MH370 - When is it enough?

What is the point of a reduced search? Whether it is 1000 vessels searching for 1 year, or 1 vessel searching for a thousand years, the cost is the same. The chance of success diminishes with time, so they should be ramping this up. Every ship and plane in the world should be deployed immediately. They MUST find this plane, and find it soon!

It's that type of view that I am questioning. "Find it at any cost?". Really?

True enough. I ponder the politics. The Malaysian PM is apparently flying to Australia. What could that possibly achieve other than an appearance of "caring".

The prime motivations for this increasingly irrational expenditure:

1) Political. A government must be seen to care in order to get re-elected. Politically motivated actions in response to misguided public opinion are typically irrational.

2) Legal/monetary. Anyone with a hand in this (airline, manufacturer, aviation regulators etc.) is increasingly terrified of litigation. They are desperate to show that it was someone else's fault.

3) Guilt. I have worked in organisations where fatalities have occurred. The personal feelings of guilt and responsibility drive irrational responses.

4) Emotional. People perhaps really do think that affected families and friends require "closure", and that spending enough money will eventually provide it. I have nothing to say on this.

.....and we thought irony was dead in North America.............

Whilst I agree that all the above account for a large portion of the activities currently in progress, I also think that people are by nature "curious" and would simply "like to know" where the plane ended up and if possible, why.

Other than Malaysian Airlines (and its maintenance/other partners) and Boeing (plus its suppliers) I don't see too many other organisations at risk of litigation. My view is that only gross negligence or criminal activity should be entertained with respect to liability otherwise, in general, we don't easily get to understand what went wrong (assuming somehow a picture of events are possible to establish).

Understanding events here might, not definite just might, reveal latent threats in Boeing 777s or Malaysian pilot training or operations which in turn just might prevent similar events in future. But human curiosity is a powerful driver !

I am as curious as the next person.

I think the likely outcome of all this is that they will eventually find something floating. Analysis will perhaps indicate whether fire or explosion occurred prior to the plane impacting the ocean. The finding of the debris will motivate a long, expensive and ultimately fruitless search for the wreckage on the ocean floor.

Winky,

On August 20th 2011 a First Air 737 crashed at Resolute.

The crash investigation report was published last week on 25th March 2014.

This was an accident in which the plane and its black box were recovered almost imediately and to which there were many, many witnessess, despite the fog at the time of the accident.

Over two and a half years to investigate and report. I have no idea how much this investigation has cost. perhaps you know or can find out. Lessons will be learnt but was the cost worth it ? Did we know what the cost would be when the investigation was started. Did we know what useful information, if any, the investigation would reveal. Could the resources used in the investigation have been put to better use. Should we disband the investigation teams paid for by Transport Canada and spend the money on saving pedestrians from car drivers ?

I appreciate your initial question re Flight MH370. Its difficult to know when to call it a day.

There is far greater certainty regarding the outcomes when the location of the crash is known. It's impossible to know the exact cost of either investigation up-front, but the MH370 investigation is far more open-ended with respect to cost, and with far less probability of a valuable outcome.

Lost planes like MH370 are in the tiny minority when it comes to crashes. Most aircraft failure investigations have a much better cost-benefit equation in terms of feedback to reliability engineering.

As I said earlier, air crashes are pretty rare anyway. Most of the information feeding aircraft reliability engineering now comes from non-crash failure investigation (battery failures on the new Dreamliner, internal wing-rib cracking on the A380 for example) as well as inspection, simulation and testing. We do not NEED to know what happened to MH370 (specifically) to keep air travel very safe indeed.

I flew a 777 to Asia last week. Never gave the aircraft type a single thought, with regards to safety.

I think Winki makes a valid point. How open ended can this search be?

The airline industry [manufacturers and operators] will tell us that it is the safest form of transport, so why not set about spending more money on making other forms of transport safer?

For example, we know what sunk the Titamic, and yet to this day we don't know why she was steaming so fast that the iceberg could not be dodged.

I imagine that we have to accept certain risks in any case. Even staying in bed does not eliminate the risk of an aeroplane crashing onto one's house.

I am all for making air transport even safer, but I suspect that their are more cost effective ways of doing it than spending millions on this sadly lost aeroplane. 

ATB from George

The sad reality is that airline safety is already subject to many compromises due to cost cutting - just some examples:

Pilots are amongst the least regulated safety critical employees of any industry in terms of working hours limits - they are for example able to work longer continuous shifts than train drivers, air traffic controllers and lorry drivers.  They are one of the few exemptions from the working time directive.  The research on which their recent UK limits were based was founded on research done by NASA on pilot performance some years ago but the EU has recently passed legislation that will in fact make the situation considerably worse.  Fatigue, particularly in the low cost carriers is now a significant safety threat.

