The head of the US National Transportation Safety Board has slammed the way flight operations information is presented to pilots as “garbage” at a public hearing into a near catastrophe involving an Air Canada flight landing at San Francisco.
The Air Canada A320 carrying 140 passengers and crew from Toronto was cleared to land on San Francisco International Airport ’s runway 28R on July, 2017.
The experienced flight crew instead lined up on a crowded parallel taxiway due to what investigators determined was a lack of awareness.
Four aircraft — an Airbus A340, two Boeing 787s and a Boeing 737 — were on the taxiway awaiting takeoff clearance on July 7, 2017, when the pilots mistook if for the runway.
After flying over the first aircraft on the taxiway at 100ft above ground level the plane dropped as low as 59 feet — barely above the 56ft height of a Boeing 787 tail — before it began to gain height.
The aircraft performed a go-around and returned to land safely but experts said it could have been one of the worst catastrophes in aviation history.
The NTSB found the crew was unaware a parallel runway had been closed due to their “ineffective review of notice to airmen (NOTAM) before the flight and during the approach briefing”.
Contributing to this was the flight crew’s failure to tune to the instrument landing system (ILS) for backup lateral guidance as well as their firm belief they were on the right course, fatigue and breakdowns in crew resource management.
Also contributing was “Air Canada’s ineffective presentation of approach procedure and NOTAM information”.
“Although the notice to airmen about the runway 28L closure appeared in the flight release and the aircraft communication addressing and reporting system message that were provided to the flight crew, the presentation of the information did not effectively convey the importance of the runway closure information and promote flight crew review and retention,’’ the NTSB said.
The NTSB called more effective presentation of flight operations information to encourage pilots to review it and remember what it said.
NTSB board members complained at the hearing that NOTAMs were an archaic system full of useless information that hid important details.
“(NOTAMs) are written in a language only a computer programmer can understand,” US media quoted NTSB chairman Robert L. Sumwalt as saying. “NOTAMs are just a bunch of garbage.”
Sumwalt said the mistakes identified in the report highlighted the need for a further review of approach and landing procedures.
“This event could very easily have had a catastrophic outcome,’’ he said. “The recommendations issued as a result of this investigation, if implemented, will help prevent the possibility of a similar incident from occurring in the future.”
Other recommendations issued to the US Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada addressed issues such as the need for aircraft landing at primary airports within class B and class C airspace to be equipped with a system that alerts pilots when an airplane is not aligned with a runway surface.
The NTSB also called for a method to more effectively signal a runway closure to pilots when at least one parallel runway remains in use, and modifications to airport surface detection equipment systems to detect potential taxiway landings and provide alerts to air traffic controllers.
The FAA, which says it is looking at simplifying NOTAMs, modified night time landing procedures at San Francisco as a result of the incident.
Air New Zealand’s first A321neo will enter low-cost carrier territory with some seats offering a Hobbit-sized 29-inch (73cm) pitch when it enters the fleet in mid-November.
The Kiwi carrier has ordered 13 Airbus neo aircraft — seven A321neos and six A320neos — to replace its existing fleet of A320s and another seven A321neos are on order for anticipated domestic growth.
The planes have a combined list price of $NZ2.8 billion and the new technology A321neos will help deliver fuel savings and efficiencies of at least 15 percent compared to the planes they replace.
The international A320neos will have 165 seats on board compared to the 168 on the current international aircraft, which feature a seat pitch of 30 to 34 inches. Seat pitch is the distance between a point on a seat to the same point on the seat in front.
The A321s will have 214 seats with a seat pitch ranging from 29 inches to 33 (83cm) inches.
But the airline says the slimline design and curved design of the A321neo seats means passengers “sink further into the seat back creating up to 7 percent more usable space when compared with the equivalent pitch on the existing fleet”.
The middle seat will also be 3cms wider and the aisle and window seats 1cm wider. This will boost the aisle and window seats to the Airbus standard of 18 inches from the narrow 17-inch seats on the existing A320s.
Other enhancements in the cabin include 25 percent more overhead locker space, a new Android-based inflight entertainment system with a 10-inch screen, high power USB charging points and Wi-Fi connectivity.
The tight seats kick in from row 18 rearwards on the left side of the cabin as you face towards the nose, although there are exit row seats and a couple of rows of seats with a pitch of just under 30 inches (76cm).
Most of the seats along the starboard side are 30 inches or above but, again, there are a couple of rows of 29-inch seats.
