Failure to find Flight 370 likely to gnaw at industry
Three-year search yields few answers
As governments sail away from the nearly three-year search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the failure to find the wreckage and explain what went wrong for the 239 people aboard could haunt an industry that has reached lofty levels of safety.
The Boeing 777 disappeared without a distress call March 8, 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Based on clues from the jet’s electronics, the governments of Malaysia, China and Australia spent $160 million scouring a section of the Indian Ocean floor the size of Pennsylvania.
The suspension Tuesday of the underwater search leaves fundamental questions unanswered: What went wrong? Was there a mechanical problem? Did somebody aboard the jet make a mistake — or crash it intentionally?
The search’s end comes two months after investigators took another detailed look at the clues that dictated where they looked, and a month after they found that another area of ocean floor the size of Vermont might be more promising.
“They’re going to be haunted by what might or might not be in that zone,” said David Gallo, who helped find Air France Flight 447 at the bottom of the Atlantic in 2011 and who is senior adviser for strategic initiatives at the LamontDoherty Earth Observatory. “This should really drive them crazy.”
Investigators said the jet’s wreckage — and potentially the data and voice recorders — could explain what problems happened, so they could be avoided in the future. The Boeing 777 is a workhorse of the long-haul fleet; there are 1,200 flying worldwide.
“We really do need to find the wreckage to ensure that there’s no problem with the aircraft,” said Al Diehl, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Boeing spokesman Doug Alder said the manufacturer has been fully dedicated to the Malaysia search and investigation.
“We accept the conclusion of government authorities leading the investigation and search that, in the absence of credible new information that leads to identification of a specific location of the aircraft, there will be no further expansion of the search area,” Alder said.
The disappearance came at a time of dramatic improvements in safety. The number of fatalities aboard passenger airliners worldwide from 1959 throgh 2015 totaled 29,165, according to a Boeing study. But the total for the last decade was 3,133, according to the study. The last fatal crash of a U.S. passenger airline was in February 2009.