Many airlines keen to achieve higher levels of aircraft utilisation have shortened turnaround times to the point where turnarounds are as short as 25 minutes (Ryanair).  This simply isn't enough to properly prep and check the aeroplane.  A complete visual inspection of the aircraft should be made before every flight but I've seen pilots (not in my airline) stand at the top of the steps, glance down the fuselage and walk back in.  Lets hope that wasn't a day when hydraulic fluid was leaking out of a system...

One airline (Ryanair) has now decided to use photocopies of arrival and departure plates rather than expensive Jeppesen originals - I've spoken to more than one ex-pilot who has struggled to read illegible plate photocopies while trying to enter or exit major international airports on a dark and stormy night.

Fuel policy in some airlines has now led to league tables being published for who carries the most extra fuel (because carrying fuel costs fuel) - a famous example led to a recent TV despatches programme when 3 Ryanair flights into Spanish airports declared fuel emergencies on the same night...  Pilots must work in a culture where they are able to exercise discretion to carry more fuel where weather or other factors make this advisable without management persecuting them for doing so.

Pilot training and type rating training in certain airlines (see above for a major offender)  is now arguably based on ability of the candidate to pay rather than ability to perform.  More traditional airlines recruit and train pilots at their expense and if you don't make the grade you're off the course.  This ensures that the resulting pilot has achieved the required standards. 

Airlines like BA spend 6 weeks training their cabin crew, many low cost carriers take 3.  Given the cabin crew are the ones who will look after you if you're taken ill on board, will deal with bomb threats, fight fires and get you off the burning plane when needed perhaps the importance of those crew and their training would be more widely appreciated.  Their primary purpose really isn't to serve you another gin and tonic.  Training costs money!

Some airlines recruit massive quantities of inexperienced pilots because they are cheaper to hire, easier to control.  Such airlines often have very poor retention rates as people move to better carriers for long term career progression.  It's in those better carriers where the most experienced pilots are to be found and in this career it takes years to build experience of events, failures and emergencies.  I've learned a lot by flying with some highly able and experienced people including test pilots from the Empire Test Pilots School, ex military and also experienced commercial pilots.  Airlines that encourage a mentoring scheme by such individuals are to be applauded though it costs money.

As others have said aircraft equipment can vary widely between operators - fitment of survival equipment - life-rafts, automatic drop-down oxygen, ELT transmitters, the numbers of parameters recorded by black boxes all add to safety but at a cost.  The regulation provides a framework (which is often lobbied against by operators fearful of increased cost).  Discretion as to what is or isn't fitted to aircraft can often come down to a bean-counter decision.

Should airline maintenance be farmed out to the lowest cost supplier or kept in house?  Cost/benefit issues here too!

National culture, cockpit culture and crew resource management training has played a huge part in improving air safety in recent years.  By and large the western carriers have embraced this and it's now rare for me to fly with Captains who aren't very keen for other members of the crew to bring things to their attention and challenge their thinking.  Problems remain however in other areas of the world where Captains are still seen as infallible Gods, particularly in the middle and Far east.

For further reading on the cost compromises inherent in airlines there's a very good book called The Tombstone Imperative which is worth a read. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-To...Safety/dp/0743415833

Chesney Sullenberger has also explored many of these competing cost pressures in his recent book 'In search of what really matters'.  It's a superb book by a true hero who landed his Airbus in the Hudson and rose to the challenge of a nightmare situation. 

In short it's wise to question where to put your money when flying.  Chances are that low cost ticket is achieved by low wage relatively inexperienced pilots flying while tired and under pressure to make the schedule on an airliner carrying more defects with maintenance done by the cheapest possible third party.   They'll also be landing you into minor airports with more primitive approach electronics, less emergency facilities and less fire cover.  You pays your money and takes your choice...

As for Malaysian I think we're a long way from calling time on the search if we're serious about air safety.

Jonathan 

Yet in spite of all this, air travel fatalities continue to trend downwards in absolute terms, whilst the number of kilometres travelled continues to escalate.

The current rate is 0.05 deaths per billion km.

Great post Jonathan. Really excellent.  Here in the US there has been continuing pressure to cut fare prices seemingly without the understanding that it costs a certain amount of money to fly a plane and make a profit for your shareholders. So the airlines keep fares competitive by charging for all the things that used to be included in the fare I.e. snacks, meals, baggage, and not just seat location but seat type. And, of course, passengers still whine about the fees. 

