An article published in The Australian by Mr Ean Higgins on 12 August 2016 falsely accuses the ATSB of ‘secretly retracting’ information from a Joint Agency Coordination Centre operations update on 27 July.
In recent weeks the ATSB has been very careful to accurately describe the Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group’s analysis of the accident aircraft’s rates of descent at the final satellite handshake (known as the 7th arc). This analysis concludes that the metadata associated with the final two satellite communications from the aircraft to the ground earth station indicates that the aircraft was in a high, and increasing, rate of descent.
All the members of the Search Strategy Working Group have reviewed DST Group’s analysis and no objections to the analysis have been provided.