The more spacious 32-inch (81cms) and 33-inch (83cm) seats are at the front of the plane (Note: The conversion to seat pitches in inches is rounded up to the nearest inch.).
The 29-inch seat pitch means the Kiwi carrier has gone where even some major US carriers have vowed not to go and into seat pitch territory normally occupied by low-cost carriers.
But Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon said the airline had extensively tested the neo inflight experience with customers to ensure it could incorporate their feedback “while meeting regulatory and operating requirements’’.
This had left it confident it would deliver an inflight experience passengers would enjoy.
“Australia and the Pacific Islands are a vitally important part of our Pacific Rim network,’’ he said.
“We operate up to 240 services each week with our Airbus narrow-body aircraft.
“These new aircraft are key to enabling us to grow our short-haul network while offering our customers a great inflight experience.’’
A second A321neo is also expected to enter service in November and the airline’s first A320neo is scheduled for February, 2019.
The remaining aircraft will follow at intervals until late 2019, while the additional A321neos for the airline’s domestic network are expected to be delivered from 2020 to 2024.
Aerial View of Everett Boeing; View from South to North; includes 777X Wing Building;
The world’s biggest building and home of the iconic Boeing 747, which rolled out 50 years ago this week, could well have ended up in California.
Boeing in the 1960s did not have a factory big enough to house its new jumbo jet so a search began for a suitable site to build what would turn out to be the mother of aircraft plants.
A key factor was an airport with a long runway capable of handling the new plane and three potential sites were evaluated while the 747 was still in the early design phase.
One was Snohomish County Airport, a former military base better known as Paine Field and located 30 miles north of Seattle near what was then the sleepy lumber town of Everett.
A second was past Tacoma, 32 miles southwest of Seattle, at a site adjacent to McChord Air Force base.
The third was at Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco area.
Boeing had recently lost the C-5 program to Lockheed and the thinking was that siting the factory in California could offset the political advantages of competitors.
Supporters of the Walnut Creek site pointed to the fact that Douglas, North American Rockwell, General Dynamics, Northrop, and many other aerospace firms were based in California.
“Some very senior Boeing people were pushing very hard to site our 747 factory there to benefit from that state’s greater political clout in Washington, DC,’’ Boeing engineer Joe Sutter said in his book “747”.
The original 747 building in 1970 with three production halls. Many of the 747s on the flight line are awaiting engines because of modifications required to meet performance issues. Credit Boeing Historical Archives
Sutter argued against the California site on logistical and cost grounds when asked his opinion at a committee meeting to discuss the site.
“Given this opening, I told ’em point-blank that I thought it would be an unmitigated disaster,” Sutter wrote. “If 747 production were sent down there, communications would slow, coordination would suffer, costs would rise, our overall logistical challenges would increase, and there was no way in hell that we would meet our schedule commitments to Pan-Am.”
Another 747 comes together at Everett. Credit: Boeing Historical Archive
Sutter’s view provoked an angry reaction from the Walnut Creek supporters but to his immense, relief Boeing decided at the start of 1966 to build its new plant at Everett.
It would prove, he recalled, a herculean task which required more soil to be removed from the 700-acre site than was shifted for the Panama Canal and Washington states Grand Coulee Dam combined.
The $US200 million project involved 2500 construction workers toiling in endless rain and mud to erect the 200 million cubic foot (5.66m cubic meter) building.
An engineering feat in its own right, the building’s immense size — it is the world’s biggest in terms volume — made it a landmark and a major tourist attraction for the region.
“So big was it that Boeing workers would sometimes see clouds forming inside it,’’ Sutter said.
The Everett factory in the early 1980s with the additional productional hall built on at the right with the orange door. Credt: Boeing Historical Archives
The factory would be enlarged to accommodate production of the 767 in 1980 with one extra production hall and was expanded again in 1993 with two additional halls to build the 777.
Today, the world’s biggest building by volume encloses 472 million cubic feet of space over 98.3 acres and you could fit 911 basketball courts inside.
At almost two-thirds of a mile (more than 1km) long and a third of a mile wide, employees often use bicycles to get between jobs.
The massive production facility has six doors, each the size of an American football field and a giant canvas for artwork depicting the company’s planes.
Two Qantas 747-400ERs come together. Credit Geoffrey Thomas
Twenty-six 26 overhead cranes cruise on 72 kilometers of networked tracks and these make 45,000 lifts a month to support the building of approximately 20 planes a month.
Yet the main assembly building is just part of a massive industrial complex that includes three huge paint hangars, sprawling flight lines, a plane delivery center that is as big as an airport terminal, office blocks and a new wing assembly plant.
