Tag Archives: Indian Ocean

International news

Two years later, that big ol’ jet is still missing

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This story continues to intrigue me.

A Boeing 777 with 239 people on board vaporized while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian Air Flight 370 disappeared nearly two years ago.

Not a trace of the jet or its human cargo has been found. Nothing.

How in the name of modern, state-of-the-art technology does that happen?

Mystery remains unsolved

Now they’ve found a piece of debris that some folks think might have come from MH 370. They pulled a piece of something off a sand bar in Mozambique, on the other side of the Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have gone down.

Try to put yourself into the hearts of those who’ve been waiting since March 8, 2014 for some closure. They don’t have it. They’re clinging to some minuscule thread of hope that their loved ones are somewhere, anywhere, perhaps alive. They know intellectually that’s not the case, but their hearts keep tugging, keep nagging at them.

The Malaysian government says the passengers and crew are dead. The Australians, who led the search initially, have said the same thing.

Meanwhile, the wildest conspiracy theories imaginable have been kicked around. The plane was hijacked and flown to some remote place; someone shot it down, perhaps by mistake, and are covering it up; my favorite came from a CNN anchor who wondered on the air whether the plane was swallowed by a “black hole.”

Let’s assume the plane crashed into the ocean. An airplane does not hit the water at high speed and remain fully intact. What is truly astonishing is that no trace of a large commercial jetliner has been found. No trace of any of the crash victims has been spotted.

We get these singular pieces of debris, such as what they found in Mozambique.

And the mystery continues.

Can’t the authorities find the damn airplane and give those desperate loved ones the closure they deserve?

 

International news

Search for plane turns up . . . what?

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I don’t know whether to laugh or scream at this news.

An Australian search vessel looking for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has discovered some wreckage at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Is it the plane? Is it any aircraft? Oh, no. It’s now been determined that the debris is from an early 1800s shipwreck.

What about MH 370, which vanished on March 8, 2014 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing? It’s still gone. Not a trace of it has been found anywhere. Satellite technology, state-of-the-art underwater vessels, shipboard sonar and radar all have failed.

A Boeing 777 with more than 200 individuals on board has vaporized.

Truth be told I’m not altogether sure why I’m even commenting on this item.

The direct descendants of those who were lost on the ship are long gone.

As for those who are waiting for word about the missing jetliner . . . well, they’re still in great pain.

 

 

International news

Families getting glimmer of closure … finally

Take it from me: The family members of those 239 people lost and presumed dead aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 have been clinging to the faintest hope imaginable that their loved ones are still alive.

Why? Because no one has found a trace of the huge jet that reportedly crashed more than a year ago.

Until now.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/investigators-scramble-to-analyse-wreckage-for-mh370-link/ar-AAdIeJ2

Investigators are combing through a piece of debris that is now believed to part of the Boeing 777 that vanished March 8, 2014 after it took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

No trace of the plane has been seen since. Now, though, a piece of debris has been found on the other side of the Indian Ocean. It’s believed to be from MH370.

Not quite 35 years ago, my father was fishing in British Columbia with some friends and business associates. They crashed their small boat. Two of the four men aboard survived the crash; the other two died. Searchers found one of the dead men right away. Dad, though, remained missing for eight days.

I speak from experience that every single day we waited for word about Dad’s whereabouts was filled with a glimmer of hope that he actually survived. That’s what your emotions do. They play cruel trick on you. You know in your head that the worst has happened, but you hope in your heart for the best.

Our hopes were dashed when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police informed us of the grim discovery they made several miles downstream in the inland where the crash occurred.

The families of the MH370 passengers and crew well might be living that very nightmare today as they await word on what was found in the Indian Ocean.

I hope — for the sake of those still-grieving loved ones — that they determine this piece of wing came from the doomed aircraft.

International news, Uncategorized

Imagine that … MH 370 search questioned

Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing on March 8, 2014 … and then vanished.

Not into thin air. It wasn’t swallowed by a black hole, as at least one TV commentator theorized.

It likely crashed into the Indian Ocean.

But 16 months later, with no trace of the plane or its 239 passengers and crew, some are questioning the search techniques used to find the Boeing 777 — which, by the way, happens to be a very large commercial aircraft.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/all-at-sea-australias-search-for-mh370-under-scrutiny/ar-BBkjK0L

According to Reuters: “Experts involved in past deep water searches say the search to find MH370 could easily miss the plane as Dutch company Fugro NV, the firm at the forefront of the mission, is using inappropriate technology for some terrain and inexperienced personnel for the highly specialized task of hunting man-made objects.”

Australia has taken the lead in the search effort. The Malaysians have sent out all manner of conflicting messages. Search teams scoured one huge section of ocean, then shifted to another huge section of ocean floor. Where on God’s Earth is that jetliner?

Not a single sign of debris has been spotted. No human remains have been detected. A plane that large hitting the water, presumably at a high rate of speed, breaks apart.

And still no sign of it?

I’m amazed, to be honest, that it took this long for serious questions to come forward about the manner in which the search has dragged on.

 

 

International news

Soon, attention to turn to that other crash

You can rest assured about this: The moment the grief subsides somewhat over the loss of an AsiaAir jetliner in the Java Sea we’re going to turn our attention — once again — to the enduring mystery of Malaysia Air Flight 370.

AsiaAir Flight 8501’s wreckage was spotted almost immediately, as one would expect. The grim task of recovering victims and debris commenced. High-tech equipment will locate the black boxes soon on the sea floor to find evidence of what happened to the plane that crashed less than a week ago.

But … what about Malaysia Air Flight 370?

It disappeared after it took off on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Crews have found nothing. Not a trace of the Boeing 777 has been spotted anywhere. More than 200 souls are now presumed dead. But the families of those aboard have zero closure.

