McConnell notes that after his trip to a MH theater of interest where he briefed 20+ senior people on the March 8 hijack by Serco – the world’s largest air traffic controller – the Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has announced he is not prepared to declare the MH 370 passengers dead!
McConnell (30 year airline and 22 year military pilot with 23,000 hours of safety) has booked a session on the uFly simulator to demonstrate the probable route taken by the hijacked aircraft and a Cat III C landing with the Boeing Uninterruptible Autopilot on the British Indian Ocean Territory of Diego Garcia.
Prequel:
#1941: Marine [One] Books CNN MH 370 Simulator for Sheraton Crossed Keys Takeoff, Serco Red Switch Landing
Australia gives up hope of finding MH 370 for now
By Robb M. Stewart
PERTH, Australia--The hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 moved from a perspective of days to one of months, maybe years, as Australia gave up hopes of finding wreckage in a narrow area of the southern Indian Ocean.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said military involvement would also be significantly scaled back. The aircrews and most of the naval vessels that had been part of the eight-nation search are set to wrap up as authorities look to hand a bigger role to companies specializing in lengthy deep-water searches.
Searchers now face the daunting task of scouring an area of seabed covering around 23,000 square miles (60,000 square kilometers) -- about equivalent in size to the U.S. state of West Virginia. That compares with the roughly 154 square miles (400 square kilometers) of ocean floor covered by a Bluefin-21 underwater drone in the past weeks' search.
Three weeks ago, the mood among officials including Mr. Abbott couldn't have been more different. After a prolonged period of false leads, Australia said sailors looking for Flight 370 had made an apparent breakthrough. Streams of signals, one of which lasted for more than two hours, were detected using a U.S. Navy underwater listening device. Hopes built of a quick end to the search, after analysis found the pings to be consistent with an aircraft's "black box" locator beacons.
The failure of the initial underwater search to find any trace of the plane has left Australian officials with no fresh leads. The batteries on the plane's "black-box" beacons are long dead. A lengthy and costly air-and-ship search of the ocean's surface has dredged up only random flotsam, such as discarded fishing nets.
Underlining that the search relies heavily on educated guesswork, Australia has asked Malaysian investigators to take a new look at radar and satellite data. The hunt for Flight 370 swung to the southern Indian Ocean in mid-March, based on new interpretations of satellite data. The search area has shifted a number of times since then as investigators made new data calculations, including around how much fuel the plane was burning and changes in the operating temperatures of the satellite.
The expanded search area spans a wide arc of sea extrapolated from the partial digital "handshake" between Flight 370 and an Inmarsat PLC satellite on March 8, some hours after it disappeared from radar screens en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. According to Mr. Abbott and search officials, it would take roughly eight months to scour the expanded area fully. But they warned even that is an optimistic assessment: Delays are likely due to bad weather and technical glitches similar to those that disrupted the initial underwater search.
"All of us have stressed all along the difficulty of this search," Mr. Abbott told reporters.
"The aircraft plainly cannot disappear. It has to be somewhere."
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who has been coordinating Malaysia's hunt for the missing plane, said the Indian Ocean search will go on but is "moving on to the next phase." The minister said he believes the coalition of 26 nations aiding Malaysia is committed to continuing the search but that it is time to consider how much the operation will cost and who will pay for it. "It's still a very long journey," he said.
Cost estimates of a wider search are unclear as a search that had been steered with sophisticated military hardware is moving to one essentially led by private contractors--with equipment that can scan trenches in the southern Indian Ocean thought to extend up to 7,000 meters below the sea surface. Mr. Abbott said hiring a civilian contractor to search deeper underwater would cost around 60 million Australian dollars (US$57 million), which Australia would seek to pay alongside contributions from other nations such as Malaysia.
"It's time to begin the discussion on transition to long-term solutions such as commercial contracting of side scan sonars like the Bluefin and commercial analysis of the ping data," said Commander William J. Marks, of the U.S. 7th Fleet.
It took searchers almost two years to find the black-box recorders for Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009 en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro. In that case, searchers had a better idea of where the plane went down after finding hundreds of pieces of floating remains quickly, yet it still took small robotic submarines nearly 60 trips under the surface before the black boxes were discovered in an area where the ocean floor was nearly 2.5 miles, or 4 kilometers, deep.