The Everett campus is the workplace for 30,000 people, produces 25,000 meals a day from 20 cafeterias and its area is bigger than Disneyland — with 12 acres of parking left over.
In many ways, it is indeed a magic kingdom where the world’s largest aerospace company Boeing has produced about 5000 widebody planes – the 747, 767, 777 and 787 since 1968.
The Everett facility in the 1990s with two extra production halls added for the Boeing 777. Credit Boeing Historical Archives
It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Washington State. Boeing started tours of the factory when it was building the first 747 and since then more than 3.5 million people have seen the facility.
The Everett campus is now building the company’s newest plane, the Boeing 777X, a revamp of the widely used 777. A plant to build the 777X’s composite wings increases the factory floor space on the campus a further 25 percent.
Read tomorrow “Safety was a top priority for the father of the 747.”
US legislation requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to draw up regulations covering minimum airline seat dimensions has been given a bipartisan tick but passengers shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for a more comfortable ride.
The House and the Senate reached consensus on a 1200-page bipartisan bill to reauthorize Federal Aviation Administration funding for five years over the weekend and one of the provisions requires the FAA to set minimum legroom and width limits for airline seating.
The FAA will then have a year to develop regulations on minimum standards for economy seating, including seat pitch (the space between a seat and the seat in front of it), width and length.
But the legislation does not specify what this should be other than to say they would be minimum dimensions “that are necessary for the safety and health of passengers”.
Nor does it give any indication how the rules would relate to cramped seating already in place.
There is some speculation The FAA could establish a floor for seat pitch as low as 28 inches and a minimum width of 16.5 inches, dimensions that would still be cramped for most people.
This FAA was forced to visit the issue after a federal court judge ordered concerns about what she described as “the incredibly shrinking airline seat’” during a case brought by consumer group Flyers Rights.
Flyers Rights had argued that narrower seats and closer seat spacing were “endangering the safety, health and comfort of airline passengers.”.
But in its response, the FAA indicated it did not have a problem with seat pitches as low as 27 inches, although it doubted airlines could sell a configuration that tight.
The lowest seat pitch currently is about 28 inches but many legacy carriers offer 31 to 32 inches.
The US regulator told Flyers Rights in a letter that it had no evidence of an immediate safety issue requiring a change to existing rules.
It said that nothing in letters or submissions provided by the consumer organization “demonstrated that current seat dimensions (width and pitch) hamper the speed of passenger evacuation, or that increasing passenger size creates an evacuation issue.”
Airline chiefs are opposed to outside interference in how they configure their cabins and say people who want more space can buy it.
However, the bosses of two major carriers, American and Delta, pledged recently not to make seating any tighter than it already was.
Some other changes in the FAA Bill may have more impact on passengers.
It prohibits passengers from being involuntarily removed from flights once they’ve passed the gate. This provision was put forward in response to the infamous incident where a doctor was dragged screaming from a United flight in Chicago.
Airlines will also still have to advertise the entire price of a ticket, including taxes and charges, and regulators will now be able to determine whether airlines are fibbing when they tell passengers that flights have been delayed or canceled because of weather.
But successful lobbying by airlines means a proposal limiting baggage and reservation change fees was dropped, although carriers must now refund passengers for services for which they paid but did not receive.
Other changes cover the potential return of supersonic flights by allowing reduced sonic booms over land and the ability of passengers traveling with small children to check strollers.
One of the more bizarre provisions makes it against the law to place a live animal in an overhead storage compartment.
This was prompted by anger over the death in March of a 10-month-old French Bulldog after a flight attendant required it to be placed in an overhead bin.
Fifty years ago this week on September 30, 1968, the Queen of the Skies that made travel affordable for all, the Boeing 747, rolled out into the Seattle sunshine.
But its birth was to bring dark clouds to the leaders in commercial aviation at the time and almost bankrupted all three.
Ironically, the 747 wasn’t supposed to carry passengers for very many years as the world looked to supersonic travel with the Boeing SST and the Concorde.
Boeing has now sold 1,568 747s and it’s still in production with the latest model still turning heads.
But giving life to the aircraft that changed the world was a challenge that brought the world’s largest aerospace company, Boeing, the then biggest engine builder Pratt, and Whitney and the legendary Pan Am to their knees.
In the late 60s, Boeing’s resources were stretched to the absolute limit as its engineers grappled with the complexities of its US government sponsored 2707 supersonic transport, which was eventually scrapped by Congress on May 20, 1971, despite commitments for 115 from 25 airlines.