Competition for customers and the need for profitability all influence the systems that have a bearing on aircraft safety. However, I have a view that effective systems are also efficient. Things going wrong are both a safety risk and a cost risk. The two outcomes are not necessarily diametrically opposed, although I acknowledge that trade-offs are evaluated and executed.

In the middle of this is regulation. We, as a society have determined that it is in our best interests to have aircraft safer than simple commercial pressures would imply, so we have regulation to push in that direction. The results suggest that people in key positions, both on the regulatory and commercial side,  generally continue to do an excellent job.

The fatality rate per journey for air travel is about 10 times that of car travel. What this means is that my risk would be about the same whether I drove to work each day (10 journeys per week) or flew to work in a different city every 2 weeks (1 journey per week). Does anyone give their daily commute a second thought?

From the book Jonathon suggested...

 "Deaths per 100 million passenger journeys are, on average, 55 for airlines compared with 4.5 for cars, and 2.7 for trains"

Personally I find it incredible that getting into a metal tube and being thrown across the ocean to a distant city is only 10 times as dangerous as driving to the store. A remarkable outcome from the aviation industry and regulators.

Thanks Clay!  Just to address your point winky that airline fatalities have declined it's absolutely true but also is only a part of the safety equation.  It doesn't in fact include any of the incidents/accidents which were serious/hull losses but didn't lead to loss of life.  As an example a runway excursion is quite likely to be survivable for most passengers but isn't something you want to happen everyday!!  IATA reports that in fact airline accidents doubled between 2012 and 2013:

The 2013 global Western-built jet accident rate (measured in hull losses per million flights of Western-built jets) was 0.41, the equivalent of one accident for every 2.4 million flights. This was a step back from 2012 when the global Western-built jet accident rate stood at 0.21 (2) -the lowest in aviation history. Looked at over the five-year period (2009-2013), 2013 shows a 14.6% improvement on the five-year average of 0.48.  (reference http://www.iata.org/pressroom/...s/2014-04-01-02.aspx)

I would argue that in improving safety however we need to cast the net wider than this and include those accidents which didn't involve hull loss but had the possibility of leading to an accident.  there will be a very much larger number of those - possibly a thousand or so a year in a significantly sized airline.  As an example the Colgan Air disaster in the US has finally led to quite significant policy changes by the regulator in the USA who have woken up to the fact that their pilots were overworked and underpaid and crucially not sufficiently rested having commuted across the country and rested in bunk/doss houses before their flight.  I would argue that for every Colgan Air approach that went very wrong due primarily to fatigue/distraction there are hundreds more every year that are rescued from disaster every year by last minute corrective action.  The airlines know a lot about some of those from on-board flight data recording systems but crucially they don't have to share that information with the regulator unless the event becomes part of a major incident investigation.

It's a very complex topic with many factors interacting.  I still totally agree that flying remains a superbly safe means of transport at present but being on the inside has made me rather more cynical about the PR veneer of technical perfection and shiny aluminium that the airlines so love to portray.  I see the industry's internal statistics and incident reports and witness the relentless cost pressures that in my experience are often detrimental to safety.  I worry that the accident rate has improved despite these pressures due to:

Technological innovation - GPWS, TCAS, GPS, more reliable hardware

Better pilot training

Better incident/accident analysis

I worry however that this is a bit like the battle against mutating viruses.  The bean-counters will keep pushing harder and cutting safety, the question is whether the designers, regulators, engineers, trainers and pilots can continue to keep the overall safety trend line positive.

Jonathan

http://www.smh.com.au/world/mi...-20140406-zqrc9.html

They're not going to find this thing, are they?

Standby. Things maybe getting interesting. 

I think there is now enough evidence to justify winky putting his hand in his pocket................

Too right !!!

The news this morning is the Aus search ship has picked up signals in an area 600km further NE from those the Chinese found.  They received them over a period of aprx 2 hours & on a 2nd run for over 20 minutes. The more positive angle on the Aus discovery is its using the deep dive US purpose built system,  not near surface as the Chinese are using.   The report says they appear to be consistent with both flight data & cockpit voice recorders,  not sure of the grammar & if this means they hear 2 sets of pings,  or that its consistent with these types of locator beacons. 

Mike, as I understand it, the FDR and the CVR are two separate devices. Each one is fitted with a "pinger". Each pinger transmits a "ping" at 1 sec intervals. All of these pingers transmit on 37.5 kHz.

