ATSB report revealed plane experienced power failure, raising possibility of foul play again

A report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau report into flight MH370’s disappearance revealed that the plane suffered a mysterious power outage some 90 minutes into its flight, raising the possibility that the aircraft’s systems were tampered with.

According to The Telegraph, the plane's satellite data unit made an unexpected "log-on" request to a satellite during the early stages of its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A log-on request, also known as "handshake", could have been triggered by a power failure on board the plane.

"A log-on request in the middle of a flight is not common," according to the ATSB, released Thursday.

"An analysis was performed which determined that the characteristics and timing of the log-on requests were best matched as resulting from power interruption."

The new evidence has, once again, raised possibilities that foul play was involved in flight MH370’s disappearance, and the plane was deliberately flown off course.

David Gleave, an aviation safety expert from Loughborough University, told The Telegraph, interruption to the power supply could be the result of someone in the cockpit trying to minimise the use of the aircraft's systems.

Thus, suggesting that there might be an attempt to turn the plane’s communication systems in order to avoid radar detection.

"It could be a deliberate act to switch off both engines for some time. By messing about within the cockpit you could switch off the power temporarily and switch it on again when you need the other systems to fly the aircraft,” he told the UK daily.

Gleave said it was possible that the plane had experience a mechanical malfunction that triggered the power failure. However, the plane wouldn’t’ have been able to continue flying for thousands of miles into the southern Indian Ocean, if that was the case.

British satellite operator Inmarsat which provided the MH370 search team satellite data, has also confirmed the assessment of the report.

"It does appear there was a power failure on those two occasions... It is another little mystery. We cannot explain it. We don't know why. We just know it did it," senior vice president Chris McLaughlin told the daily.

A closer examination on the report also revealed that the plane attempted to log-on to Inmarsat satellites at 2.25am, and another one nearly six hours later.

Based on the request analysis, the plane would have been flying north of Sumatra in the first log-on attempt. The second log-on attempt is believed to have been caused by the plane running out of fuel and electrical power.

Meanwhile, Australian news portal news.com.au reported that Malaysian Airlines (MAS) had only twice attempted to make phone contact with the airliner over six hours before it apparently went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

The portal said that Inmarsat and investigators calculated the early Indian Ocean search areas based on automatic satellite “handshakes”, initiated by an Inmarsat ground station in Perth, but also from phone calls made from the ground to the cockpit satellite phone.

Both went through the same ground station.

“If they’d been calling the plane, the satellite would have tried to log-on and the aircraft pinger would have tried to respond,” said veteran Qantas pilot Captain Richard Woodward.

Weighing in on the matter, he said if the ground staff continuously called the airliner through the plane’s satellite phone, it would have provided a distance from the ground station, which would have helped narrow down the search area.

The pilots made their final contact with ground at 1.22am on March 8.

It took one hour and 17 minutes later before the ground staff tried to ring the plane’s satellite phone.

The next attempt to phone the plane was only made five hours later at 7.13am, after the airliner was supposed to have landed in Beiing.

“If you’d lost contact with an airliner you’d be calling them on every frequency. You’d definitely be trying to call them on the satellite phone (as well as VHF and HF and by data link, similar to SMS),” Woodward added.