Bangkok: An Australian aviation expert says he is convinced MH370 crashed into the sea west of the Malaysian mainland without proper control by the pilots who were incapacitated by a catastrophic event on board the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777.
Desmond Ross, a commercial pilot with 25 years experience as an aviation and defence industry manager, told Fairfax Media that his "gut feeling and experience" tells him the southern Indian Ocean search has been conducted in the wrong area, thousands of kilometres from the crash site.
"I have said since day one that the aircraft was not under full control and was flying on a course set on the flight management system but with incapacitated pilots unable to make changes," he said.
"The aircraft descended to a low altitude because the pilots had set an emergency descent when a catastrophic event occurred on the aircraft, but they had been unable to complete their manoeuvre due to incapacitation."
The aircraft carrying 239 people inexplicably altered course from its scheduled flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing while flying over the South China Sea in the early hours of March 8, 2014, turning back to fly across Malaysia.
Investigators say turning the plane around would have required typing a complicated code input into a flight management system, indicating either foul play or an event that caused the pilots to lose consciousness after they had done it.
Captain Ross, who conducted a review of Kuala Lumpur's international airport in 2005, said the search area was based on the "relatively flimsy science" of calculations by the British company Inmarsat, which the company itself said were not guaranteed to be accurate.
The search area was based on calculations using automatic "pings" to Inmarsat's satellite via a ground station and the aircraft after it vanished.
Captain Ross said people seem to have forgotten the reports of eyewitnesses on an oil rig and yacht seeing a flaming object in the sky on the night of the disappearance, in an area west of Malaysia.
Captain Ross pointed to reports that six Swiss people who were on board a cruise liner travelling between Perth and Singapore on March 12 2014 saw debris in the sea including life jackets, food trays, papers and pieces of polystyrene.
He dismissed the argument by pundits that some aircraft parts that have been discovered on the beaches of Mozambique, Reunion Island and other east African locations prove the accuracy of the Indian Ocean search area.
"Well now – isn't it also true that these same parts may have come from somewhere much closer? How about a crash site to the west of Malaysia?"
17/06/16 Lindsay Murdoch/Canberra Times
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Desmond Ross, a commercial pilot with 25 years experience as an aviation and defence industry manager, told Fairfax Media that his "gut feeling and experience" tells him the southern Indian Ocean search has been conducted in the wrong area, thousands of kilometres from the crash site.
"I have said since day one that the aircraft was not under full control and was flying on a course set on the flight management system but with incapacitated pilots unable to make changes," he said.
"The aircraft descended to a low altitude because the pilots had set an emergency descent when a catastrophic event occurred on the aircraft, but they had been unable to complete their manoeuvre due to incapacitation."
The aircraft carrying 239 people inexplicably altered course from its scheduled flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing while flying over the South China Sea in the early hours of March 8, 2014, turning back to fly across Malaysia.
Investigators say turning the plane around would have required typing a complicated code input into a flight management system, indicating either foul play or an event that caused the pilots to lose consciousness after they had done it.
Captain Ross, who conducted a review of Kuala Lumpur's international airport in 2005, said the search area was based on the "relatively flimsy science" of calculations by the British company Inmarsat, which the company itself said were not guaranteed to be accurate.
The search area was based on calculations using automatic "pings" to Inmarsat's satellite via a ground station and the aircraft after it vanished.
Captain Ross said people seem to have forgotten the reports of eyewitnesses on an oil rig and yacht seeing a flaming object in the sky on the night of the disappearance, in an area west of Malaysia.
Captain Ross pointed to reports that six Swiss people who were on board a cruise liner travelling between Perth and Singapore on March 12 2014 saw debris in the sea including life jackets, food trays, papers and pieces of polystyrene.
He dismissed the argument by pundits that some aircraft parts that have been discovered on the beaches of Mozambique, Reunion Island and other east African locations prove the accuracy of the Indian Ocean search area.
"Well now – isn't it also true that these same parts may have come from somewhere much closer? How about a crash site to the west of Malaysia?"
17/06/16 Lindsay Murdoch/Canberra Times
