by Ean Higgins
Griffin said the new data could in fact narrow down the ‘highly likely’ zone where the wreckage would be to 8000 square kilometres, or even 4000 square kilometres, essentially on the southern end of the new proposed search area of 25,000 square kilometres.
Not long after that, the ATSB and its CSIRO allies came up with yet another, intriguing new set of clues as to where MH370 might be. From the start of the surface search on 18 March 2014, Australian authorities had gone to other national governments and agencies seeking satellite imagery of possible debris. They had all been checked out and found to be junk of one form or other. But the new evaluation of the drift-modelling showed a likely location of MH370 farther north. With this and the benefit of knowing what MH370 debris looked like from what had been washed up and recovered, the ATSB decided to have another review of the satellite imagery.
Early in 2017 the French Ministry of Defence gave the ATSB four military intelligence satellite images from their Pleiades 1A spy satellite, which had been taken on 23 March 2014 to the north-west of the Seventh Arc, in an area not covered by aircraft during the surface search. The ATSB immediately saw them as significant. The drift-modelling of the debris showed the best new promise to be on the Seventh Arc at around latitude 35 degrees south. The French spy satellite images were captured just where MH370 debris was likely to have drifted to the north-west in the two weeks after MH370 went down – if it had started at 35 degrees south on the Seventh Arc.
The original French analysis in March 2014 had identified four possible objects which may be debris in the satellite images. In 2017, the ATSB asked Geoscience Australia to reanalyse the images and determine whether the objects, or others, were potentially man-made. It was intense, painstaking work, with experts poring over the satellite images at the greatest possible resolution.
In August 2017 Geoscience Australia came up with a report concluding that of at least 70 identifiable objects in the four satellite photos, 12 had been assessed as ‘probably’ man-made and a further 28 ‘possibly’ man-made. The resolution was not good enough to determine conclusively that the objects were aircraft debris – they were, essentially, white blobs. But even to the naked, untrained eye, some of the blobs appeared vaguely rectangular and the sort of thing a busted-up bit of plane might look like as a blob.
The ATSB passed the results of Geoscience Australia’s analysis to CSIRO to perform a drift study to determine with greater precision where the objects identified in the imagery were likely to have been on 8 March 2014, two weeks before the images were taken. Griffin and his colleagues got back to work, and determined that based on the new French military satellite images, the aircraft could be located quite precisely. The report said: ‘We think it is possible to identify a most likely location of the aircraft, with unprecedented precision and certainty. This location is 35.6 [degrees south], 92.8 [degrees east].’
At the time it all looked a bit like an orchestrated campaign by the organisations involved to persuade the three governments that they had discovered the new evidence, pinpointing a final resting place for MH370 which the ministers said they needed to renew the search. Griffin, who said he for one ‘obviously’ wanted the hunt to recommence, explained: ‘I think everyone who has been involved in the search in the ATSB is absolutely determined to bring it to a successful outcome.’
In any event, it worked: the owners of Ocean Infinity were convinced it was worth a shot and they were prepared to take the financial risk of only getting paid if they found MH370 in 90 days, and the Malaysian government accepted the deal.
The agreement was signed amid a bit of fanfare and an invited media pack on 10 January 2018 in the Malaysian administrative capital Putrajaya, with Plunkett and Liow officiating.
Liow, who had described the deal in a rather poetic fashion as ‘no cure, no fee’, spelt it out in more detail. The Malaysian government would pay Ocean Infinity $US20 million if the plane were found within the first 5000 square kilometres of the agreed search zone, $US30 million if it were discovered within 10,000 square kilometres, and $US50 million if it were located within an area of 25,000 square kilometres. Beyond that area, Ocean Infinity would receive $US70 million, Liow said. He also said the clock was ticking: the hunters had 90 operational days to find the aircraft, or they would not get a dime.
‘They cannot take forever or drag it on for another six months or a year,’ he said.
And so, a few days later Seabed Constructor, with half of Ocean Infinity’s total workforce of about 45 employees aboard, along with the ship’s crew from Swire, and two Malaysian naval officers, started the next hunt for MH370.
The strategy had divided the band of the Seventh Arc to be searched into four ‘sites’, each one north of the other, and the ‘sites’ were divided up into ‘areas’. Each week, the Malaysian government issued a bulletin reporting just how much had been searched, along with a multicoloured map.
The hunters made good progress: weather was good, the equipment worked well, and the eight autonomous underwater vehicles did their job. After the first fortnight, the Seabed Constructor had covered 7500 square kilometres – pretty much all of Area 1, Site 1 on the map – and headed to Fremantle for resupply and crew change. The Malaysian government duly reported the state of play in its second bulletin, saying no bits of plane had been found, but displaying some interesting geological formations of what looked like underwater sand dunes.
