The Malaysian Insider March 25, 2014
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced last night that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was lost at a remote location in the middle of the Indian Ocean, possibly ending weeks of speculations as to the plane’s final stop.
That did not, however, answer several key questions which have been lurking ever since the Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, sparking what aviation experts call the most mysterious plane tragedy in history.
Britain’s Daily Mirror looks at five questions still begging for answers.
1. No confirmed debris, so did plane really crash?
Investigators know where a plane crashed, even before finding debris. A single piece of wreckage is enough to determine whether the plane exploded or crashed. The key answer lies in the black box, which may take years to discover.
2. Where’s the black box?
This usually orange piece of equipment is about a foot long and can survive virtually any impact. Search teams are using a beacon locator to detect signals from the black box, which can last about two weeks more from now. Finding the black box is no easy task: Air France flight 447’s black box was found two years after the first wreckage was found in 2009.
3. Why did nobody call from the plane?
Passengers would have tried to make calls or send texts to loved ones, had they known there was an emergency. But at 10,000ft, and at a plane’s speed, nobody on board would get a phone signal.
4. Why no one noticed plane diversion?
At the centre of the mystery is the fact that radars did not detect this flying jet. This is perhaps why the conclusion was made that the plane could have flown to the southern Indian Ocean, where no radars are available. If it flew to the north, it was unlikely that it could pass by many heavily guarded countries without being detected. The question remains, however, on the failure to detect the plane near Malaysian air space.
5. Pilots, fire, or someone else?
Another belief is that the plane’s path was deliberately changed by someone onboard, first to fly west back towards Malaysia and then northwest. Did Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot Fariq Abd Hamid have anything to do with this? Such a speculation is fuelled by the fact that all communications had been turned of. Was it someone else? Or was it caused by some mechanical failure due to fire? – March 25, 2014.