Tag Archives: Malaysian Airlines

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.

 

 

Uncategorized

MH 370 data might be wrong

The cluster flip — formerly known as the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 — has taken yet another bizarre turn.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/27/world/asia/mh370-is-inmarsat-right-quest-analysis/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

The data that came from a satellite, Inmarsat, might be wrong — meaning that all those ships, planes, submersibles and people might have been looking in the wrong place for a missing Boeing 777 jetliner.

Holy mackerel! Can it get any worse?

Hang on. I’m thinking it might.

At issue is the data released from Inmarsat, which transmitted to searchers the possible whereabouts of MH 370, which disappeared March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to Beijing.

The flight reportedly made a sharp left turn, flew back south over the Indian Ocean and then vanished with 239 passengers and crew aboard. They’re presumed dead. The search area has been modified, re-modified and re-re-modified.

A major piece of aviation hardware has vanished and no one seems able to locate it. I understand the difficulty of finding a place at the bottom of a large ocean, which is where I believe MH 370 ended up. What is harder to understand is why the information flow from the Malaysian government has been so, um, erratic.

I’m no beginning to believe the view of some “experts” — and I use the term with caution — that the discovery of the plane might take many more months, or even years.

No surprise there, given that the supposedly high-tech data taken from supposedly sophisticated satellite equipment might have been bogus.

Meanwhile, many loved ones’ anguish continues.

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

Theories abound over Flight 370 fate

Everyone seems to have a theory about what happened to Malaysian Air Flight 370.

With those theories, the emotions of those most intimately involved — the family members and other loved ones of the 239 people aboard the jetliner — are pulled and pushed in every direction imaginable.

My heart breaks for those who are waiting for some sign, any sign, of the fate of those on board the Boeing 777.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-plane-up-to-speed/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Was the plane hijacked?

Did someone on board sabotage the aircraft?

Did the plane lose cabin pressure and fly on for hours before crashing?

Did the Triple Seven crash into the ocean, into the jungle, the Himalayas … where?

Is it sitting on a remote airfield in the middle of nowhere?

All these theories are being kicked around on various print and broadcast media.

No matter how this story turns out, there will be some serious questions to ask the authorities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Flight 370 originated en route to Beijing, China.

I don’t know, nor will I dare predict, how it will end. It well might be that the plane crashed somewhere and it’s just taking the world an inordinately long time to detect the wreckage. It well might be a cut-and-dried mechanical failure of some sort.

You can rest assured, though, that everyone who proclaims some expertise on airline safety will venture ideas, theories and recommended solutions.

This story is going to remain on our conscience for a very long time after searchers find the airplane — intact or in pieces.

Meantime, let’s pray for strength for the loved ones who must endure this torture.