29 March 2014

MH370 - Is this proof that flight MH370 was downed by a 'blow torch' fire in its cockpit? British lawyers claim missing jet could have suffered same fate as another Boeing 777 three years ago

Is this proof that flight MH370 was downed by a 'blow torch' fire in its cockpit? British lawyers claim missing jet could have suffered same fate as another Boeing 777 three years ago

Malaysian authorities believe foul play aboard could have downed the jet
But London-based law firm believe a fault led the plane to catch fire
EgyptAir Boeing 777-200 with 291 passengers on board caught fire in 2011
Cairo fire due to problem with the cockpit hose used to provide oxygen
280 Boeing 777s were delivered with the faulty wiring that caused Cairo fire
It is unclear if the MH370 was one of the affected planes

PUBLISHED: 10:52 GMT, 28 March 2014 | UPDATED: 19:04 GMT, 28 March 2014

A 'blow torch' fire which ripped through the cockpit of a Boeing 777 in Egypt three years ago could hold the clue to the fate of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, it has been claimed.

Stewarts Law, which has litigated in a series of recent air disasters, believes the plane crashed after a fire - similar to the blaze on the Cairo airport runway - broke out in the cockpit.

Since the Beijing-bound airliner disappeared on 8 March with 239 people on board speculation has been rife about whether foul play by either the pilots or someone aboard led the aircraft to disappear.

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A fire which led to a Boeing 777 being written off in Egypt in 2011 could explain the disappearance of the Malaysia airlines jet, it has been claimed

But James Healy-Pratt, a member of the firm who is also a pilot told MailOnline he has worked with his technical team of Boeing-approved captains to come up with his 'simpler' explanation.

Mr Healy-Pratt, who represented some of the families of the Air France Flight 447 which crashed in 2009, said: ‘I have been doing this for 22 years. These pilots have between them more than 50 years of flying and we have looked very carefully at the facts as the emerged and done our own work.'

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‘In the first week it looked like it could be similar to Air France, but then other facts emerged. Simple explanations are usually the case and we looked at EgyptAir Boeing 777 - the fire in Cairo was an electrical fault and then fire then got out of hand.'

The burnt interior of the Boeing 777 after the fire broke out in the Cairo airport in 2011

A British law firm is comparing the current situation with a fire that broke out on the flight deck of an EgyptAir Boeing 777-200 with 291 passengers on board prepared to depart for Jeddah, pictured

WHAT CAUSED THE 2011 FIRE ON BOEING IN CAIRO AIRPORT ?

When the captain was preparing the aircraft for departure the oxygen levels were normal.

But 30 minutes later the first officer heard a pop followed by a hissing sound underneath a cockpit window to the right.

The captain tried to put it out using the fire extinguisher available in the cockpit, but it was too powerful and firefighters worked at extinguishing it for over an hour.

The crew and passengers escaped without injury, although seven people including passengers, Egyptair staff and fire fighters suffered from mild asphyxia and were transferred to hospitals.

After an investigation Egypt's Aircraft Accident Investigation Central Directorate (EAAICD) released their final report which revealed that the fire originated near the first officer's oxygen mask supply tubing.

Oxygen from the flight crew oxygen system is suspected to have contributed to the fire's intensity and speed.

The cause of the fire could not be conclusively determined. It is not yet known whether the oxygen system breach occurred first, providing a flammable environment or whether the oxygen system breach occurred as a result of the fire.

Investigators pinpointed a problem with the cockpit hose used to provide oxygen for the crew in the event of decompression.

Following the 2011 blaze US aircraft owners were instructed to replace the system - it was estimated to cost $2,596 (£1,573) per aircraft.

It was not known whether Malaysia Airlines had carried out the change.

He said his team decided one possibility is there was a form of electrical fire leading to a rapid decompression and that then resulted in the turn-back and the aircraft disappearing somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

The British law firm, which is advising families of the missing passengers, drew comparisons with a 2011 fire that broke out on the flight deck of an EgyptAir Boeing 777-200 with 291 passengers on board as it prepared to depart for Jeddah from Cairo airport.

The crew and passengers escaped without injury, although seven people including passengers, Egyptair staff and fire fighters suffered from mild asphyxia and were transferred to hospitals.

