, the fire spread very quickly, and the pilots started losing control.

  ‘Rudder control . . . flight control, all are not working,’ the captain radioed in.

  One of the pilots issued the words, ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday’, and the last transmission from the first officer, 19 minutes after first declaring an emergency, was ‘altitude control is not available due to heavy vibration, going to ditch . . . ah’.

  The aircraft crashed down at high speed into the sea off Jeju, South Korea. The origin of the fire was never definitively established, but a lot of attention focused on the mix of flammable materials, including the lithium-ion batteries, along with paint, amino acid solution and synthetic resin.

  The MH370 investigators asked, could mangosteen juice and lithium-ion batteries have hooked up to form a similar deadly combination on MH370? The report said there were suspicious circumstances:

  ‘The batteries were speculated to be a fire hazard and the mangosteens were also speculated to be out of season at that time of the year.’

  It was a thorough piece of investigation.

  ‘Contrary to speculations that the fruits were out of season, it was found to be in season in Muar, Johore and neighbouring countries,’ Kok’s team reported.

  Both the type of batteries and mangosteens were tested to within an inch of their lives. The sponge used to keep the fruit fresh was found to have a pH value of 6 and the mangosteen juice had a pH value of 3.

  ‘When current was passed through mangosteen extracts, the current flow indicator lit up (mangosteen extract was conductive).’

  Nonetheless, the investigators tried everything to persuade the mangosteen juice make the lithium-ion batteries catch fire, but despite their best efforts, it just didn’t work.

  So, those suspects – the mangosteen growers and the lithium-ion battery manufacturers – were exonerated.

  Mahathir Mohamad’s theory of a remote electronic takeover of the aircraft was also investigated.

  It turned out Mahathir was, in one sense, right: Boeing had, incredibly, devised a futuristic anti-hijack technology to this end, the investigators determined. The aircraft company had in 2003 filed, and in 2006 received, a patent ‘for a system that, once activated, would remove all controls from pilots and automatically fly and land the aircraft at a predetermined location’.

  The thought was that even though cockpit doors had been toughened, a captain might yield to a threat of violence from a hijacker and open it.

  So the patent allowed for the aircraft to be flown automatically to a designated airport, and no-one on board would be able to stop it. This revelation, on the face of it, brought into the realm of possibility the idea of a rogue state like North Korea hacking into the anti-hijack remote autopilot to steal the aircraft or just take it down. But, th
e investigators found, the technology had never got beyond the patent stage.

  ‘Boeing has confirmed that it has not implemented the patented system or any other technology to remotely pilot a commercial aircraft and is not aware of any Boeing commercial aircraft that has incorporated such technology,’ the report said.

  The investigators could also not find any sign of mechanical failure that could explain the disappearance of MH370 – all the maintenance records, and automatic reporting systems showed everything on board to be working fine.

  The loss of communications was most likely explained by someone turning them off, the report said.

  There were some other, individually intriguing bits of work done by the investigators, including looking into the eerie mobile phone log-on – just one was recorded – from the co-pilot Fariq’s phone when MH370 rounded Penang. The investigators wanted to see if a telephone call could, in fact, have been made. A telecommunications expert flying in a King Air 350 over the same area during the same time of night tried three different types of mobile phone at different altitudes up to 24,000 feet – one was able to make a call at 20,000 feet.

  Among the other key findings of the Malaysian investigation, a vital element related to the turns the aircraft made after it ‘went dark’ but was picked up on military radar. The first left-hand turn after IGARI – the ‘turn back’ – took two minutes and 10 seconds, according to the military radar playback. The pilots on the investigation team tried several attempts to make the turn via setting the autopilot – it didn’t work, the turns took more than three minutes. Then they tried it by disconnecting the autopilot and making the turn manually. The second manual attempt, the closest to the actual time, took two minutes and 28 seconds.

  It was a hair-raising turn. The maximum bank angle on autopilot is 25 degrees; this turn in the simulator was made at a bank angle of 35 degrees. The ‘bank angle’ warning sounded several times, telling the pilot this turn was extreme. About half way through the turn, the stick-shaker went off, warning the pilot the aircraft was in danger of stalling – the greater the bank angle, the less the lift generated by the wings. This produced one of the key conclusions of the report: that left-hand turn just after IGARI could only have been performed by a pilot disengaging the autopilot and turning the aircraft manually in a difficult, risky, even violent manoeuvre.

  ‘The turnback was not made by autopilot, the turnback was made by manual control,’ Kok told journalists in the press conference where he released the report.

  The investigators said they had no evidence anyone other than the pilots was flying the plane from the turnback on, but said they equally could not exclude the possibility that somebody else was flying it.

  Kok’s report mentioned the simulated flight to the southern Indian Ocean flown on Zaharie’s home computer, but dismissed it as irrelevant, saying the Royal Malaysian Police report ‘concluded that there were no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations’.

  There was some discussion in the report of the large amount of extra fuel carried ordered by Zaharie. It said, ‘a captain has the privilege of carrying extra fuel if he feels that there is justification to do so, based on expected weather forecast en route and at the destination.’

  But in this case, it said, ‘there was no known en route weather forecast that could pose a threat for MH370.’