At the time the 747 was considered only an interim solution before the world’s air routes were taken over by supersonics but fortunately, Boeing had appointed Joe Sutter, a brilliant young designer, to the project and he was to father the classic of the jet age.
Joe Sutter in front of the first 747. Credit Boeing Historical Archives colorized by Benoit Vienne
Mr. Sutter was extremely modest on this role.
“I was the only qualified person available. All the smart guys, Maynard Pennell, Bill Cook, Bob Withington, and many others were tied up on the SST, while Jack Steiner was heading the 737 programs,” Mr. Sutter said in a 2009 interview with the author.
The 747 was designed at the outset to be a freighter as everyone thought the 747 would be relegated to cargo routes.
“That’s what Boeing’s marketing people thought; they estimated we’d probably sell 50 or so 747s for passenger use,” said Mr. Sutter.
The 747 was a mass travel dream of Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe and Boeing chief Bill Allen.
Boeing’s Bill Allen (Left) and Pan Am’s Juan Trippe. Credit Boeing Historical Archives colorized by Benoit Vienne
Mr Trippe had started mass travel in 1948 when he introduced economy class onto 70 seat DC-4s.
But the 747 was far, far bigger. It would carry over 350 – almost double the Boeing 707 – and would slash fares.
It is impossible to find anyone who recalls if there was a definitive business plan for the 747. But traffic was booming for the airline industry which had enjoyed growth of 15 percent a year through the early 1960s as passengers flocked to jet aircraft.
Mr. Trippe was a man on a mission.
He wanted to make travel affordable for everyone and he believed that the 747 with the new high bypass turbofan engine could do just that.
Pan Am ordered 25 but most airlines were terrified of the jumbo’s size. Qantas ordered 4, British Airways 6, while many airlines just ordered 2 or 3 just to stay in the jumbo race.
However, the trickle of orders wasn’t the major problem it was the 747’s weight.
Initially, it was to weigh 250,000kg but this leaped to 322,000kgs by the time it flew because of design changes impacting range, altitude, speed, and fuel burn. A solution, to run the engines at higher temperatures to give more thrust, was found and within six months of entering service, the jumbo was performing at acceptable levels.
Despite the many problems encountered in its manufacture, the birth of the 747 was an amazing feat. Pan Am took delivery of its first aircraft just 3-and-a-half years after its order was placed and that included a 10-month flight-test program.
Because the 747 was so big airlines splashed out with lounges. There was the upper deck lounge and many had lounges at the back of economy class. However a Boeing proposal for a lower deck lounge – called the Tiger Lounge, because of the fabric design used in the mock-up never made it.
The 747 gleams in the Seattle sun
The spacious age, however, was short-lived with airlines responding to a demand for cheaper and cheaper travel in the late 1970s by adding more seats.
There have been many variants of the superjet. The upper deck was stretched for the -300 model and a modified wing and bigger engines added for the longer range -400 version.
The 747 was also shrunk for the SP (Special Performance) model that was the first aircraft to be able to cross the South Pacific from the US to Australia non-stop.
Finally, the 747 itself was stretched to create the 747-8, which features wing changes and 787 engines.
Today the 747 is still the Queen of the Skies to many and for billions of passengers, it is the plane that enabled them to see the world.
Tomorrow AirlineRatings.com looks at the Boeing’s jumbo kingdom.
The pilot of a plane involved in a fiery fatal crash in a Melbourne shopping center did not detect that a rudder setting that caused the plane to veer to the left was engaged prior to take-off, investigators have found.
Pilot Max Quartermain and four American tourists died when the Beechcraft B200 King Air aircraft crashed into a shopping complex and exploded at Melbourne’s Essendon Airport in February, 2017.
The four US nationals —Greg DeHaven, Russell Munsch, Glenn Garland and John Washburn — were on a golfing trip to King Island off the coast of Tasmania.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau report found the aircraft took longer than expected to take off and was seen to yaw to the left after it lifted off.
It entered a shallow climb followed by a substantial left sideslip prior to it descending and hitting the shopping center.
Investigators found the pilot, who sent out a Mayday as the aircraft descended, did not detect that the rudder trim was in the full nose-left position prior to take-off.
Rudder trim is used to adjust a small panel on the rudder to allow coordinated flight without the pilot having to constantly apply pressure to the controls.
“The position of the rudder trim resulted in a loss of directional control and had a significant impact on the aircraft’s climb performance in the latter part of the flight,’’ The ATSB said.
