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| Satellite image released by the Chinese Saturday evening |
Writing from Kuala Lumpur---News this afternoon that a Chinese satellite has recorded images of a large piece of what could be debris from the missing Malaysia flight 370 will provide a distraction to the otherwise newsworthy realization that official investigators hyped a theory of criminal intent by the pilots with little evidence to support it.
Sometime in the not-too-distant future, it is my hope that this friendly little country and the people who lead it, will re examine how their minister of transport and defense handled this unprecedented event.
The minister, Hishammuddin Hussein interrupted his daily press briefing Saturday afternoon to tell reporters about this latest debris sighting.
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| Google Earth representation of today's announced sighting. |
At 72 X 40 feet, it is about the size of a jetliner wing and is located 1570 miles more or less to the south west of Perth, Australia. Whether this is the same large chunk the Australians reported seeing earlier in the week, I can't say. That was also reported to be about 1500 miles from Perth.
Mr. Hishammuddin has to be thrilled. Certainly for the obvious reason, we all want to find the plane and start working on solving the mystery, but also because the sooner he can talk about wreckage, the sooner people will start to forget how he called the disappearance of the plane very likely a deliberate act. With that announcement on March 15th, Hishammuddin launched the media on unchecked feeding frenzy even though there was little to support his claim.
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| Jay Davis photographed 9M-MRO at LAX last year |
Everything presented to reporters as suspicious activity on the flight deck has either turned out to be not accurate or not knowable. For example, we were told that the ACARs transmission was turned off prior to 1:19am. Only to learn later that nobody knows if the ACARs was turned off, only that the transmission scheduled for 1:37 was not received.
Then U.S. officials leaked to reporters that the Malaysians said the ACARs transmission showed the pilots pre programmed a turn off course prior to acknowledging the hand-off to Vietnam air traffic control with an "Alright, goodnight." I have little confidence that such an action can be transmitted via ACARS. If it is true, it does beg the question, Why would the pilots program a turn back without reporting a problem during the hand-off?
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| Capt. Nik Huzlan in Kuala Lumpur |
Now I think I know the answer. In an interview conducted by ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff and I in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, former Malaysia Airlines captain Nik Huzlan Nik Hussain told us, it is not uncommon for pilots to pre program the heading for the closest emergency airport throughout the flight. As the plane passes each way point the heading is changed to reflect the next nearest emergency airport.
I've believed for a while now that this plane experienced an sudden decompression that incapacitated the cockpit crew without affecting the fly-ability of the plane. I have no insider knowledge, but I'm familiar with similar events and I know it is possible.
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| Minister Hishammuddin at a press briefing |
What I haven't seen before is such a ham handed effort to present to the press inflammatory characterizations and distortion of the facts. I'm assuming the whole thing is at attempt by the minister to spin the drama towards pilots and away from the fact that as minister of defense as well as transport, it is he who has some explaining to do.
An unidentified airliner blows through Malaysian airspace without being noticed. A Malaysian airliner goes missing for nearly seven hours before being reported. Satellite data presented to Malaysian officials gets stuck in somebody's inbox for days while a sea, land and air campaign stretches half way around the world for a failure to use that data to focus the search.
Bully for the Chinese and for the Australians for bringing what might be good news to this so far hopeless investigation. There's a lot of work ahead for everybody. But sometime in the future important questions need to be asked about the sorry performance of Minister Hishammuddin on three levels; as the transportation chief, as the defense chief and as the orchestrator of groundless speculation about the pilots of Flight 370.
UPDATE On Sunday evening the Malaysian authorities denied any pre-programming of the turn back when the MH370 flight crew reached the IGARI waypoint, eliminating the only suggestion that someone planned in advance to take the flight off course. The statement from the Ministry of Transport said, the ACARs transmission at 1:07 "showed a normal routing all the way to Beijing."
UPDATE On Sunday evening the Malaysian authorities denied any pre-programming of the turn back when the MH370 flight crew reached the IGARI waypoint, eliminating the only suggestion that someone planned in advance to take the flight off course. The statement from the Ministry of Transport said, the ACARs transmission at 1:07 "showed a normal routing all the way to Beijing."