Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17: examining the evidence

Nearly a week after the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was destroyed over Ukraine, questions abound over what exactly happened.

Writer Jelena Damjanovic spoke to professors Tracy Rogers and Doug Perovic about the procedures − and the challenges − of gathering scientific evidence and performing analysis to determine the causes of such tragedies.

Rogers is a forensic anthropologist and director of the forensic science program at the University of Toronto Mississauga who helped identify remains found at the farm of serial killer Robert Picton. Perovic is a professor in the department of materials science & engineering and a renowned expert in forensic engineering who helped investigate the collapse of the stage at a Radiohead concert in Toronto in 2012.

What evidence might the bodies of the passengers provide about the tragedy?
TR: There will be various lines of evidence regarding what happened. The information provided by the bodies of the victims would be most useful if the bodies were actually examined in place at the scene. The distribution of the remains, along with the patterns of injuries they sustained can help investigators sort out the sequence of events.  Knowing the seat number of each victim, and examining injuries in light of the person's position on the plane, could provide some insight into which areas of the plane were most impacted. 

The usefulness of this type of analysis will depend on the overall degree of destruction and degree of decomposition that has taken place.

What evidence, if any, can be gleaned once bodies have been moved by non-professionals after decomposing for days?
TR: That is very difficult to say. It really depends on what they are trying to learn. Mainly they will be concerned with identification of the bodies, but some of the injury patterns might be informative, even information like whether or not the body was burned could be useful.

Now that the bodies have been moved from the scene, the investigators will have to ID the bodies to find out who they are, link that info to their seat placement, then examine the injuries to see if they can provide insight into where or how the plane was hit, etc. 

But the plane itself may prove more useful for this type of analysis.

What methodology and technology would be used to determine the cause of a plane crash?
DP: These are the key steps to any investigations:

• The root cause failure analysis (RCFA) procedures are employed
• All available and relevant background information and data is collected
• All physical evidence available is collected and reassembled as best as possible to reconstruct the aircraft structure
• The origin of the failure event is then determined using a wide range of characterization tools involving spectroscopy, microscopy etc., as needed
• The location of origin is analyzed in detail to determine the initial cause of the event using a cause-and-effect RCFA approach by assessing all possible causes and the resultant effects and then eliminating the possibilities to the most probable cause
• Ultimately a sequence-of-events RCFA analysis is developed in order to determine the history of the event from beginning to end in order to fully assess liability and damages

Who is typically involved in investigating the causes of plane crashes, what bodies or institutions? What about instances when an aircraft crashes over a war zone?
DP: The federal authority of the country where the accident occurred takes the lead. Usually the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), aircraft manufacturer and pilot associations are involved.

A crash over a war zone is clearly a problem for the normal course of events. The physical evidence has to be immediately secured and not disturbed until properly documented by experts to do the types of analyses outlined above. I understand that is not the case in Ukraine.