Investigators said it was likely Quartermain was applying right rudder pedal in an attempt to compensate for the yaw induced by the incorrectly set runner trim.
‘While the ATSB was unable to quantify the rudder pedal forces required to overcome the mis-set rudder trim, when tested in a B250 class-D simulator, the forces could only be countered by the pilot for a short period of time,’’ it said.
Investigators also found Quartermain did not have appropriate pre-flight check systems in place and this “increased the risk of incorrect checklists being used, incorrect application of the aircraft’s checklists, and checks related to supplemental equipment not being performed.”
They also noted the aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder did not record the accident flight due to a tripped ‘impact switch’, which was not reset prior to the accident flight.
“This deprived the investigation of potentially valuable recorded information,” it said.
The aircraft was operated above the maximum take-off weight on the day of the accident, although this was not seen to have influenced the crash.
The report found that the presence of the building struck by the aircraft did not increase the severity of the consequences of this accident. In the absence of that building, the aircraft’s flight path would probably have resulted in an uncontrolled collision with a busy freeway, with the potential for increased ground casualties.
Photo: ATSB
It also raised questions about buildings in the retail precinct that exceeded the airport’s obstacle limitation surfaces.
“The ATSB also found that the presence of the building struck by the aircraft did not increase the severity of the consequences of this accident,’’ it said. “In the absence of that building, the aircraft’s flight path would probably have resulted in an uncontrolled collision with a busy freeway, with the potential for increased ground casualties.”
In its safety message, The ATSB emphasized the importance of checklists and flight check systems.
“The ATSB encourages all pilots, no matter what your experience level, to always follow the appropriate checklist thereby preventing accidents like this in the future,” chief commissioner Greg Hood said.
“In addition to the checklists, The ATSB also considers that pilots need to carefully consider their decision making, particularly during critical phases of flight such as take-off.
“If anything is abnormal in relation to the operations during take-off, considering aborting that take-off.”
The crash is controversial because Quartermain about 18 months previously had been involved in a near collision that took him within a few hundred feet of another plane near Victoria’s Mt Hotham.
The Mt Hotham report found Quartermain ran into difficulties as he approached the airport and had difficulties operating the GPS and autopilot.
It said “an unexpected reduction in the level of flight automation” and an increase in workload affected Quartermain’s ability to follow the established tracks such as the published approach and missed approach. He also did not communicate his position accurately to the other aircraft or air traffic control.
The pilot underwent flight testing by a Civil Aviation Safety Authority delegate and then by a flying operations inspector, who recommended remedial training before undergoing a further flight test.
He was deemed proficient and competent to resume operations after the subsequent flight test.
Air New Zealand will stop flying to Vietnam next year and is suspending flights to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to protect itself against “unexpected disruptions”.
It will also reduce frequencies to Argentina and its recently opened route to Tapei as it grapples with a global problem affecting Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines powering its Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
The airline has been flying to Vietnam on a seasonal basis since 2016 and had already reduced the frequency from three flights to two a week.
The changes were outlined in a letter from AirNZ boss Christopher Luxon to customers apologizing for what he labeled “an incredibly challenging year”.
Luxon acknowledged that many of the airline’s customers had experienced disruptions and delays, rescheduled flights, unexpected aircraft replacements and overcrowded lounges.
While there had been unexpected problems with weather and a ruptured pipeline, Luxon said the biggest issue had been the unscheduled maintenance issues with the Rolls-Royce engines powering its Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s.
Air New Zealand has been caught up in a problem with Trent 1000 package C engines that has caused increased checks and maintenance affecting airlines worldwide.
“This has meant that at any time up to five of our 13 787 Dreamliners must be grounded while the engines are serviced in Singapore,’’ Luxon said.
“This has placed significant pressure on our whole interconnected network of over 3,500 weekly flights and I will be meeting with Rolls Royce management in London in a few weeks to further seek personal reassurance that all is being done to get our affected engines back in service as soon as possible.”
The Kiwi carrier has leased three aircraft to offset the Dreamliner engine problems and staffed them with Air New Zealand crew, food and beverages.
“We will also further protect ourselves from unexpected disruptions by stopping flying to Vietnam next year, suspending our services to Haneda in Tokyo and slightly reducing our frequency to Argentina and Taipei,’’ Luxon said.
“These are big decisions to make but are vital to free up capacity and let us concentrate on delivering a better experience across the board.”
Air New Zealand has also been struggling with increased traffic at airports due to what Luxon said was underinvestment by airport operators as well as long wait times at its call centers.
