MH370 - No easy task to make sure where the flaperon came from - Curt Lewis

 

THE FRENCH CONNECTION TO

MALAYSIA AIR 370 FLAPERON FLAP

By Roger Rapoport

When a Boeing 777 wing flaperon washed up on the shores of the French territory Reunion Island, frustrated Malaysian officials thought they had their answer to conspiracy theorists. After being derided and ridiculed for 17 months over their inability to find a single piece of the plane, Kuala Lumpur leaders had hope.

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Unfortunately none of them were prepared for dealing with the conservative approach of the French aviation accident experts, legal system and military investigators.

The emerging split between Malaysian officials and French authorities studying a flaperon that may be linked to Malaysia Air 370 hardly was entirely predictable in the nation that invented the word bureaucracy. French experts studying the piece recovered on Reunion Island at a military facility outside Toulouse are under the direct supervision of a counterterrorism judge. In this case the margin for error is truly zero.

While the Malaysian government insists that the missing part is indeed from the Boeing aircraft that disappeared in March of 2014 on a flight to Beijing, the French scientists are taking a much more conservative approach. To understand why it's helpful to know a little French aviation history.
In 1986 an Air France 320 pilot flying more than 130 passengers including children and special needs guests crashed his plane into a Habsheim, Germany air show. Three died and 34 were injured. The Air France pilot was jailed in the subsequent felony case. There were suits and countersuits alleging, among other things, that the flight recorders had been tampered with in an effort to exonerate the airline and manufacturer. Those charges were never verified amidst a flurry of exposes, documentaries and books.
More recently following the 2009 crash of Air France 447, the French BEA led a series of sea searches which failed to locate the missing Airbus 330 over a 22 month period. As in the Malaysian Air 370 case, some victim's relatives accused the French government of dragging their feet in an effort to protect the airline, manufacturer and regulatory officials.

In the spring of 2011, with financial assistance from Airbus and Air France, the French Government hired experts from Woods Hole Institute in Massachusetts. This team launched a new search with the assistance of French scientists on a BEA hired vessel. The three month hunt in the South Atlantic ended early when the American led team found the vessel in just six days.

Another reason why French investigators are cautious about leaping to conclusions was premature coverage of the sixteen month investigation of the Air France 447 accident Leaked cockpit transcripts prompted misled journalists to leap to the conclusion that the accident was entirely pilot error. In fact, as the diligent French BEA analysis proved in 2012, the accident was the result of multiple factors including an automation surprise. In this case a flight director that appeared to be working after the autopilot shut off, prompted an inexperienced and poorly trained copilot to climb into an aerodynamic stall. 

While many of the French government's recommendations for increased simulator time and training, new stall recovery procedures, hardware and software modifications were implemented by the aviation industry, one will have to wait until at least 2021. That was the BEA's endorsement of instant satellite tracking of mysteriously off course planes outside ground radar coverage. Had that four year old concept been adapted at a cost of $500,000 per plane or less, Malaysia Air 370 could have been tracked and found. 

While the Malaysian government is determined to link the newly discovered flaperon to Flight 370, French officials, under judicial supervision, are determined to avoid leaping to conclusions. Fortunately the French scientists doing the analysis are among the world's best at underwater recovery.

Roger Rapoport is the author of The Rio-Paris Crash: Air France 447 and the producer/screenwriter of the feature film Pilot Error (www.piloterrormovie.com)