Written by:
Tanay Singhvi, Year 12
Perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in aerial
travel since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart is the incomplete tale of
Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.
Setting off from the Kuala Lumpur International
Airport on the 8th of March 2014,
the Boeing 777 has vanished with no trace. The flight was carrying a crew of 12
and 227 passengers. All have gone missing since the plane broke communications
mid-flight to their destination, the Beijing Capital International Airport. The
last transmission came only hours after the flight took off.
A report was made on the 9th of April detailing the problems with communication
between the flight and the Malaysian air travel controllers; however, this
report was only made public on the 1st of May, nearly a month after the flight went missing.
The report brought little to light in regards to
the situation. According to sources, the report by the air controllers did not
add much information to the search. Relevant authorities already knew the
majority of information, with the other countries helped with the search.
However, it did bring some accusations of incompetence and clear disregard of
the potential situation while in its early stages.
The flight controllers had lost communication, and
then tried reaching the plane for four hours, paying no heed to the apparent
signs of the emergency. They did not contact any of the relevant authorities
during the interim after they lost the plane and before they declared it an
emergency.
There have also been some international issues. The
flight, despite being a carrier for the Malaysian Airlines, was transferring
mostly passengers of Chinese nationality. There has been speculation that this
would tarnish the long-standing positive relationship between the two nations.
Dr Huikang, the Chinese ambassador to Malaysia, has disabused this notion and
put down any fears of reprisal, in any form, from China.
At this stage in the search, the United States of America,
China, and Australia are the major contributors of aid. They have traced the
pings (a communication signal from one computer to another) from the black box
of MH370 to a few square kilometres in the Indian Ocean. However, since May 14th, when the search began for the source of these
pings, until today, no breakthrough has been met.
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