The airline is adding 80 additional call center staff to cope with the wait times and is talking to airport chief executives to try and accelerate needed improvements.
It had also invested in a lounge redevelopment program in Auckland and has upgrades planned at Wellington and several regional airports, Luxon said.
Controversial attempts to suggest a mysterious third party was responsible for the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have been further undermined by new revelations about Captain Zaharie Ahmed Shah’s eccentric online behavior.
Malaysia’s recent major report on the Boeing 777’s mysterious disappearance in 2014 confirmed that the aircraft was flown manually as it performed a series of turns across the Malaysian Peninsula.
This is something pilots and other experts have been saying consistently and many see Zaharie as the most likely candidate.
But the Malaysians fired up a controversy by suggesting a third party could have unlawfully interfered with the plane after take-off to shut down communications and make the turns without saying whom that may have been.
Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon took that further during a press conference.
“We have examined the pilot, the first officer. We were quite satisfied with the background, with the training, with the mental health, mental state,’’ he said. “We are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”
Kok said investigators could not deny the turns were manual or that systems were turned off “with intent or otherwise”.
“So we feel that there’s also one possibility that could account for all this,’’ he said. “We are not ruling out any possibility, we are just saying that no matter what we do we cannot exclude the possibility of a third person or third party or unlawful interference.’’
The head of the Malaysian investigation Kok Soo Chon at the Mh370 report press conference. Image: Star TV/YouTube.
To be fair, and as Kok pointed out, investigating MH370 was one of the world’s toughest jobs because of the lack of information about the flight. He also noted that the International Civil Aviation Organisation Annex 13 investigation was charged with looking at safety rather than criminality.
MH370 CREW MENTAL STATE
Nonetheless, the mental state of the crew is one of the human factors involved in that process and it is disturbing there was no mention in the report of Zaharie’s politically-charged Facebook posts, a relationship with another woman or his obsession with the two models.
The Australian newspaper’s South-East Asian correspondent, Amanda Hodge, uncovered Zaharie’s relationship with a married woman and her three children in 2016.
The two messaged each other about a personal matter two days before the flight but the woman would not talk about it.
Fatima Pardi told The Australian Zaharie had not seemed stressed and that she had been interviewed four times by Malaysian investigators about the relationship and MH370.
Stories about Zaharie’s strongly opinionated political Facebook posts, his support for the Malaysia People’s Justice Party (PKR) and his distant relationship to PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim surfaced as early as 2014.
There was an ongoing suggestion, denied by his family and not dealt with in the report, that Zaharie hijacked the plane for political reasons.
And now there are new revelations by veteran journalist Paul Toohey about Zaharie’s pursuit on Facebook of Malaysian twin-sister models 34 years younger than him in the year before the tragic disappearance of the Boeing 777.
This included 97 separate Facebook comments on the page of the Penang-based model Qi Min Lan, also known as Jasmine Lan.
One psychologist, Paul Dickens, told Toohey the posts about politics and the girl showed “a degree of obsessional behavior mixed with recklessness”.
All of this is a marked contrast with Malaysia’s report suggesting nothing untoward had been uncovered about Zaharie’s mental state or family life.
One basis for this was an examination of CCTV footage at a series of airports in the weeks leading up to the flight.
These included flights to Beijing, Denpasar and Melbourne which showed “ no significant behavioral changes” .
“On all the CCTV recordings the appearance was similar, i.e. well-groomed and attired. The gait, posture, facial expressions and mannerism were his normal characteristics,” the report said.
Investigators also looked at medical records — finding one for Zaharie from a private center that was not recorded by Malaysia Airlines — and searched credit card accounts for patterns of buying over-the-counter medication at local or overseas pharmacies without finding any.
They interviewed families and work associates and combed through financial records looking for signs of unusual activity or debts. Family and friends have continued to maintain Zaharie was not responsible for MH370’s disappearance.
The report said Zaharie’s ability to handle stress at work and home “was reported to be good”.
“There was no known history of apathy, anxiety, or irritability,’’ it said. “There were no significant changes in his lifestyle, interpersonal conflict or family stresses.”
Overall, the report concluded, “there is no evidence to suggest that the PIC and FO experienced recent changes or difficulties in personal relationships or that there were any conflicts or problems between them.
MH370 pilot in charge Zaharie. Photo: Facebook
“ All the flight and cabin crew were certified fit to fly and were within duty-time limits at the time of the flight and were adequately rested.
