MH370: 'One of the great aviation mysteries' - Emirates CEO

Resting in an unknown territory therein lies the debris or what is left of the Malaysia Airlines airliner, MH370 – the Beijing-bound aircraft which mysteriously vanished on March 8.

Many months later, most of us are still perplexed over the disappearance questioning the ‘lack of information and the cold hard logic of the incident and the factors that led to the disappearance.

“Malaysia Airlines MH370 remains one of the great aviation mysteries. Personally I have the concern that we will treat it like that and move on, and it will go onto National Geographic as one of aviation's great mysteries,” said President and CEO of Emirates, Sir Timothy Charles Clark in an interview with aviation journalist Andreas Spaeth, published on the Sydney Morning Herald.

Said Clark, the routing, its altitude oscillations were all measurable and explainable, but yet the responsible quarters seemed to have allowed all possibilities, “to go into this black hole of 'it could be one of aviation's great mysteries'.

“It can't be left like that, never. We must know what caused that aeroplane to disappear,” he said in the report.

Clark was adamant in his views that flight MH370 control was taken of the aeroplane and that what occurred during the course of its navigated route is as good as anybody’s guess.

“I think we need to know who was on this aeroplane in the detail that obviously some people do know, we need to know what was in the hold of the aeroplane, in the detail we need to know, in a transparent manner.

"And we need to continue to press all those stakeholders that were and are involved in the analysis, in the assessment of what happened, for more information,” said Clark.

“I do not subscribe to the view that the aircraft, which is one of the most advanced in the world, has the most advanced avionics and communication platforms, needs to be improved so that we can introduce some kind of additional tracking system for an aeroplane that should never have been allowed to enter into a non-trackable situation,” he added.

An experienced aviation figure, Clark explained that technical know-how of an aeroplane.

Top on his technical list is the transponders which are under the control of the flight deck which constitute tracking devices, aircraft identifiers that work in the secondary radar regime.

“If you turn off that transponder in a secondary radar regime, it causes a disappearance of that particular aeroplane from the radar screen. That should never be allowed to happen. All secondary and primary radar should be the same,” said Clark.

“Irrespective of when the pilot decides to disable the transponder, the aircraft should be able to be tracked. So the notion by the Malaysians that the disappearance from the secondary radar and then the ability of the military to use primary radar to track the aeroplane and identify it as 'friendly' – I don't know how they did that - is something we need to look at very carefully,” he added.

Other monitoring means

The process of the track of an aircraft is the Aircraft Communication and Reporting System or ACARS, said Clark.

Designed primarily for the companies to monitor what the aeroplanes are doing, ACARS is used for several things focusing on aircraft systems and engine performance monitoring.

“So we track from the ground, as we do at Emirates, every single aircraft and every component of the aircraft and engine of the aircraft at any point of the planet, and very often we are able to track faults in the systems before the pilots do. It's that good and it's that real time,” he said.

The notion that a certain ‘disabling’ method took place on MAS’ MH370, Clark said that disabling it is no simple thing and Emirates pilots aren’t trained to disable ACARS.

He said that there are ways to enter the system via multiple menu levels for access and disable, but to completely disable requires a deck crew to travel down below the main deck into the avionics bay.

"And that requires you to leave the flight deck and go down through a trap door in the floor to do that. But somehow this thing was disabled, so much so that the ground tracking capability was eliminated,” said

Clark, adding that a set of enhanced systems to allow ACARS to continue uninterrupted, irrespective of who is controlling the aircraft must be identified.

“If you have that, with the satellite constellations that we have today even in the Southern Ocean, we still have the capability of monitoring. So you don't have to introduce additional tracking systems,” he added.

ACARS and all its complexities

He recommended that aircraft manufacturer should attempt finding a way to make disabling of the ACARS system impossible by the flight deck.

The reason why a pilot should be able to put the transponder into standby or off is perplexing, said Clark, adding that the air traffic control systems should not have a situation where a non-transponder aircraft without its squawk identifier should not be allowed to turn off and still not be able to track it.

“This is absolute stuff of nonsense. Radar is radar. It will pick up metal objects flying at the speed of the size of a 777 without any difficulty. Who took the decision to say: 'If a transponder is off, we can't track it in a secondary radar regime'? Which apparently most air traffic control systems are in. We must look at that as well. This aircraft in my opinion was under control, probably until the very end.”

On flight MH370 'unknown' five-hour route, Clark said that every single element of the facts pertaining the incident needs to be challenged and examined in full transparency and exhausted to the core.

“All the entities involved like the NTSB, the Malaysians, the Australians, Boeing itself, whatever. They all know that people like me, and I hope the Malaysians are in this boat, too, will not allow this to go into that box of oblivion.

"Every single second of that flight needs to be examined. From the point on its heading in a north-easterly direction where it 'disappeared' off the screen and made a conscious left turn to go almost due West in controlled flight,” said Clark.

“ There were apparently some oscillations in altitude from 41,000 to 27,000 feet, then the notion that it turned between existing waypoints on a north-easterly, then a north-westerly, then a south-westerly heading, where it theoretically then ended up in the Southern Ocean. For which they couldn't find a trace in 1.7 million square miles of search, nothing, they say,” he added.

Clark cited flight Aeroflot AF447 incident which took two years to track although shortly after it occurred authorities found the fin, floating.

“So we knew that the aircraft had gone in. And yes, there were all sorts of oceanographic issues with the currents and it took us two years to find.”

In the case of flight MH370, no evidence, of any sorts (RE: seat cushion) has been retrieved, where the aircraft has gone down.

“We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is nothing. Apart from this 'handshake', which calls my electronic engineers to start thinking 'what is all this about?'.

“Well, I question this ‘handshake’. In the Southern Ocean, with a very weak signal, which is intermittent, and they are a multitude of other aircraft in the same area, I’m not sure about that.

“First of all let's establish what actually happened. If the industry then believes there is a case to put extra tracking devices on board, we can look at it. But don't walk down a blind alley. Many people, including at IATA, are going down this path. I don’t agree with it,” said Clark.

Over-water incident, he said apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939, that has not been at least, five or 10 per cent trackable.

“So for me that raises a degree of suspicion, and I'm totally dissatisfied with what is been coming out of all of this.

Full transparency

Whether or not, the mystery surrounding flight MH370 will be solved, Clark viewed that there is full transparency of everything that everybody knows.

“I don’t believe that the information held by some is on the table. Who actually disabled ACARS, who knew how to do it? If you eliminate the pilot on a suicide mission, I’m sure you could have put the aircraft in the South China Sea, rather than fly it for seven hours.

“So if he was on a suicide mission, he would have done it then. Who then took control of the aircraft? Who then knew how to disable ACARS and turn the transponder off? That is a huge challenge,” said Clark, adding that the response that ‘on prime radar we identified it as ‘friendly’ leaves much to be desired.

“This is a very busy part of Southeast Asia, the notion that we should not be able to identify if it is friend or foe, or we can on primary radar and do nothing about it, is bizarre. Friendly with intent, or friendly without intent? But what was done?

"These are the questions that need to be asked of the people and the entities that were involved in all of this. Full transparency of that will help us to find out what went on,” he concluded.