Malaysia jet prompts perplexing questions
Tom Ballantyne, Al Jazeera: “Whatever the ultimate outcome of the investigation into the bizarre disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with its 239 passengers and crew, the autopsy into the mystery will go down as a landmark period in the history of aviation safety. ... The blame game has yet to begin, but hopefully the outcome will lead to an incredibly safe mode of transport becoming even safer.” Chris Goodfellow, Wired: “The pilot did all the right things. He was confronted by some major event on board that made him make an immediate turn to the closest, safest airport. ... For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire. ... What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed.” Peter Bergen, CNN: “If this were a hijacking for political purposes, the hijacking would have been followed by an act designed to send a political message, such as the planes hijacked on 9/11 that were then flown into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Or there would be a set of demands, as was the case with the Indian Airlines flight that was hijacked to Kandahar, Afghanistan, by militant Kashmiri separatists in December 1999.” Amy Davidson, The New Yorker: “It doesn’t take terrorists shouting slogans to insert politics into an aviation disaster. That scenario hasn’t been ruled out in the case of Flight 370 — nothing has, really. ... The families waiting at the airports are, as always, left to test the mechanisms of transparency, accountability and press freedom in their own countries or someone else’s. They are like desperate dissidents who really don’t care if they get in trouble for shouting out unwelcome questions or calling a powerful man a liar. What more can they lose?” Michael Oakes, The New Republic: “This has never happened before. The airline, the civil aviation authority, the region’s air navigation service providers, and even the aircraft and engine manufacturers themselves appear clueless. Modern planes don’t disappear. ... Working on the information we have, there seem to be no obvious explanations for what could have happened.”