The world may soon have to reconcile itself to the greatest modern aviation mystery — that of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 — never being solved with the kind of certainty we are accustomed to in this day and age. Even assuming the debris spotted on Saturday by a Chinese satellite in one of the planet’s most desolate places in the southern Indian Ocean belong to the Boeing 777, there is no guarantee sufficient pieces of the wreckage will be found in years to come in order to piece together what is likely to be the most extraordinary riddle of the 21st century. Two weeks of 25 countries scouring ocean and land following every tip or rumour from satellites and aviation experts have brought forth nought. The cooperation that the tragedy of MH370 has elicited among nations as adversarial as the United States and China and as diverse as Pakistan and Australia is the only positive one yet. But the grieving relatives of missing passengers can derive no solace from the goings on. The truth is we are technologically hamstrung by various factors regarding modern aviation. The theory most believed in was that the plane had been hijacked to aTaliban area in Afghanistan-Pakistan where the governments’ writs do not run. Suspicion will always remain against the pilots,and the flight engineer on board, as there is no logical explanation to why the jetliner veered off course with a sharp turn and who was behind the revised route programming. An alarming fact that inadvertently slipped out from a senior officer during the course of international chatter was that the Indian Air Force operates its radar on a“need to” basis,which means 24x7 operations for surveillance and security are not on because of the costs involved. What that means to our defence preparedness can well be imagined. Another fact emerged against civil aviation economics as airlines are prepared to use satellite time to provide wi-fi to passengers but not install jet-tracking programmes. The loopholes to cover, as revealed while grappling with the mystery of the plane that went missing on March 8, are many. If loose conspiracy theories about sinister hijackers are to be disproved, the world must know what really happened. It is hard to believe such an aircraft would be commandeered for a 9/11 repeat when millions of aeroplanes are parked around the world without too much security. It is the suspense of not knowing that will haunt humanity, but we must be prepared for a very longhaul as strong oceancurrents in very deep seas and the Roaring Forties (strong westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere) may preclude an accurate reconstruction of whatever happened to Flight MH370.---Deccanchronicles
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 08:11:17 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015