As the search got underway, a sensational international fight broke out between Australian officials and the families of those lost on MH370. It was a classic case of ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’: then Prime Minister Tony Abbott first mooted it in 2014 – a permanent national memorial to MH370. It got the go-ahead from the Western Australian government in late December 2017, which set the site at Elizabeth Quay in Perth and put out a tender for the project valued at $126,000 – plus GST. The cost of the memorial was to be shared between the federal and state governments.
The tragic mistake was typical of governments: nobody seemed to have asked the people to whom it was aimed if they wanted it. The proposal caused a storm of anguish among the families, particularly in China where the overwhelming majority of the passengers on MH370 were from. They basically regarded the move as an effort by Australian politicians to kill off their loved ones once and for all with a plaque of their names. The association representing the families of the Chinese nationals on the flight issued a media release saying ‘China family members are incensed at being notified of the intent to proceed with an MH370 memorial by the Australian government, contrary to their and Australian family members’ expressed wishes’.
‘We hereby reiterate that we now firmly oppose the establishment of a memorial to MH370 at Elizabeth Pier in Australia.’
The view was that their loved ones were missing, not confirmed dead, and would remain so until – if and when – the aircraft were found. In what also seems to be another common error of government, both the minister and public servants rubbed salt into the wound by saying, effectively, the families would damn well get the memorial whether they liked it or not. A spokeswoman for the new federal transport minister, Barnaby Joyce, said at the time the plan for the memorial would proceed ‘to honour the passengers and crew of the missing aircraft’.
‘The monument will acknowledge those who were on board the aircraft and also recognise Australia’s unique involvement in the search effort,’ the spokeswoman said. ‘Australian-based families have been consulted and will continue to be engaged during the design process.’
It went from bad to worse. The news site Free Malaysia Today reported that Judith Zielke, the senior public servant who, as head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, still held the principal all-of-government role of maintaining contact with the families, wrote to the Chinese families saying the memorial ‘has received widespread support from the Australian families of those on board MH370’.
In fact, I could not
find a single Australian family member who did support the idea, and Zielke did not take up the offer to name any. Danica Weeks launched herself into the fray, all guns blazing. In an email exchange with the Chinese families, she told them not to worry, as ‘she [Ms Zielke] knows my opposition to the memorial, the same as you’.
‘I called her on who she has consulted in Australia as she NEVER asked me about it and she said the other Australian families,’ Danica wrote to the Chinese families. ‘So I contacted them and they too said they had not been consulted! So trust me I don’t know who she spoke to here and who gave the go ahead, definitely no-one in the Australian families I know!’
Teresa Liddle, whose sister Mary Burrows disappeared on MH370, said Zielke ‘never approached me’ about whether she would support a memorial, and said to me, ‘I am totally opposed to it’.
‘I just disagree that they declared them dead,’ Teresa said, saying this was the effect of announcing a plan for a memorial.
Amanda Lawton, whose Brisbane parents Bob and Cathy disappeared on MH370, said, ‘I’ve still not received any info regarding the memorial.’
It was an early battle in a war over the memorial which was to last many months.
MH370 is a mystery, and at the time, elements of the Ocean Infinity search looked mysterious in the public eye. The company did not say much to the media, although I got more access than most. Early on something really cloak-and-dagger happened: the Seabed Constructor ‘went dark’ and disappeared just like the aircraft it was trying to find.
Ships carry an Automatic Identification System transponder, something like aircraft transponders, that lets maritime authorities know where they are. Various website apps can track the ships, and members of the international MH370 club did so with gusto. But, like the transponder on MH370, the ship’s transponder can be turned off, and that’s just what happened with the Seabed Constructor early in the search. The Twitterati watching this went ape, particularly since those tracking Seabed Constructor had observed the ship making a big wide circle before it went dark. The MH370 rumour mill worked overtime – had Ocean Infinity found the aircraft? Then there was an even more sensational rumour: Seabed Constructor was secretly retrieving sunken treasure.
The wooden shipwreck discovered in 2015 during the previous ATSB-led search for MH370 had all but dissolved over the estimated two centuries it had been there (marine archaeologists had determined the type of anchor was not made after about 1820). But Paul Kennedy, the head of Fugro in Australia, had told a conference in Perth in 2016 that a large chest was the only big thing left intact, at about 4000 metres.
‘It’s a big chest, it’s about three metres long, maybe one-and-a-half metres wide. And it’s still closed,’ he said at the time.
Eventually, an Ocean Infinity spokesman said the Seabed Constructor ‘went dark’ just to take a look at what turned out to be the underwater sand dunes.
‘As highlighted in the weekly report, there were a couple of points of interest identified last week. These turned out to be of no significance,’ the spokesman said. ‘Ocean Infinity did not want to give the impression they had found the wreckage.’
Mystery kept dogging Ocean Infinity and the new hunt. The ABC ran an extraordinary story that the Malaysian investigation had, in effect, been the subject of an internal military coup of sorts.
‘A power struggle has emerged in the Malaysian-led investigation into the disappearance of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 over the Indian Ocean four years ago,’ the ABC story went.
‘Four civilian air crash investigators, including the lead authority on analysing black box flight data, have been sidelined over reported budget constraints.’