I imagine that if the FDR and the CVR are located close together, the hydrophones or ping detectors on the search vessels could therefore be searching for "double pings" which are slighly out of phase with each other, assuming both devices are still transmitting.

If the FDR and CVR are in completely separate locations (not sure why this might be) then this could possibly account for separate detection pings reported by the Chineese and Australians.

I understand that the pingers are made by Dukane Seacom who are based in Florida.

....trust the BBC..........

Planes, ships and submarines have all been deployed.

China, Australia, Malaysia, the US, the UK New Zealand, Japan and South Korea have all contributed to the search. So how much is it costing, and who pays?

Malaysia has refused to be drawn. Acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein told reporters that the cost of mounting the search was "immaterial" when set against the need to bring solace to the families of the missing.

But mounting a search operation on this scale, and for this length of time, does not come cheap. The bill so far probably runs to £20-25m ($33-42m), estimates Peter Roberts, senior research fellow in sea power and maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

This includes the cost of fuel, spare parts, and transporting supplies, as well as the relocation of staff - even costs such as cancelled leave can push up the final bill.

and so it continues.........

I do think it needs to continue for the reasons stated.  Can you imagine a family member being on the plane and having the governments say "oh well".  We pay taxes for the government to take care of things that are important to society that are not a matter of life and death.  The arts, animal welfare.......they have to continue till this plane is found or there is just zero chance of finding anything

But everything is a trade-off. Would resources be better deployed on humanitarian relief in Somalia? A Somalian having lost their land and home, and now facing the prospect of their family dying from hunger in some desert camp might have a different value judgement than that of a MH370 family member seeking "closure" (whatever that really means).

Yes    I do understand that.  But you can say that about everything.  Money should not be spent on rheumatoid arthritis as people don't die from it and people are dying in Somalia

Yes, of course you can say it about anything. It is always true. It is the principle of opportunity cost. As for the RA example, it may well be worth sacrificing some lives for the betterment of a vast number of people's quality of life. Difficult trade-off but typical of those we make every day. But anyway, I never said don't spend any money on air safety. I just said that we should know when to stop on this particular pointless search.

A major obstacle to rational decision-making is that we typically value life differently according to how close to us it is. People would spend their entire savings and more to save the life of a family member, but would not spend a much smaller amount (or anything at all in many cases) to save the life of a complete stranger on the other side of the world.

We're really just selfish. Improve air safety at "all costs" rather than get some quick, cheap wins in Africa in the fight against disease and malnutrition. We choose air safety because we can imagine us (or someone we relate to) being killed in an aircrash, but the prospect of diseases due to malnutrition and poor hygiene and healthcare killing us seems remote (and actually is remote for us rich westerners - obesity-related disease notwithstanding). So the people with control of the resources  (us) choose a slight chance of a miniscule improvement in the risk of our dying in an air crash whilst many people (without control of resources) needlessly die of malaria. It is really quite sad.

In 2000-2004 people in Sub-Saharan Africa died 32 years earlier than those in North America did. In contrast, if we could magically eliminate ALL air travel fatalities overnight, it would not make the slightest measurable difference to average life expectancy. You decide where the quick wins in improvement of overall human welfare might lie. There is a reason there are no charities operating in air safety.

I'm afraid I don't follow the logic of the "better things to spend the money on" argument. This is always going to be the case. Governments would never spend money on art or sport, or even transport and education for that matter, when the health of others is at risk. And then we'd all become animals again.

At its primordial level, selfishness is a preservation thing. Essential, and not necessarily bad. I'm sure there are human beings for whom we would all willingly lay down our own lives to save theirs. In exceptional cases, they might even be strangers (although people whose company we are in at the time). But this doesn't mean you should stave yourself to death in order to send food to people who don't have enough. There are better ways to try to solve that problem. A nation should not decide whether to buy a painting on the basis of whether or not it can cope without the hospital that the money could build instead, it should decide on the basis of whether it is in the interests of the nation for the painting to be owned by the nation or not.

They should continue to search for the plane, and even if they shouldn't, they will. It's human nature to want to know, and this is a good aspect of human nature.

It's obscene to be sending robots to Mars in the pursuit of knowledge when there are babies in Africa dying of curable diseases. Except - the thirst for knowledge that gives rise to the former is the same thirst for knowledge that made the latter curable in the first place. We need to do both.

Having said all that, this graphic suggests that the chances of finding out are rather slim:

http://apps.washingtonpost.com...oblem/931/?tid=sm_fb