Missing jet’s fate determined
Families told plane crashed in Indian Ocean
KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA — It was the unwelcome, anguishing news the families of the missing had dreaded, and when they heard it from Malaysia’s prime minister Monday there were shrieks and intense heartbreak: the missing Malaysia Airlines flight whose fate was a mystery that consumed the world had crashed into a remote corner of the Indian Ocean.
The news, based on fresh evidence gleaned from an unprecedented analysis of satellite data, meant it was all but impossible that any of the 239 passengers and crew on board the jetliner could have survived.
In Beijing, family members who have followed every twist and turn in the search sobbed uncontrollably.
One woman collapsed and fell to her knees, crying “My son! My son!” They had been called to a hotel to hear the announcement. Afterward, they filed out in heart-wrenching grief.
Medical teams arrived with stretchers and one elderly man was carried out on one, his faced covered by a jacket. Minutes later a middle-aged woman was taken out on another, her face ashen and her eyes blank.
In Kuala Lumpur, family members also broke down in sobs.
Selamat Omar, the father of a 29-year-old aviation engineer who was on the flight, said: “We accept the news of the tragedy. It is fate.”
The satellite data was a small step toward solving one of the greatest puzzles in aviation history — the Boeing 777 inexplicably disappeared from Asian skies during what was supposed to be a routine overnight flight March 8 from Malaysia’s capital to Beijing.
With the location of Flight 370 still unknown — most likely at the bottom of the southern Indian Ocean — questions remain about what brought down the aircraft.
The search for the wreckage and the plane’s black boxes could take years. The task, involving a multinational force sweeping a vast region of ocean whose dark floor is up to 7,000 metres deep, has been daunting. It is possible that what is left of the plane may never be found.