A fire broke out in the cockpit and the captain tried to put it out using the fire extinguisher available, but it was too powerful and firefighters worked at extinguishing it for over an hour.

Investigators pinpointed a problem with the cockpit hose used to provide oxygen for the crew in the event of decompression.

A total of 280 Boeing 777s had been delivered with the faulty wiring, Mr Healy-Pratt said

Following the 2011 blaze US aircraft owners were instructed to replace the system - it is not clear if Malyayisa Airlines had carried out this change
Mr Healy-Pratt said.

He said the fault can cause a 'blowtorch type fire' that will melt aluminium in a matter of seconds.

He explained depending on the severity of the fire it could take 90 seconds before the pilots are unconscious, but the plane could continue to fly on using -fly-by-wire - a system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface.

He told MailOnline: 'In 99.99 per cent of cases pilots try to do their best. If it turns out there is an electrical fire, they would try to deal with it, turn back and try to fly to the nearest airport. In an emergency pilots are taught to aviate, to navigate and it you have got time, communicate.

Explaining the lack of emergency calls from the Malaysia Airline pilots, Mr Healy-Pratt said there was a three and half minute period during the Air France crash in 2009 in which the pilots were so busy trying to solve the problem there was no time to make a mayday call.

The cockpit fire theory has been supported by Chris Goodfellow, a Canadian pilot with 20 years experience, who hailed captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah as a hero, not a hijacker, in his fascinating explanation, which claims to debunks all theories about the fate of the missing jet.

He insists the only reasonable scenario is that a fire broke out aboard the plane and Shah was doing exactly what he needed to do in an emergency - get the plane to the nearest airport as soon as possible.

Australian authorities say Malaysia plane search shifts north

Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. 'We believe that in due course, the crew will be regarded as heroes rather than villains,' Mr Healy-Pratt said

In this case, that was the 13,000 foot strip Palau Langkawi, and that is directly where the aircraft was heading when it was last tracked.

However, Goodfellow believes the crew were overcome by smoke and the aircraft flew as a 'ghost plane' for hours past the chosen airport.

'We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Always,' Goodfellow wrote. 'Instinctively when I saw that left turn with a direct heading I knew he was heading for an airport.'

He said he immediately brought up Google Earth and discovered the runway, which was had fewer obstacles blocking the plane's approach than if Shah attempted to return to Kuala Lumpar, which was also further away.

Gone: The Malaysian Airways jet (not pictured) vanished on March 8 after communication was severed just one hour into a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing

'This pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event aboard that made him make that immediate turn back to the closest safe airport,' he says in the post.

But Shaheer Magdy Abdel Sayyed, the pilot on the Egyptair flight where the fire took place, says the two incidents have significant differences.

'The problem happened with my aircraft at the ground. If the same problem happened while the plane flying it will not last for too long before it fall,' he said reported The Telegraph.

THE 1987 BOEING THAT CAUGHT ON FIRE MID AIR, LOST COMMUNICATION AND CRASH LANDED INTO SEA...

On November 28, 1987, a South African Airways Boeing 747-244B Combi carrying 159 people crashed some 134 nautical miles northeast of Mauritius in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

The plane had been travelling from Taipei's Chiang Kai Shek Airport to Mauritius Plaisance Airport, but crew radioed approach control to let them know there was smoke in the aircraft some nine hours into the journey - just 46 minutes before it was due to land.

Minutes after the final communication at 00.04 the plane crashed into the sea.

Fragments sunk 15,000ft to the bottom of the ocean while other pieces of the aircraft floated away on the currents and were recovered later, including one piece discovered on a beach in Natal more than 2,000 nautical miles away.

The plane is thought to have crashed into the sea following an fire in the main deck cargo compartment.

The cause of the fire has never been discovered, but it has been claimed the design of the aircraft and the lack of adequate fire suppression systems in the deck cargo compartment prevented the crews from being able to put the fire out, according to jet-age.net.

At the time, the search and salvage expedition was the most expensive ever launched.

Examinations took place on each piece of the plane recovered but the origin of the fire, or the sequence of events which eventually led to the crash, have never been discovered.

