A Lectromec Solicitation

"MH370 - not really a mystery"

An MH370 Analysis of Likelihoods

We corresponded quite some time ago and even before that I corresponded with Dr Armin Bruning. I was working with Lyn Romano in IASA at the time (she lost her husband Ray aboard SR-111). My early career for many years was as a pilot in a number of Airforces and British Aerospace. At a later date I was Editor-in-Chief of Air Safety Week (PBIMedia's award-winning ASW). Of late I've been working with Ross Coulthart on an MH370 theory based essentially upon its cause having been similar to the prior loss of a 767 and a 777 in ramp fires (Cairo and SFO), .... both having been proven to have been wiring-short initiated oxygen-involved fires. This was the theory Ross Coulthart was following until he allowed himself to be diverted by other supposedly accredited opinions that essentially claimed the captain was a kamikaze with the deep Southern Ocean as his target. Ross would have originally canvassed this theory of mine with you but (I suspect) not in any great depth. He proved to me that he had only a layman's grip on the detail by his asking me some quite revealing simplistic questions about the details of my theory. His program aired recently on 60 minutes and featured the usual bleeding heart interviews with victims' relatives and shouted inquisitions from the media audience of the Malaysian PM etc etc. However it's now been scientifically discredited by the boffins who'd much earlier dissected and analyzed the failed and interrupted final 9M-MRO satellite handshake. To the split second, its timing tallied with an APU restart and a quick flame-out after utilizing the exact 30lbs of fuel trapped in the APU fuel feed manifold leading to the (now empty) port main wing tank, and that event's originating loss of scheduled Satcomms following the 2nd engine's flame-out. This is the underlying premise for the whole search area construction based upon the 7th arc of the Inmarsat flight following handshakes. The Australian ATSB has also since decried the 60 Mins theory of a controlled ditching and both the Malaysian police and FBI have denied that the random waypoints recovered from the pilot's simulator hard disks (with most of them being dated more than a year old on 08 March 14) could be deemed relevant. The closest plot-position to the assessed ditching search area was over 1450kms distant and the various recovered positions of vastly different dates could not be construed as having any sort of a coherent singular or even direct-tracking rationale. In fact it's an acknowledged possibility that MAS (or the MAS pilot body) was considering the same sort of Antarctic pleasure flights as QANTAS and other airlines are currently undertaking - and so Captain Zaharie was looking at these possibilities.... based upon a pax pickup or drop-off  in Perth ... as well as single-engine and emerg depressn range limitations to possible routes and stop-overs ex-KL.

So that vague 60Minutes pilot-hijack theory having foundered for total lack of supporting facts and in the face of official denials,  it's back to the potpourri theory of mish-mashed incomplete explanations for the MH370 mystery. Or is it? I've cleaned up every one of these insoluble known enigmas in a theory that dates back to April 2014. It is now actually one that is being put forward in litigation by many of the law firms involved. Stewarts Law of London announced this two months ago. That oxy-fire theory still stands out as credible with a bolstering background of ample precedent, supportive scientific data and quite a bit of circumstantial evidence. That evidence is based upon covert post-MH370 actions by both the FAA and Boeing. Many stakeholders are hopeful that the MH370 mystery will always remain inconclusive and indeterminate. Quietly publishing singular non-descript omnibus directives for fleet-wide oxygen hose replacements in the US Federal Register might seem very routine.... and no doubt it was meant to appear thusly. However it was a necessary step for mandating a proprietary Boeing Service Bulletin that rectifies a known dangerous universal flaw in all Boeing types (including the 787). Further examination reveals that it was a known flaw that covered all Boeing types and hearkened all the way back to the much earlier 767 ramp burndown. Let's just call that omnibus Airworthiness Directive "the filling in of a dangerously blank FAA square in the MH370 crossword puzzle". Further explanations will become apparent below.