“There had been no financial stress or impending insolvency, recent or additional insurance coverage purchased or recent behavioral changes for the crew.
“The radio-telephony communications conducted by the PIC and the FO with the Air Traffic Controllers conformed to the routine procedure and no evidence of anxiety or stress was detected in the communications.”
QUESTIONS ABOUT COMMITMENT
The discrepancies between media reports of Zaharie’s life and the report’s conclusions raise questions about how open and committed the Malaysians have been.
They were quick to draw a line under the Annex 13 investigation after the unsuccessful conclusion of the most recent search.
Members of the Independent Group of experts have been critical of what they say are deficiencies in the report, including the failure by Malaysia to collect all available pieces of potential debris and the move to shift blame onto the mysterious third party without evidence.
As IG member Victor Iannello said shortly after the report’s release: “How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane?”
There are several examples where an investigation has been reluctant to conclude a pilot deliberately crashed a plane, including a 1997 crash of a SilkAir Boeing 737-300 in Sumatra that killed 104 people.
In that case, the crash was independently investigated by the US national transportation safety Board and the Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee.
The Indonesian NTSC was unable to determine a cause of the crash while the NTSB found it was the result of deliberate control inputs, most likely by the captain.
Leaked documents later confirmed Indonesian authorities would not issue a public verdict because they feared it would make people too frightened to fly.
The MH370 investigation apparently did look at online allegations but AirlineRatings could find no mention of them in the main body of the report. A Royal Malaysia Police report noted that Zaharie commented on Jasmine Lan’s photos and he was involved in “political related activities”.
Despite the political involvement, the police said there was “no indication and information that could be considered as potential threat in investigation”.
Responding to questions during the press conference, Kok said the team looked at all the reports and gossip on social media and came up with 60 allegations.
He said these were removed one by one to see what remained behind.
“Only seven remained behind,’’ he said, without revealing what these were. AirlinesRatings has subsequently seen a report by the Royal Malaysia Police alluding to the Jasmine Lan Facebook posts but not the comments uncovered by Toohey.
Kok said two psychiatrists who were part of the investigation team had examined the audio recording during the M370 flight as well as CCTV footage of the crew prior to the flight without detecting anything abnormal.
Backing away slightly from his original position, Kok said the report was not saying the pilots did not do it – conceding “Ok, it could be possible” — but he again reiterated the belief this was unlikely.
He contended the fact the turn-back was manual, there were no records of aircraft defects and the plane’s transponder and ACARS digital data link were switched off “irresistibly” pointed to the words “unlawful interference”.
“But having said that, since we are talking about this, if there was unlawful interference, why were there not claims?’’ he said “Why were there not threats, why were there not people coming up to claim responsibility? We don’t find those things, so how could you say it’s unlawful interference?”
Kok also conceded all passengers from the 15 countries represented on the flight had all been checked out by local authorities.
“And they have come up with clean bill of health for everybody,’’ he said. “None of them had ever received any flight training. They are not able to pilot a plane.”
Ultimately, Kok handballed the question of unlawful interference to the police.
CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION
With plane wreckage still not found and with no guarantee that even that will help answer the question of who was responsible, an ongoing criminal investigation is a major remaining avenue of inquiry.
Yet the move by the Annex 13 investigation to set the scene for exonerating Zaharie raises questions about the will of the Malaysians to pursue this further rather than sweep the whole untidy mess under the carpet.
Justice, as the old adage reminds us, should not just be done but should be seen to be done.
Authorities in France have an ongoing criminal investigation underway, as they do for all air crashes, because of the presence on MH370 of four French citizens.
Could one possibility be to use the French inquiry as the basis of a multinational joint investigation team similar to the one working on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17?
A sensational new and detailed investigation into the disappearance of MH370 alleges Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah used Facebook to pursue Malaysian twin-sister models 34 years younger than him in the year before the tragic disappearance of the Boeing 777.
A News Corp investigation also reveals a psychologist believes Zaharie, the pilot-in-command when MH370 flew to its doom, “exhibited self-destructive and obsessive online behavior that should have raised a red flag with Malaysia Airlines”.
The investigation by multi Walkley Award-winning journalist Paul Toohey found that Zaharie, a married 53-year-old, did not bother to conceal his identity, and “openly chased much younger women on social media and risked his career by putting his name to rants against the ruling government, which owned the airline for which he flew”.
It further undermines a move by Malaysian authorities to dismiss Zaharie as the culprit behind the aircraft’s March 8, 2014 disappearance with 239 people on board.
