Never to be found?
Malaysian Flight 370
“An airliner has been lost from radar and all radio contact including transponder and ACARS ceased simultaneously”. This was approximately the first report of the disappearance of the Malaysian B777 airliner which reached us all around the world. On the face of it, I am sure we all thought the same thing. A sudden, catastrophic, structural failure of the airframe at cruising altitude. This could be the only cause for such an instant and permanent loss of all comms. It was only later that we all started to become aware that this was not a “usual” aviation disaster.
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These past months we have lived through the greatest aviation mystery of all time. Although sharing some similarities with the loss of Air France 447 in the Atlantic Ocean back in 2009, the disappearance of flight MH370 has confounded all the experts from day one. At least in the case of AF447, they knew approximately where to look and very soon after the airliner went missing they found floating wreckage including bodies which assisted in the determination of the most likely location where the aircraft entered the sea and broke up. Additionally from the last ACARS transmission, the BEA (French equivalent of the UK AAIB) could define that the aircraft could not have flown more than 40 nm from this position, taking into account predicted flightpath etc. Eventually the major remains of the AF447 hull was discovered at 13,100 feet deep by sideways looking sonar which picked it up on a flat part of the ocean floor.
In MH370’s case, if the airliner really is in the part of the Southern Ocean where the teams have concentrated their search, then the location is even deeper by possibly another 2,000 feet and the underwater topography has been described as similar to the Himalayas. It has to be said there is much less likelihood of anything being found by the present range of robot submarines with their advanced sonar systems, even if they can get down to these depths.
Perhaps one of the most incredible aspects of the search for the Air France aircraft was the employment of Bayesian Mathematical probability principles to predict the most likely area where the crash site could have occurred. Even though the BEA were working on a primary search zone of radius 40nm, this was still a huge piece of ocean. The statisticians at Metron (US company) were asked to use Bayes’ law** to re-examine all the known data and search results thus far and to guide the search teams in the right direction. Interestingly, during the first round of calculations and analysis of the search to date, the Metron team assumed (like everyone else) that the Flight Data Recorder pingers were still operational and transmitting during the period when the initial passive acoustic search was carried out. The main focus (like this time with MH370), had been on the battery life of the radio beacon transmitter – 30 days plus or minus a few. This meant that they discounted a large area which had been ‘swept’ by the towed array passive sonar listening devices. It was another year later, when the BEA asked for a review, that the team started again from scratch and this time challenged all the previous assumptions. “If” the ELT location devices on the FDR/CVR had NOT been working when that area was searched, then that would change the picture completely. Indeed this was the case and within a week of a new search being carried out, the wreckage was found.
So much for the brilliance of great minds and the application of scientific process. One of the least attractive aspects of the greatest aviation mystery of all time has been the deplorable standard of journalistic reporting. Without doubt the worst example of this has been the US news channel CNN with their consistent sensationalist and insensitive broadcasts throughout the search for the aircraft. They seemed to have had a deliberate policy to go after the commercial ‘ratings’ by trying to attract as many viewers to the channel as possible, culminating in widespread condemnation from all sides. The caption on one of their “inside a real flightdeck B777 simulator” pieces was totally puerile. Perhaps you have seen it already? Underneath the visual images from a B777 flightdeck with supposed expert aviators giving their opinions, was the wording, “DEVELOPING STORY: BOEING 777 WILL STRUGGLE TO MAINTAIN ALTITUDE ONCE THE FUEL TANKS ARE EMPTY”. Unbelievably dumb! Do they really think stuff like this can be classified as “News”?
That being said however, the reality is that the authorities do not know how long the fuel lasted and when it was exhausted, what altitude the aircraft was at. The gliding range from 37,000 feet is going to be huge compared to that of an airliner at 10,000 feet when the tanks run dry.
The human cost cannot be trivialised in any way. Seriously, there can be hardly anything more heartbreaking than waiting at an airport in joyful anticipation of being shortly reunited with loved members of your family or friends, only to find “INDEFINITE DELAY” on the arrivals board next to their flight number, shortly before being taken aside by airline officials who explain the flight has vanished and assumed to have been lost. When this loss is compounded by inadequate standards of journalism combined with apparent incompetence on behalf of the authorities, the situation is worse for all concerned. Agreed, they all picked up their game later on in the story, but the first days and weeks were atrocious.
One thing’s for sure, we can expect to see several changes to the ways in which our industry ‘tracks’ the airliners. The financial cost of the search must have exceeded a billion US dollars already, even when you discount some of the military involvement because these resources could be said to have been already funded regardless. This is from the viewpoint that the men and materiel would have been ‘on exercise’ if not actively involved in the search for a missing passenger jet.
For example, the current battery life of 30 days +/- for the location devices is clearly not enough. Also, flightdeck continuous video recording is possibly being considered and this in conjunction with CVR tapes which do not self erase after so many minutes. Even if this CVR is ever found, it is quite possibly not going to be of material assistance to the investigation team if the last ‘x’ minutes of the ‘flight’ of MH370 was conducted in silence for whatever reason.
Finally, the technology is currently available to ensure that every airliner is fitted with a tracking device which can be ‘watched’ continuously by satellites such that there is no place to hide on the surface of the earth. It goes without saying that the control of these devices would be out of reach of anyone onboard the aircraft.
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On BBC Radio 4 in the UK recently, there was a very interesting piece of radio journalism which included an interview with one of the chief statisticians from Metron. The lady described the entire search for AF447 methodically and in an articulate way such that even those of us without an appreciation of higher Mathematics could understand the principles. In fact it was completely fascinating to listen to an expert in the field who had the gift for facilitating the comprehension of the listener. The saddest part of the whole item however was when she was asked if she thought that the location of MH370 would ever be discovered. She paused, summarised the major factors involved and said that “No”, in her opinion, the aircraft would “never be found”. A sobering thought indeed.
© James McBride.
PS. We should all say a prayer for the passengers and crew of flight 370. Until the cause is known, (and it may never be) there but for the grace of God go all of us.
**Thomas Bayes, (1701–1761). Mathematician and Clergyman, son of a Presbyterian Minister.