  The report said no more than a ‘reasonable amount’ of extra fuel was carried. But it says the flight plan called for enough fuel to fly to not one, but two alternative airports: Jinan Yaoqiang International estimated to be 46 minutes from the diversion point, and Hangzhou Xiaoshan International estimated to be one hour 45 minutes away.

  The investigators had looked at the personal backgrounds and social situations of Zaharie, referred to as the pilot-in-command or PIC, and Fariq, referred to as the first officer or FO, and the 10 cabin crew. Reading the conclusions it appears they were an extraordinarily well-adjusted, healthy, well-behaved and happily partnered dozen.

  ‘There were no behavioural signs of social isolation, change in habits or interest, self-neglect, drug or alcohol abuse of the PIC, FO and the cabin crew,’ the report said. ‘The PIC and FO as well as the crew were not experiencing difficulties in any personal relationships.’

  In passing here and there, the report said how magnificent Malaysia Airlines was as a whole, including referring to ‘excellent service awards won by the company’s cabin staff for several years’.

  Of Zaharie, the report said, ‘The PIC’s ability to handle stress at work and home was reported to be good. There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability. There were no significant changes in his lifestyle, interpersonal conflict or family stresses.’

  Zaharie had hurt his back in a paragliding accident some years earlier, but there was no evidence he was still on prescription pain killers.

  His finances all appeared to be in good order, there were no unusual financial transactions in the period leading up to the flight, and no unusual insurance policies to be found. He was healthy, and on the day of the flight, he was looking his usual calm, well-dressed, confident self.

  ‘On studying the PIC’s behavioural pattern on the CCTV recordings on the day of the flight and prior 3 flights there were no significant behavioural changes observed,’ the report said.

  Professionally, the report said, Zaharie had sailed through with ‘flawless safety records with a smooth career pathway to his existing position’.

  But at the same time the investigators picked up a couple of odd things in the radio transmissions between the controllers and Zaharie. For some reason, Zaharie said he was maintaining his altitude – 35,000 feet – twice within seven minutes: ‘maintaining flight level three five zero, three seven zero’. The investigators said while this happened now and again in flying, ‘it was anomalous at this time’.

  More significant was that Zaharie, in the famous final transmission, ‘Good night, Malaysian Three Seven Zero’ in response to the Kuala Lumpur controller advising him to switch to Ho Chi Minh control on radio frequency 120.9, did not read back the frequency. This, Kok’s team said, was in breach of both Malaysian and ICAO regulations, the latter of which says ‘clearances or instructions shall be read back or acknowledged in a manner to clearly indicate that they have been understood and will be complied with’.

  On the much-disputed question of what the pieces of MH370 found washed up on the other side of the Indian Ocean suggested, Kok’s team did not go into any great detail of the examination. The investigators said of the wreckage found thus far, ‘no traces of explosion were found’, eliminating a bomb or missile bringing down the aircraft.

  The report did also say, as Larry Vance found, that the right flap and flaperon were in line on impact and butted into each other. But the Malaysian-led investigation stuck with the ATSB conclusions that the flap and flaperon were most likely retracted.

  However, there was one startling admission which went completely the other way: that soon after the discovery of the flaperon in July 2015, the French had determined it was ‘likely to be deflected at the time of impact’.

  ‘This was primarily based on the damage observed on the trailing edge of the flaperon,’ the report said – just the conclusion Vance had come to and disseminated at the time.

  By ‘deflected’, the French meant lowered. This suggested that going right back to the middle of 2015, the French had provided evidence that MH370 had been configured for a controlled ditching, something the ATSB had not mentioned. But the Malaysian report swept this evidence aside.

  ‘This scenario was considered a hypothesis only due to lack of corroborating information, and more importantly, it was done without the benefit of the damage information available from the right outboard flap which was found much later,’ the report said.

  The investigation report went into considerable impenetrable detail about last two satelli
te transmissions eight seconds apart, which the ATSB relied on heavily for its ‘death dive’ theory claiming they show MH370 at the end of the flight was in rapid and accelerating descent. Like the revelation that the French had concluded the flaperon was lowered, the report casually threw in a bombshell you would miss if you did not know the significance of it. It concluded the burst frequency offset changes could indicate rapid descent, but then again, it could mean something else altogether – something called ‘warm-up drift’ of the oven controlled crystal oscillator (OCXO).

  The 8:19am log-on request and log-on acknowledgement could indicate ‘that the aircraft was likely to be descending at this time,’ the report said.

  ‘Alternatively, it could have been due to the OCXO warm up drift, or it could have been due to a combination of uncompensated vertical velocity and OCXO warm up drift.’

  This finding, buried in jargon as it is, turned out to be a critical blow to the ‘death dive’ theory. Robin Stevens, a British electrical engineer and later insurance executive who has been working with pilots Bailey, Hardy and Keane on developing a new search strategy, watched the MH370 saga from the start. He generously explained in layman’s terms what the ‘warm-up drift’ issue was about, and its significance. It hinges on the fact that investigators believe there was a loss of power to the satellite data unit after the main engines ran out of fuel which would have shut it down, and then a minute or so later a re-powering of the equipment when the auxiliary power unit automatically kicked in.

  ‘The aircraft’s satellite data unit has a crystal oscillator to control the frequency of its transmissions to the satellite, and the temperature of this oscillator has to be kept within close limits to ensure as stable a transmitting frequency as possible,’ Stevens told me.