View from the Street
When a plane goes missing
As humans, we tend mostly to be rational. We observe and probe, and we ask questions in the hope of getting answers that might add to our accumulated knowledge. When we cannot comprehend what has happened, we try to bridge the knowledge gap by testing theories. We want a satisfying conclusion, a resolution, something that we can understand.And so it has been for the past two agonising weeks as the world awaited news, however slight, of the fate of 239 people aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Sadly, there has been no resolution and no clear answer as to why the plane veered dramatically from its regular route to Beijing and, in the dead of night, disappeared over the dark Indian Ocean. That objects possibly related to the search for the plane have been located in the ocean's southern reaches, about 2500 kilometres west of Perth, may salve the hunger of those wanting to know where the plane's long journey ended. But we are, for now, none the wiser about why.A cluster of debris, including an object measuring about 24 metres and which the Australian Maritime Safety Authority says appears to be just under the surface, may point the way to the remnants of MH370. The search is being conducted south of the zone scanned by Australian search aircraft earlier this week, and it is being aided by aircraft and vessels from the Royal New Zealand Air Force and the United States Navy as well as a merchant vessel in the region.It may be many days before there is conclusive evidence of a precise crash site, but it is vital for the safety of future airline passengers that all efforts are made to discover if the plane was technically deficient, if the crew was somehow incapacitated, or if the aircraft was perhaps deliberately directed to fly until it ran out of fuel.While the aircraft's black-box containing crucial onboard data is unlikely ever to be found, aviation safety experts and regulators have surely learnt a lot from this incident already. From the outset, Malaysian Airlines was lax with security: two passengers bearing stolen passports were cleared to board the plane, and one of the pilots previously has indulged passengers by bringing them into what should be a secure cockpit.The aircraft's disappearance also seriously tested the capabilities of the Malaysian government. It has been found wanting. Why, for example, did Malaysia take so long to confirm - even to the many nations that deployed search aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea - that radar monitored by the Royal Malaysian Air Force had detected MH370 as it passed thewestern coast of the Malay peninsula?For that matter, why was the nation's defence force apparently so blase about the random passage through Malaysian sovereign territory of an unidentified aircraft the size of a jumbo jet? We don't expect defence forces to scramble fighter jets at every airspace intrusion, but it beggars belief that it took a full week for the Malaysian government to confirm that, based on this radar information, it suspected the search efforts were focused on the wrong area. And it took far too long to collate satellite data predicting likely flight paths. The information provided to relatives, and to other countries that assisted with the search effort, has been riddled with confusing and contradictory statements. The lasting impression of the Malaysian government from this episode is one of incompetence.In following the mystery of MH370, each of us has clung to shreds of information and, in our own ways, tried to splice them into a coherent narrative. We all want resolution, a happy ending. There would be few among us who have not hoped, irrationally, that somewhere on a remote airstrip all those people might yet be found safe. Finding debris may be a relief to some, an ending at least, but it will be no comfort to hundreds of bereaved families.
This week Australia is a boy in a hood ...
Hope trumped by reality
Stop the bastardry