I continue to believe that MH 370 went into the drink somewhere in the vast Indian Ocean. The goofy conspiracy theories do not hold up. The plane wasn’t hijacked and flown to some lost island.

As for the other nutcase scenarios, not one of explains how a plane so large can disappear without a trace. Was it shot down by some government’s air force? No. Debris would be found, on land or in the water. And no government can keep a secret from a hyper-curious public.

The fate of one air disaster contrasting with the unsolved nature of the other, though, does cause one to wonder: What in the world happened to Malaysia Air Flight 370?

International news

Air tragedy reaches a known conclusion

The families of another air tragedy are coming into my mind this morning as I learn that searchers are recovering victims and debris from a jetliner crash in the Java Sea.

AirAsia Flight 8501 went down over the weekend on a two-hour flight from Indonesia to Singapore. Bad weather was the culprit. It was an Airbus 320 and it crashed into the sea with a depth of just 150 feet.

Closure has arrived for the families of those who were lost. There will be no survivors.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/indonesia-says-debris-is-from-airasia-jet-1419922721?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

The other flight? It’s that Malaysian Air Flight 370 that vanished on March 8 somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

Searchers have found nothing, not a single piece of debris, not a single artifact from the Boeing 777 that disappeared from view. That flight was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It turned suddenly in another direction. Then it was gone. Just like that. Gone!

The speculation about where it went, what happened to it has been alternately desperate and insane.

It has produced some of the wildest theories heard since, oh, Amelia Earhart’s disappearance over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.

One tragedy has reached the conclusion everyone expected.

The other one has yet to be resolved. The pain of many anxious families continues.

International news

Search resumes for missing jetlner

It’s so hard to keep up with these compelling news stories that keep getting pushed away from the public eye.

You remember Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, correct?

It’s still missing somewhere in the Indian Ocean with more than 200 people on board. Searchers took four months off to map the floor of the ocean.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/with-huge-search-area-mapped-mh370-hunt-resuming/ar-BB7nH4P

The crazy conspiracy stories have stopped. Malaysian and Australian government officials have more or less stopped issuing press releases. The loved ones of those on board have returned to their homes, although I’d bet real American money they haven’t resumed living “normal” lives.

The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. It’s now believed to have crashed while traveling more or less in the opposite direction of its intended destination. These highly sophisticated airplanes don’t do such things on their own.

The mystery still must be solved. It’s as compelling a problem to the loved ones of those who are missing and presumed dead as it was when it vanished without a trace.

For the rest of the world? We’ve been pulled so many directions since that terrible story broke it’s impossible to keep up, it seems, with where to turn our attention next.

I’m going to join many around the world, though, in hoping the resumption of the search will finally — finally — produce a discovery.

Uncategorized

Malaysians have lost world's trust

Is it me or has the Malaysian government lost the trust of a curious world that wants to know about the fate of that missing jetliner?

I’m beginning to disbelieve almost anything that government is saying about the what it thinks happened to Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 after it took off March 8. It disappeared. It had been headed due north from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Searchers have been looking due south, in the Indian Ocean, off the Australia coast.

Through it all, the Malaysian government has made a mess of the information it is supposed to tell people about what might have happened to the Boeing 777 and the 230 people on board.

http://news.msn.com/world/indian-ocean-undersea-hunt-for-mh370-set-to-be-extended

The search area has been shifted, expanded, shrunk and re-expanded. The families of those missing and presumed dead have been pushed through an emotional sausage grinder. The Malaysian government informed the family members via text message that their loved ones likely are dead. Some members of the transportation ministry have actually said they’re holding out hope they’ll find survivors, giving grieving family members reason to hold onto the faintest of hopes in a hopeless situation.

The search has become the costliest and most extensive aviation disaster operation in world history.

It’s understandable that the search is being done in a treacherous, deep and rarely navigated waters. Everyone should grasp the difficulty in finding wreckage 3 miles below the surface of some rough ocean water.

It’s just that the Malaysian government — which is supposed to have taken responsibility for telling the world all it knows about the tragedy — has seemed to incapable of sending out consistent information about what it knows and when it knew it.

Australian underwater search devices have been deployed. They’ve found nothing so far. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott says his government won’t stop looking until teams find the wreckage and recover those flight recorder devices.

That should provide some tiny measure of comfort for family members waiting to know what happened to their loved ones. They don’t seem to be getting it from the Malaysians.

Uncategorized

Closure, finally, for Flight 370 families

Sixteen days after a Boeing 777 disappeared, the grieving families of the 239 people on board have a semblance of closure.

Finally, it has come.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced today that Flight MH 370 crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, far from any possible landing sites.

http://news.yahoo.com/malaysia-pm-plane-plunged-indian-ocean-140639275–finance.html

The Malaysia Air flight took off March 8 from Kuala Lumpur, reportedly took a sharp turn to the west and then apparently headed south over the ocean. Flight crews and satellites have spotted debris that searchers think belongs to the jetliner.

Still, theories — legitimate and crackpot — are being bandied about regarding what happened to the jetliner. Searchers hope to obtain the vital information contained in the flight data recorder that lies at the bottom of the ocean. Once they collect that recorder, they’ll learn the truth about what happened to MH 370.

But today’s announcement carries a bit of mystery itself. The Malaysian government reportedly sent — get ready for this — text messages to family members informing them their loved ones are lost and presumed dead.

Text messages.

I’m trying to grasp why the government felt the need to inform these grieving individuals about this tragic outcome in such a seemingly heartless fashion. It’s likely they’ll have to explain that one to an inquiring worldwide community.

But the family members and loved ones now know what they’ve feared all along.