On that same theme of muddied waters, it should be noted that the Professional Pilots' Rumour Forum (www.pprune org) has been purchased at a premium off Danny Fynne (Captain Pprune) by these vested interests and then surreptitiously "nobbled". The forum was placed, by these quasi-anonymous "owners", in the hands of the quite notorious Internet Brands Inc (as operators and moderators) and run harshly with a view to curtailing any material critical of the owners and their vested interests. Since the take-over, they have accomplished their discussion-suppression tasking by riding rough-shod over long-term posters (mainly professional and retired airline and military pilots and technicians), banning many of them permanently for pursuing any theme that contrasted with (or contradicted) the promoted party-line. Quite indicative also is the fact that these long-term stalwarts have just been covertly "disappeared" from the Pprune forum without a trace. Such is the covert ability accorded by the opaque subtleties of internet censorship. Likewise there is never any rationale behind the illogical non-sequiturs induced by these banned posters' posts being disappeared from the contentious threads. One recent example was a post promoting the similarities between the sudden crash of MS804 (Egyptair A320 in the Mediterranean short of Alexandria) - and MH370. That thread was padlocked to curtail debate and then suddenly disappeared as if it had never existed. Once the 60 Minutes program was aired, that thread reappeared, but minus the MS804 debate. This blatant censorship has been going on ever since the protracted debates on the AF447 crash in the Atlantic. That was likely the inspiration for positive moderator control of surmise and whistleblower revelations.

The basis of the oxygen fire theory is to realistically extrapolate the circumstance of an oxygen ramp fire into what would happen at cruise altitude once the pilot's supplementary oxygen was compromised by a wiring fire. It doesn't need a lot of imagination.... just an exploitation and logical interpretation of a number of precursor precedents (and Egyptair's MS804). Two electrical anomalies were found to exist globally in the 777 fleet and yet another fleet and company-wide in the 767's ramp destruction. Basically either flaw could've caused an oxygen-involved fire aboard MH370. The 767 loss was notable in that the NTSB criticized the FAA severely for not acting upon their safety recommendations - in particular the replacement of an electrically conductive helical anti-kink spring used globally in pilots' oxygen hoses. I've had various opinions from 777 pilots and fire experts and researched the oxygen fire data-base of the NASA White Sands New Mexico facility that studies and catalogues in detail all oxygen accidents. Nothing I've heard or read dissuades me from the probability that MH370 was an oxygen-supported fire that broke out suddenly on 9M-MRO's flight-deck..... most probably close adjacent to the side-console mounted oxygen regulators - as in the prior ramp burn-downs.

The highlights of the theory are:

a.  The 9M-MRO pilots would not have been aware (ever), that it was an oxygen-involved fire ... and, as it was initially presenting as a wiring short (hidden audible arcing beneath the side console, sparks, sounds, fumes and smoke initially (only) ), they would have quite sensibly donned their quick-sweep masks.

b.  Due to their closed doors, flight-decks aren't exactly hermetically sealed but the air-conditioning air's swap-out rate would ultimately be overcome as any oxygen blowtorch eroded its way at its enlargening source to a greater introduction rate of oxygen flow and thus an ever-increasing oxygen enrichment level, albeit this being quite unbeknownst to the pilots. At the same time (see the Nefertiti imagery, 767's NTSB report pictures and all the other oxy-fire graphics), the blowtorch would be weakening the close adjacent hull skin.

c.  Being colourless and odourless, oxygen involvement and (more importantly, the oxygen enrichment rate) would not be apparent at all to the pilots. They may or may not know that Halon fire extinguishers are quite ineffectual against oxygen-involved fires but they would be instinctively attempting to fight any outbreak with a hand-held anyway. It's a very similar circumstance to the insidious effect of carbon monoxide poisoning - but factor in the flammability and it's just as deadly an unnoticeable hazard.

d.  In a matter of minutes the pilot who'd had to vacate his seat (and shed his oxygen mask and attempted to fight the fire) would be overcome by smoke and Halon fumes. He may or may not seek succour from the 3rd seat oxy mask. If he did do that, he'd be a certified quick thinker. Some oxygen flows would be available to those two unaffected seats' regulators.

e.  Whether it was a waypoint keypad punched or a heading dialled in, at about this time MH370 reversed course for the nearest available airport. At this pre-DDT stage, a pilot's mind would be fixated upon landing ASAP at the nearest available airport

f.   The timing and position of this turn likely accords with the oil-rig worker's sighting of an incendiary event low on the horizon to the WSW. More on verification and validation of that sighting later.... (or see "empty visual field myopia"  in the main document at http://tinyurl.com/or9bzf2 ).