'It was very fortunate for me and for the passengers and the crew that it was in the ground but if it happened while the plane flying there will not be any flying, the plane will not fly all that distance and will fall immediately in its location.'

Earlier this month, it was reported that the US Federation Aviation Authority (FAA) ordered airlines to fix a potentially fatal flaw in some Boeing 777 jets six months ago - although the flaw did not affect the particular model of 777 used on the MH370.

The FAA reportedly warned the planes could suffer a drastic loss in cabin pressure or even break apart because of cracks or corrosion in the fuselage.

Malaysian authorities have insisted the plane had been 'fully serviced' and all the maintenance checks 'were in order'.

A spokesman for Boeing declined to comment on a possible parallel between the incidents due 'to international rules surrounding air incident investigations.'

A plane has spotted objects in the Indian Ocean of the first day of searching a new location for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, but officials say it will take until tomorrow to determine whether they are related to the lost plane.

The search area moved 680 miles to the north east earlier today, and a New Zealand military plane, one of nine aircraft involved in the hunt, found the objects, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said on Twitter.

Amsa said the find needs to be confirmed by a ship which is expected to arrive in the area tomorrow.

The search area was shifted after new radar data analysis suggested the jet flew faster than originally thought and would have used up more fuel, which might have reduced the distance it travelled.

Amsa said the change in search area came from new information based on continuing analysis of radar data between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca before radar contact was lost with Flight 370 early on March 8.

'This is our best estimate of the area in which the aircraft is likely to have crashed into the ocean,' said Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

The new search area is more than 600 miles north of an area in which apparently floating objects were spotted by Japanese, Thai and French satellites earlier this week.

COULD MH370 HAVE CRASHED DUE TO A NEW FAULT WITH A BOEING?

While the 777 has an excellent safety record, with an accident rate of one quarter the rate of the total jet fleet, theories abound about mechanical or structural failures that could have contributed to the disappearance of flight MH370.

If something did turn out to be wrong with the aircraft it would be the latest in a long list of problems that have beset Boeing planes recently, albeit incidents that mainly occurred on its 787 model.

Here are some of the recent issues which arisen:

• 7 July 2013: A Boeing 777 with 307 aboard people came down short of the runway at San Francisco International Airport on July 6 killing two people and injuring dozens. The plane hit a sea wall as it approached too low and too slow - the reason is still under investigation

• 17 January 2008: A Boeing 777 crash landed at Heathrow Airport after losing power to both engines because of restricted fuel flow. None of the 152 people on board the aircraft was seriously injured

Problems with the Boeing Dreamliner...

January 7, 2013: The battery on an empty Dreamliner caught fire at Boston airport

January 15, 2013: A flight made an emergency landing in Japan after a smoke alarm went off. The string of incidents led to regulators ordering a global grounding of the entire Dreamliner fleet, which lasted for four months

July 12, 2013: Ethiopian Airlines plane catches fire on the runway at Heathrow, forcing the closure of the whole airport

January 14, 2014: Norwegian Airlines Boeing 787 was preparing to take off from Bangkok on a journey to Oslo when a passenger saw that fuel was leaking on to the runway

Mr Young said those satellite images 'may or may not actually be objects' and acknowledged that the search had moved away from that area.

He said it was not unusual to make such changes and dismissed questions that the earlier searches had been a wasted effort.

'This is the normal business of search and rescue operations - that new information comes to light, refined analyses take you to a different place,' he said. 'I don't count the original work as a waste of time.'

The new area is 123,000 square miles and about 1,250 miles west of Perth. The sea depth in the new area ranges from 6,560ft to 13,120ft, Mr Young said.

Australia's HMAS Success and five Chinese vessels are on their way, and that the Success is expected to arrive tomorrow night local time.

Strong winds and currents have made it difficult to pinpoint objects spotted so far, and the search has yet to produce any trace of the plane.

Malaysian officials said earlier this week that satellite data confirmed the plane crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

Authorities are rushing to find any piece of the plane to help them locate the so-called black boxes, or flight data and voice recorders, that will help solve the mystery of why the jet, flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, flew so far off-course. The battery in the black box normally lasts about a month.

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