The strategic shift in the hunt for Flight 370 doesn't mean authorities have run out of options. Other organizations are ready to provide submersibles that can go deeper than Bluefin, including the U.S.-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which helped recover the black boxes from the ill-fated Air France jet. Sonar equipment towed by a ship could cover greater distances than the Bluefin, which had to be brought to the surface every 20 hours so its data could be downloaded.
The decision to widen the search is the latest blow to relatives of the 239 passengers and crew on board Flight 370, already angered by the false leads and lapses in coordination among countries and companies trying to find the jetliner.
Malaysia Airlines last week said some of its staff were temporarily detained at the Lido Hotel in Beijing by families who were been unhappy with the details being provided on the missing aircraft. On Monday, Wen Wancheng, outlined the families concerns to Malaysian Embassy deputy chief of mission, Bala Chandran Tharman.
"After all these tips have been followed, we haven't gained any clue or evidence regarding the whereabouts of the flight," said Mr. Wen, whose 34-year-old son was on the plane. Mr. Bala said the Malaysian government would continue to search for the plane and its passengers, and the Chinese government has also promised to commit the resources to carrying on.
"China hopes the Australian side will coordinate search resources to enhance the underwater search," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang at a daily media briefing in Beijing. "China will continue to send search forces and stay in communication and cooperation with the Malaysian and Australian sides."
In Malaysia, the absence of any tangible evidence of where the plane went down, such as debris, has meant some relatives have held out hope the plane didn't crash in the ocean. "Maybe it is time for the government to rethink where the search should be," said Selamat Omar, whose son Mohammed Khairul Amri Selamat was a passenger. "Look for the plane on land." Richard C. Paddock and Celine Fernandez in Kuala Lumpur and Wayne Ma and Lilian Lin in Beijing contributed to this article.
Write to Robb M. Stewart at robb.stewart@wsj.com and David Winning at david.winning@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires”
“The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) (French: Administration canadienne de la sûreté du transport aérien, or ACSTA) is a Canadian Crown corporation responsible for the security screening at the 89 designated airports in Canada. CATSA reports to the Government of Canada through the Minister of Transport, who is responsible to the Parliament of Canada.
CATSA was officially formed April 1, 2002, following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in the United States. After September 11, 2001, the Government of Canada took responsibility for airport screening which, until then, was the responsibility of the airlines.
CATSA shares responsibility for civil aviation security with several federal government departments and agencies, air carriers and airport operators. Transport Canada is Canada’s designated national civil aviation security regulator, under the standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
CATSA contracts screening services to private security companies.”
“CNN Flight Simulator Reports on Flight MH 370 using our simulator
We have been helping CNN with their investigative reporting of the missing flight MH370. CNN has been filming in our simulator recreating scenarios to answer many questions of what could have happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight. Our prayers go out to the families of the missing crew and passengers.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was a scheduled international passenger flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing that lost contact with air traffic control on 8 March 2014 at 01:20 less than an hour after takeoff. At 07:24, Malaysia Airlines (MAS) reported the flight as missing. The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 14 nations.
A multinational search and rescue effort, later reported as the largest in history, was initiated in the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea Within a few days, this was extended to include the Strait of Malacca and Andaman Sea. On 15 March, based on military radar data and radio “pings” between the aircraft and an Inmarsat satellite, investigators concluded that it had first headed west across the Malay Peninsula, then continued on a northern or southern track for approximately seven hours. The search in the South China Sea was abandoned. Three days later the Australian Maritime Safety Authority began searching the southern part of the Indian Ocean.
uFly Simulator
Tel:
416-777-CAN1
(416-777-2261)
Address:
1535 Meyerside Dr. Unit 6
Mississauga ON L5T 1M9
Open:
Tuesday - Friday
12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Saturday - Sunday
10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Email:
ufly@uflysimulator.ca”
“John Vrieling
Drvier Examiner
Ottawa, Canada Area
Transportation/Trucking/Railroad
John Vrieling's Overview
Current
Driver Examiner at Serco
Past
Scheduler at Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa
Scheduling and Resource Manager at Aeroguard Group
General Manager at Servisair
John Vrieling's Experience
Driver Examiner
Serco
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; SRP; Outsourcing/Offshoring industry
May 2013 – Present (1 year) Ottawa, Canada Area
Driver Examiner
Scheduler
Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa
Nonprofit; 201-500 employees; Individual & Family Services industry
July 2012 – March 2013 (9 months) Ottawa, Canada Area
Scheduling and Resource Manager
Aeroguard Group
Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Security and Investigations industry
March 2007 – November 2011 (4 years 9 months)
• Design and implement seasonal shift and vacation bids within a unionised environment.
