A Search Ends !

Anytime there is an aircraft crash anywhere in the world it sets off the most intensive investigation to determine the exact cause.  Every day an almost unimaginable number of planes carry people safely to their destinations and yet the entire theory of flight rests on engineering principles that must go exactly to schedule to avoid disaster.

A modern airliner has a multi million dollar price tag because it consists of literally thousands of finely engineered parts and with proper servicing individual aircraft remain in service for decades. The people who fly these aircraft spend hours in an exact flight simulator to learn and test the individual features of the make and model they will be licensed to fly.  Instructors create an entire range of emergencies to test their recovery skills.

In the early days, air travel was noisy and slow.The jet age and then the wide bodied jet saw people moved in mass at heights where the air was smooth and speed over the ground was near the speed of sound.  Seat prices dropped and world holidays became within the financial reach of very ordinary people.

The fear of flying evaporated.  Stepping onto an aircraft became as mundane as stepping onto a commuter bus.   We were actually safer travelling in an airliner than journeying to the airport in our private car.  That was why crash investigators were so diligent in determining why rare aircraft accidents happened - so that lessons could be learned to ensure that cause was never repeated.

In March 2014 two hundred and thirty nine passengers and crew boarded a Malaysian airliner for designated flight MH370 between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.  The first part of the journey was uneventful but as the aircraft was passing between control zones the transponders which made it visible on radar were mysteriously turned off as was its radio communications.  It made several strange course changes and then headed out into the vast expanse of the Indian ocean.   That aircraft was never heard from again.

This mysterious loss set in motion a massive search under the auspices of Malaysia, China and Australia.  Equipment on board relaying engine functions gave a search approximation and over two hundred million dollars was spent searching for the wreckage on the ocean floor - without success. No oil slick or floating wreckage was sighted and many months later parts identified as part of the missing plane washed up on Union island and Mauritius in the northern Indian ocean.

There are many theories to explain this mystery.   It seems certain that the aircraft continued its journey over the Indian ocean for many hours - until it ran out of fuel.   There have been occasions where pilots have committed suicide by deliberately crashing their aircraft.   It is possible a sudden decompression killed all aboard by lack of breathable air.   It is possible that some integral part of the aircraft failed.   It seems that we will never know because the search has been discontinued.

Even if some miracle later leads to discovery of the wreck site it is unlikely that a cause will be determined.  Recovery of the "black boxes " was the first objective, but by now they have experienced both the crash and years of immersion and are likely to yield nothing.

It seems that the designation "MH370 " will become another of the mysteries cloaked by the vastness of this worlds oceans.