g.   After around two to three minutes, the oxygen enrichment levels would have reached that required for DDT (Deflagration to Detonation Transition). This is a low order detonation caused by oxygen enrichment levels reaching that required for a flash-over. The overpressure of a DDT added to aircraft pressurization and a blowtorch weakened hull would cause an explosive depressurization and all fires would quickly be extinguished to something less than a smoulder. The flashover would be of a duration less than a minute and possibly as little as 20 seconds. Oxygen enrichment is defined by NASA as anything greater than 23% by volume but a DDT eruptive event would need something approaching 80+%. Once oxygen enrichment reaches those levels, the experiments conducted by NASA after the three deaths in the 100% oxygen environment of the Apollo 1 capsule gave us some interesting facts. The interior of the capsule was heavily sooted (100% oxygen levels that didn't drop in content until the hatch was finally opened - because oxygen doesn't burn, it merely supports combustion). The Egyptair 777 and the 767 fires went on for some time and their flight-decks showed considerable fire damage. But thanks to the high altitude depressurization, the level of damage aboard MH370 before a prompt flame extinction (following hull rupture) was likely light, in fact a light sooting only. Why only a light sooting? At saturation levels all surfaces are being "wetted" by oxygen and so those surfaces are combustible. Only if that fire persists will the fire become penetrative and self-sustaining (as seen in the many images in the Egyptian report on their 777 "Nefertiti"). Notably some of the debris recovered at the crash site of MS804 was described as being "lightly sooted". All of which gives rise to the next conjecture.

h.  What about the loss of comms you may ask? Why did the transponder and ACARS link via Satellite drop out? The most probable answer is tied to the changing nature of the modern plastic flight-deck. The plastics used in modern cockpit push-button switchology and keypads, touch-screens and circuit-breakers are very dissimilar to the metal switchology of yesteryear. Instead of the metal switch's toggled physical retention, plastic switches rely upon solenoid latching and relay interactions. The other dissimilarity is that between a switch and its surround mount having very different melting points (to put it simply, that can result in jammed switches or tripped switches. You could also surmise that the electrical relays first introduced with the B717 as an alternative to electromagnetic relays (for the purpose of instantaneous and transparent load switching without disruptive transients) has also moved some system goal-posts once an oxygen flash-over passes thermally through the flight-deck. Circuit-breakers are also designed to be thermally tripped. Some may be self-resettable. So in such an atmosphere of transient thermodynamics and heat pulse, is it really surprising that some systems might be affected and some not? It's not dissimilar to the EMP phenomenon. You could ask further: "Would all systems be vulnerable? Or just some?" At that point you can fall back on the very much assured fail-safe and failure-proof aspects of some systems - such as the active flight control system. This sports many layers of self redundancy, in no case less than four. Could this explain why MH370 flew on, but the Egyptair A320 with a totally different fly-by-wire design philosophy did not - and could not?

i.  Most hull losses are on the ground and are related to undetected leaks during replenishment or component swap-out. One QANTAS 747 lost a cylinder overboard through the hull whilst abeam Manila. Are there any other examples of airborne oxygen fires? Yes, but mainly in the military. However the recent loss of an Egyptair A320 in the Mediterranean screams "watch this space". There was a shout of "FIRE" by the MS804 captain and an order for his F/O to fight the fire - mere seconds prior to the aircraft spiralling down out of control. The oxygen cylinders in the A320 are beneath the F/O's seat.

j.  A recent development (in late August 2016): FAA AD 2016-18-02 is worth reading (electrically conductive oxygen hoses in passenger compartment). This is along the same lines as the omnibus Airworthiness Directives that were "snuck out" soon after MH370 went missing (and covered all Boeings up to and including the 787 and 747-800). These are all referenced or quoted in the main document.

http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAD.nsf/MainFrame?OpenFrameset

 the AD itself:    http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgad.nsf/0/6E7D9BAFA68C00DD8625802000523F29?OpenDocument

k.  The very recent discovery of a severely heated (aka burnt) piece of MH370 wreckage is a further confirmatory link to what was likely a self-extinguishing oxygen-involved fire aboard MH370 ...... one that flashed over and then died due to a blow-torching hull burn-through rupture and rapid depressurization.

So Mike, if you've any opinions or data that could assist , I'd appreciate it.

regards

John Sampson

http://tinyurl.com/hd3awyv