Tag Archives: MH 370

International news

Meanwhile, that jetliner is still missing

Tragedy takes many forms, so many of them in fact that it seems easy to forget one tragedy when another one shakes us to our core.

Just as it is said that “Francisco Franco is still dead,” the Boeing 777 jetliner that disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is still missing.

The Malaysian Air jet took off and then vanished. No trace of the jet with its 239 people on board has been found. It occurred on March 8, 2014. That’s damn near four years ago!

I remain baffled in the extreme that a monstrous aircraft can just vanish as this one did. I also remain convinced it’s at the bottom of some large body of water, likely the Indian Ocean.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/03/no-conspiracy-theories-please/

I’ve never bought into the conspiracy theories that sprung up as the search began growing in futility.

As we seek to send our love and sympathy to all the loved ones of the victims who died in Parkland, or in Sutherland Springs, Texas, or Orlando, or Las Vegas, let us also offer some prayers to those who still do not know with absolute certainty the fate of those aboard MH 370.

This mystery still needs to be solved.

International news

MH 370 search ends; now, wait for the gossip

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They will come, believe me. Just wait for the rumors to spring anew.

Australian, Malaysian and Chinese officials have called off the search for a Boeing 777 jetliner that disappeared in March 2014. The best technology in the world — including what was provided by the United States — has been unable to find the missing Malaysian Air Flight 370 that took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

Then, in a flash, it went poof! Gone. With barely a trace. They’ve pulled bits and pieces of the plane from the ocean and identified them as likely belonging to the missing 777.

Meanwhile, the family members and loved ones of more than 200 passengers and crew members are left to wonder — perhaps for the rest of their lives — about whether the souls lost on that plane might still be alive, somewhere.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/after-3-years-mh370-search-ends-with-no-plane-few-answers/ar-AAlVSf3?li=BBnb7Kz

As someone with a bit of knowledge about these things, I can tell you that absent the recovery of human remains or spotting the wreckage of the huge jet somewhere in the Indian Ocean, the grieving survivors are going to cling to the thinnest reed possible about those who vanished with the aircraft.

My father was involved in a boat crash in September 1980. The Canadian police didn’t find him for eight days. The period between learning of the accident and the recovery of his remains were eight of the longest days of my life. Your head tells you there’s no hope; your heart, though, pleads for a different outcome. That’s what my head and heart did for that period of time.

I guarantee you that the loved ones who have waited for some confirmation of the fate of those on board MH 370 have endured the same kind of agony.

What’s more, they now will have to endure the crackpot theories from those with too much time on their hands about what happened to that jetliner. We’ve heard our share of those nutty notions already. Be assured there will be many more of them to come for the entire time the plane’s fate remains a mystery.

My heart breaks for those loved ones today.

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

MH 370: Still missing one year later

Conspiracy theories usually are the province of those with too much time on their hands.

Idle minds concoct notions that defy description, let alone credulity.

That all said, the mystery behind Malaysia Air 370’s disappearance from Planet Earth one year ago is sorely testing my skepticism of conspiracy theories.

I’m still skeptical of anything other than the obvious result, but man, it’s been tough to resist the notion that something truly strange happened to MH 370.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/03/07/asia/mh370-theories/index.html

My belief remains that the plane crashed into the drink somewhere in the Indian Ocean. No one seems to know whether it was a hard crash or a “soft” one, if that’s possible.

A hard crash would have produced debris as the plane broke apart. It was a Boeing 777, one of the airline industry’s bigger birds. It carried 239 passengers and crew members. There’s been zero sign of debris or human remains spotted, despite all the efforts of several nations’ best efforts, not to mention some of the most sophisticated search technology in use today.

A “soft” crash is another matter. Was the flight deck crew able to land the plane on top of the water, only to have the plane sink over time? If that’s the case, why was there no communication with anyone about what was happening?

The victims of this crash, beyond those on board, are the loved ones who are awaiting discovery of what actually happened to MH 370. There’s been a boatload of misinformation coming from the Malaysian government; the plane, remember, took off March 8, 2014 from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing. It fell on the Malaysians to tell the world what happened to the aircraft.

A year later, nothing is known.

I shudder to think that this mystery will remain unsolved until the end of time.

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

Now it's an AirAsia plane that's disappeared

What in the name of “safe” air travel is happening in Southeast Asian air space?

An AirAsia Airbus 320 has disappeared. Remember the Malaysian Air 370 tragedy this past March? And the Malaysian Air 17 plane that was shot down over Ukraine?

Now another Malaysia-based airliner is having to console family members until they can account for the whereabouts of an AirAsia Flight 8512 carrying 162 passengers and crew.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/search-resumes-for-missing-airasia-passenger-jet/ar-BBhhsK0

It’s impossible to understand any of this.

The Airbus was flying through apparently some horrific weather conditions en route from Indonesia to Singapore. It had been in the air about 42 minutes when it vanished. Pfftt! Just like that. Gone.

There was no pre-disappearance communication from the flight deck. Nothing was said. Ground crews had the plane on their radar screens. Then it was gone. Off the grid.

My heart breaks for those awaiting word on the whereabouts of the plane. It’s impossible to believe anything good can come from this — other than some closure for those who need to know the fate of this airplane.

 

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

Tired of the Ferguson story

Let’s discuss this one a little.

OK, I’ll start. I am tired of the Ferguson, Mo., story. Does anyone else out there share that thought?

We know many of the facts already. A young African-American man, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb. Residents protested. The protests got violent. The Ferguson police responded with a very heavy hand. The state police took over. The governor declared a curfew and called out the National Guard to keep the peace.

The cable news networks have been all over this story. They’re covering it like a blanket. 24/7, or so it seems.

I’m weary of it.

The Ferguson story, I think, gets to the heart of what sometimes ails TV journalism. Reporters get fixated on stories and then beat them into the ground.

I grew tired of the Trayvon Martin story, which had a similar context. I grew sick and tired of the Natalie Holloway story — remember her? She was the Alabama teenager who disappeared in Aruba. The networks were all over that one for seemingly forever. I got sick of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner disappearance story. CNN was the worst, reporting “breaking news” when none existed. One news anchor asked someone if it was possible if the plane flew into a black hole; he was then reminded by the guest that a black hole would swallow the entire solar system.

What am I missing in this Ferguson story?

It’s not that that my heart isn’t broken over the death of the teenager. Or that the police made a mess of their response to the protests. Or that the state police captain who’s taken charge of things hasn’t acted with nobility and courage. I get all of that. I’d like answers to questions surrounding the militarization of the police department and whether minorities are being targeted unfairly by police. How about the Ferguson political structure? It needs to change. A majority black community needs more African-Americans in positions of authority.

I just cannot watch it at length any longer. I’ve grown tired of the media saturation, just as I tired of one cable network’s obsession with the Benghazi tragedy in Libya and its coverage of the IRS non-scandal.

Is there something wrong with me?

I’m all ears.