Malaysia’s final report into the crash released in July made no mention of Zaharie’s Facebook activity.
A Royal Malaysian Police report does mention Zaharie visiting the FB pages but does not mention what he said or how many times he accessed the pages. They simply dismissed the matter as not important.
Captain Zaharie
Although Zaharie was described by acquaintances as “kind” and “easy going”, Toohey says he appeared to have had hit a mid-life roadblock and had become bored and reckless.
Toohey found that “across 2013, Zaharie posted 97 separate Facebook comments to the page of the Penang-based model Qi Min Lan, also known as Jasmin Min, who turned 18 that year. Zaharie did not know her personally, but was fixated.”
Many of the comments, such as “Damm it, you’re hot” were suggestive and carried, Toohey alleges, “the tone of a desperate man”.
Other include: “tasty”, “gorgeous” and “just shower.”
Toohey went back through the FB pages of Qi Min Lan and then had translated Captain Zaharie’s comments.
The posts, says Toohey, “reveal a previously uncharted dimension of the pilot’s intense character, as do a deeper look at his political activities.
“Zaharie was not merely politically active, as some have said. He was virulent, at one point labeling then prime minister Najib Razak a “moron” on his Facebook page.’’
Zaharie was a vocal supporter of the Malaysia People’s Justice Party (PKR) and had volunteered in the lead up to the 2013 national elections.
One theory is that he hijacked MH370 as a political protest against the imminent jailing of PKR leader Anwar Ibrahim, to whom he was distantly related, but he left no statement and his family has always denied the allegation.
In the month of April 2013, in the lead up to the elections, Zaharie posted 119 comments under his own name, all reflecting his disgust with Najib’s government as he urged citizens to action said Mr Toohey.
Toohey sought the opinion from UK-based psychologist Paul Dickens, whose Core Aviation Psychology is a world leader in assessing the mental health of commercial pilots.
Dickens said: “I think what you’re seeing is a degree of obsessional behavior mixed with recklessness, which is unusual for a pilot. He had a degree of obsessional behavior about the politics and the girl.”
The latest revelations come after The Australian’s South East Asia correspondent, Amanda Hodge, in 2016 revealed Zaharie had grown close to a married woman and her three children, one of whom had cerebral palsy, in the months before his disappearance.
The two messaged each other about a personal matter two days before the flight but the woman would not talk about it.
Fatima Pardi told The Australian Zaharie had not seemed stressed and that she had been interviewed four times by Malaysian investigators about the relationship and MH370.
Retired Malaysia Airlines chief pilot Nik Huzlan and long-time friend of Zaharie told the newspaper that the MH370 captain was the most likely culprit, by process of elimination, behind the plane’s disappearance
“The captain is the person best placed to have both the opportunity and capability,” Mr Huzlan said. “Then it goes down to the first officer, chief steward, No 1 cabin guy, then so on and so forth down the pecking order of the aeroplane staff and then passengers.”
The head of the Malaysian investigation Kok Soo Chon at the Mh370 report press conference. Image: Star TV/YouTube.
The extraordinary revelations of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s secret life of stalking younger female models demand a reopening of the investigation into the disappearance of MH370.
And those revelations destroy any notion of a stable family man portrayed by the Malaysian investigation into the disappearance of MH370.
His flight simulator program flown just weeks before the plane’s disappearance which replicated MH370’s final flight, the obsession with model QiMin Lan, who has two FB sites and his countless anti-government posts point, according to experts, to a man that was deeply troubled.
According to leading psychologists, Zaharie exhibited self-destructive and obsessive online behavior that should have raised a red flag with Malaysia Airlines.
In Paul Toohey’s investigation, Melbourne-based clinical psychologist Vasileios Stravopoulos, said Zaharie appeared to deliberately invite negative consequences and was acting in a self-destructive manner.
The Malaysian government’s final report on MH370 has been widely described as a whitewash, and it did not mention any of Zaharie’s activities.
A source, that works as a contractor to Malaysia Airlines told AirlineRatings.com that “very early on” after MH370 disappeared the airline’s operational management said, “Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah was responsible.”
While the final Malaysian report exonerates the pilots the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into the search for MH370, issued in October said: “In the six weeks before, the accident flight the Pilot in Command had used his simulator to fly a route, similar to part of the route flown by MH370 up the Strait of Malacca, with a left-hand turn and track into the southern Indian Ocean.”
One of the most respected analysts of the MH370 disappearance, Independent Group member Victor Iannello has also criticised the final report.
“How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane?” Mr. Iannello said.
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