The ABC quoted the lead aviator, Colonel Lau Ing Hiong, who confirmed his secondment to the search team but said he was just there in case the black boxes were found.
There were other rumours: that the ATSB was somehow mixed up in all this, and that its operatives had been secretly dropped off on the Seabed Constructor when a vessel from Fremantle, the Maersk Mariner, had made a rendezvous with it.
The secrecy with which the ATSB and the JACC continued to carry out their residual roles when it came to MH370 did not help. For weeks, they refused to answer questions from The Australian as to whether or not the ATSB still had an officer on the investigation team. It was one case where the truth could only be wrenched out by senators.
The Australian Senate has a number of committees, and one of the things public servants hate is that they have to periodically appear before public hearings known as Senate Estimates to be grilled by senators on things they won’t tell journalists. In this case, I made some suggestions to cross-bench Senator Rex Patrick from South Australia as to what to ask ATSB boss Greg Hood and JACC head Judith Zielke when they appeared before a senate committee in February. Hood at first tried to distance the bureau from the MH370 affair, saying ‘the ATSB’s formal involvement in the search concluded last year’. But under cross-examination by Patrick, Hood admitted the ATSB did have continued involvement in the investigation into ‘what happened on that flight’.
‘Australia has an accredited representative on that investigation team,’ Hood revealed.
The ATSB had been particularly sensitive on the matter, with its spokesman Paul Sadler referring questions to the JACC, while Zielke did not respond and her spokesman referred inquiries to Malaysian government authorities. It may be that the ATSB, knowing that what was likely to be a controversial final report of the Malaysian investigation into MH370 was coming out within months, was trying to minimise public exposure of ATSB involvement. Zielke, in answers to questions from Patrick, did scotch the wild rumour that Australian officials had been on Seabed Constructor.
A few months later, as Malaysia enjoyed a major resurgence in democratic expression, the JACC and the ATSB went the other way. Zielke had another attempt at shutting me down when I was starting to think about writing this book, or at least an extended feature about the ATSB and the JACC’s restrictive Freedom of Information and media policies. Saying I was considering writing a ‘long form’ piece on this topic, I emailed ATSB spokesman O’Malley to re-check the details he had told me about why he talked American, and spokesman Sadler about some aviation journalism awards for which he had been a runner-up. That prompted Zielke to mount another failed attempt to have me taken off the MH370 story. In a letter to Editor-in-Chief Paul Whittaker, dated 18 April 2018, Zielke wrote ‘we will no longer be responding to inquiries from Mr Higgins’.
‘Should you assign another writer to the story, we will accommodate their request for information.’
The editors ignored this intervention as a further attempt by an unelected public servant to curb freedom of the press and dictate which journalists should cover a story. They instructed me and other reporters on the paper to write more, harder stories about MH370 and the role of the JACC and the ATSB.
The weeks passed, and the weekly Malaysian government updates showed the area searched by the Seabed Constructor moving steadily north, with no hint of MH370. Those who knew the background to the search strategy knew this was not good news: the plan had been based on the CSIRO/ATSB assumptions and the drift-modelling, and that had put the aircraft most likely in the area first searched. When the two arms of the ‘Phase 1’ section had been covered, it eliminated the three most likely spots which Griffin and his team had identified.
Critics of the search strategy started re-emerging in the media, saying the whole Ocean Infinity approach was wrong from the start because it was still based on the ATSB’s insistence that the MH370 was a ghost flight at the end, and crashed down rapidly after running out of fuel while flying on autopilot. Pilots Simon Hardy, Byron Bailey, and a new entrant to the debate, New Zealander Mike Keane – a former RAF fighter pilot and chief pilot of Britain’s largest airline easyJet – started making noises again. They maintained the place to look was just outside the southern
section of the ATSB-led search, allowing for Zaharie having glided (possibly with the engines barely turning over) the aircraft up to 100 nautical miles after fuel exhaustion and ditching it.
In the exclusive interview with Plunkett, I asked the Ocean Infinity chief executive if it were possible Seabed Constructor could be sent to the pilots’ preferred zone if the new search of the ATSB defined area came up blank. Plunkett chose his words carefully.
‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ Plunkett said. ‘We are ultimately providing a service to the government of Malaysia.’
What happened, in fact, is the government with whom Plunkett had struck the original deal got turfed out in the most extraordinary political upheaval in Malaysia since independence from Britain in 1957.
The Prime Minister who had served in that role since 2009, Najib Razak, was a member of Malaysia’s political elite, educated at an English-language private school before earning a degree in economics from the University of Nottingham. His father and uncle had been Prime Minister before him, and when his father died in 1976, Najib was elected to his seat in Parliament.
In the six decades since independence, Malaysia had, overall, been a success story among developing countries, with solid economic growth, steadily rising levels of prosperity and wealth distribution, political stability and, notwithstanding race riots in the 1960s, a fairly harmonious mix of Malays and ethnic Chinese and Indians.
