Red herring in hunt for MH370 highlights air traffic flaws

A map shows the possible path of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 as released to Reuters by the Malaysian Transport Ministry May 1, 2014

Fresh questions have been raised over air traffic co-ordination after a preliminary report on the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared almost two months ago revealed 90 minutes of wasted effort while controllers looked in the wrong country.

While Flight MH370's disappearance has led to calls for real-time tracking, it has also re-focused attention on the gap between what controllers sometimes think and see, which complicated early efforts to find Air France 447 in 2009.

Some 25 minutes after the Malaysian jet was first reported missing over the Gulf of Thailand on March 8, the airline told controllers that it had flown onto Cambodian airspace. It later added it had been able to exchange signals, the report said.

Half an hour later, the airline reassured controllers that the Boeing 777 was in a "normal condition" based on a signal placing it even further east, on the other side of Vietnam.

In fact, by then it had flown back west across Malaysia and was already on a new southerly course thought to have taken it across the tip of Indonesia and towards the Indian Ocean, where investigators believe it crashed with 239 people on board.

The false trail appears to have cost controllers time, according to maps and a chronology released on Thursday.

Unnoticed by civil controllers because its transponder was switched off, and deemed no threat by a military radar controller, the aircraft flew back across Malaysia and the Malacca Straits for an hour while the airline believed it was in Cambodian and then Vietnamese airspace.

The airline later told controllers the information had been based on a "projection" and was not reliable, according to the report.

Malaysia Airlines could not be reached for comment.

The confusion echoes a fumble when Air France 447 vanished over the Atlantic five years ago. Controllers at first mistook a virtual flight path for the plane's actual course, according to an official report, which may have delayed a search operation.

In both cases, people on the ground were looking only at projections when they thought they were looking at real data.

HIGH TRAFFIC

Both events illustrate the problems in handling a growing amount of air traffic crossing through remote areas, where controllers and dispatchers sometimes have to fill in the blanks by anticipating where an aircraft should be.

"It is a natural consequence of the old traditional industry ways, which are limited by communications capability," said air traffic control expert Hans Weber, president of U.S.-based consultancy TECOP International.

Experts say such methods are not necessarily unsafe because controllers simply compensate for uncertainty by leaving a bigger "bubble" of vacant space around a jet to avoid collision. But that can also lead to delays and greater congestion.

"Controllers anticipate where a plane's next call should come from: that is what they do because that is all they have to work with," said Weber.

Many private satellite firms are offering flight tracking services, but analysts say they face problems of capacity due to sharp rises in global air traffic expected over coming years.

Such issues could be overtaken by broader plans for a radical overhaul of air traffic control in the next decade in the United States and Europe, using satellites. But the schemes are costly and have not yet been widely adopted elsewhere.

(Additional reporting by Siva Govindasamy; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Source:
www.reuters.com

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AirAsia forced to apologise over magazine claim that 'pilots will never lose a plane'

In-flight magazine told passengers to 'rest assured that your captain is well prepared to ensure your plane will never get lost'

Southeast Asia's top budget carrier AirAsia has apologised over a controversial advert that promised “the captain is well prepared to ensure your plane will never get lost” in its inflight magazine.

The airline was forced to remove the magazine when it sparked outrage following the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Passengers described the claim made in an article, which had been written by a retired pilot, as “distasteful” and “disturbing” after it was circulated across social media.

The paragraph read: “Pilot training in AirAsia is continuous and very thorough. Rest assured that your captain is well prepared to ensure your plane will never get lost.”

Datuk Kamarudin Meranun, the AirAsia Executive Chairman and Publisher of the Travel 3Sixty magazine expressed his “deep regret” over the article and said the magazine had gone to print well before flight MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board.

In a statement, he said: "With deep regret and remorse I would like to sincerely apologise for any offense caused by the Pilot's Perspective article in the latest issue of Travel 3Sixty magazine.

"As a monthly contributor, Capt Lim prepared all of his articles months in advance before the magazine goes to print. Unintentionally and regrettably, the current issue carry an article that discuss about GPS and Radar, which was printed a month before its issue date.

We are removing the magazine from all of our flights on all AirAsia aircraft immediately. Our thoughts and prayers remain with the family and friends of the recent aviation incident."

Mr Meranun added that he was "truly sorry" the issue had been released at such an "inopportune moment" and said disciplinary action would also be taken against the magazine's editorial staff.

Chinese state media announced today a patrol ship in the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has discovered a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz - the standard frequency for a black box recorder.

Source:

www.independent.co.uk

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