• Liaise with CATSA to understand the client’s resource requirements and deliver to their expectations.
• Responsible for the scheduling of 230 screening officers at the Ottawa International Airport.
• Tracking attendance and vacation on Time Tracker System. • Authorize all shift trades amongst screening officers daily
• Monitoring of all vacation and sickness payments with the payroll department.
• Forecasting resource requirements both long and short term
• Manage within a tight budget of maximum weekly hours (MWH)
• Produce and submit monthly staffing reports to CATSA
During my tenure as the scheduling manager Aeroguard obtained all bonuses for manpower requirements. General Manager
Servisair
Privately Held; 10,001+ employees; Airlines/Aviation industry
January 2003 – January 2007 (4 years 1 month) Ottawa, Canada Area
• Lead staff of 110 employees through the ever changing airline industry.
• Ensured all staff was aware of the company’s health and safety policies.
• Maintained a close working relationship with airline customer groups, government agencies and the Airport Authority.
• Ensured FAA, TSA, US Customs, CATSA, Transport Canada and Airport rules and regulations were complied with.
• Formulated a yearly budget for the Ottawa base.
• Formulated manpower schedules.
• Maintained a good working relationship with the IAM Union responsible for all discipline and took leading role in grievance procedures.
• Understood airline contracts and was responsible for recouping extra billing.
• Responsible for the budget of 60 motorized pieces of equipment and approximately 90 non-motorized equipment.
• Member of the AOC Airlines Operator Committee which met on a monthly basis.
• Acted as the chairman of the Airline de-icing sub committee. x
Supervisor
Servisair
Privately Held; 10,001+ employees; Airlines/Aviation industry
January 1987 – January 2003 (16 years 1 month) Ottawa, Canada Area
• Responsible for 20-30 unionized employees during a shift ensuring all detailed work was accomplished.
• Co-trained on airline de-icing procedures for compliance.
• Instrumental of the inception SOP’S for the central de-icing facility at the Ottawa airport.
• Did hands on aircraft container loader training for the company at John F. Kennedy airport Oct. 1999.
• Also on two separate occasions worked at the Vancouver airport doing training and supervising for 2 months at a time in the summer of 1995 and summer of 2000 Lead Ramp Attendant 1980-1987
• Lead a crew of 5-7 employees daily and maintained all airline tight schedules in a fast paced environment.
• Trained new hire employees, liased with airline operations
John Vrieling's Skills & Expertise”
“[British Company Serco – under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office in the United Kingdom for Crossed Key tagging of prisoners – operates Defense Red Switch Network for United States!] … Building a State-of-the-Practice Data Communications Network To create a state-of-the-practice data communications network required Serco to engineer different solutions for each of the AFSCN’s [Air Force Satellite Control Network] unique locations. Each ground station around the world had to be surveyed in order to develop detailed installation plans, project support agreements and testing plans.
Furthermore, to assure communications reliability between the ground station and the operational control nodes, Serco also had to conduct a complete circuit testing exercise. After completing the survey, Serco’s team continued with their due diligence, for developing and implementing a state-of-the-practice solution, by conducting circuit, system verification and integration, installation and checkout testing for each of the ground stations, including those located at Diego Garcia, in British Indian Ocean Territory, the Royal Air Force Base in Oakhanger, England and the Anderson AFB, in Guam
In developing this enhanced voice and data communications network, Serco’s team engineered and implemented an ATM backbone and secure voice system for each of the AFSCN ground stations. The installed network was based on a Wide Area Network (WAN) architecture utilizing IP based network capabilities and proprietary secure communication technologies such as KG-75s, KG-84S and KIV-7s. Serco ensured Defense Red Switch Network connectivity and operations throughout the AFSCN.”
McConnell has been directed by Abel Danger Global to select witnesses to the upcoming uFly simulation who may to wish to sue for damages in re Serco’s apparent role in staging a MH 370 Crossed Keys take-off for from Kuala Lumpur and a Red-Switch landing on Diego Garcia.
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
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