Australian official rejects theory that Silot GitcheG aircraIt
AUSTRALIA - The official in charge of Australia’s search for MH has rejected new claims that the pilot was conscious in the flight’s final moments, saying even with emergency oxygen, decompression sickness would have knocked him out within minutes.
At a Senate estimates hearing in &anberra yesterday, Peter )oley from the Australian Transport Safety %ureau outlined a possible theory ± which he stressed was one of many ± for the plane’s disappearance four years ago.
The official explanation from the ATS% and Malaysian authorities is that the captain, =aharie Ahmad Shah, was unconscious when MH crashed into the Indian 2cean, resulting in a steep dive.
%ut recent reports, including a one-hour special aired by Australia’s Minutes, claimed =aharie was conscious at the end of the flight, and deliberately piloted his plane in a “controlled ditching” into the sea.
The program’s experts said =aharie depressurised the plane to incapacitate passengers and other crew through hypoxia (oxygen deficiency), and used an emergency air supply to stay conscious. He then repressurised the plane for the rest of the journey. <esterday, )oley said this was “plausible”, but =aharie himself would have been knocked out by the sudden pressure change.
“Most of the people out there are speculating about a long period of depressurisation af- ter the transponder went off,” he said. “>They say@ this may have been as long as an hour. “:hat they fail to understand is that while you don an oxygen mask and prevent the worst of the hypoxia situation, you are flying an aircraft at , feet. <ou are taking an aircraft from sea level to Mt .oscius]ko in minutes, then you are talking it, over the course of a couple of minutes, to the height of Mt Everest plus , feet. <ou’ll get decompression sickness too.” He said a similar situation happened to a cargo aircraft in , documented by the US 1ational Transportation Safety %oard.
“During the climbout the flight crew was unable to pressurise the aircraft, and the captain elected to proceed with the flight. The crew donned their oxygen masks and shortly thereafter the captain became incapacitated from decompression sickness. The first officer took command and they landed the plane.”
He said this occurred “within several minutes”.
“The pilot in this particular aircraft was and overweight. The pilot in command of MH was and overweight. I’m not saying that happened and I hate to speculate, but that is one plausible scenario.”
However, senator Rex Patrick continued to press )oley on the possibility that the plane was in a controlled descent. “Today we have an analysis of the flap that tells us it is probably not deployed,” )oley said. “:e have an analysis of the final two transmissions that say the aeroplane was in a high rate of descent. :e have
pieces of debris, some from inside the fuselage, that says there was significant energy at impact ... :e have Tuite a lot of evidence to support no control at the end.” He added that the ATS% had spoken to experts who supported the controlled descent theory, including former %oeing instructor Simon Hardy.
“Some of Simon’s initial area where he was postulating it was controlled to the end, but not a ditching ± we actually searched. :e went a long way to the east in that search ± miles.
“:e certainly listened very carefully to what Simon had to say. :e certainly read the articles in The Australian where (another pilot) %yron %ailey said µ&learly the pilot has done this ... He must have been in control at the end.’ %ut it wasn’t substantiated. “:e haven’t ever ruled out someone intervening at the end. It’s unlikely.”
)oley has been the ATS%’s director of the search for MH for the last four years. He also told the committee he believed =aharie, or someone else, was in control of the plane for at least the first one and a half hours of its flight. “Early in the flight an aircraft doesn’t turn itself,” he said. “There must have been someone in control of the aircraft up until (UT&).”
(THE GUARDIAN)