MH370: Lessons learnt from missing aircraft

We have heard the stories highlighted by the media, we have witnessed how our leaders are handling this international crisis, and we have to some degree learnt a lot about the aviation industry.

While the search continues for the missing airliner, the search has revealed some surprising facts of the world to us:

"Planes can disappear"

It’s quite a thought to digest —how can a 63.7 meter Boeing 777-200 with a wing span of 60.9 meters suddenly disappear?

With a reported search area of more than approximately 7.68 million sq km (approximately the size of Australia) and 26 countries involved in the search and rescue (SAR) mission, coupled with the slow release of military information, has created a diplomatic nightmare.

As the clock keeps ticking and the search continues, the likelihood of finding the plane and its survivors is slowly dwindling.

As Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein aptly said: “This is going to be a long haul, we have to trench down on this.”

16 days into the search, searchers have only 14 more days to locate the missing blackbox which must be within a 25km range to find it before it stops transmitting a signal.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on March 20 announced of a ‘new and credible’ information based on the satellite imagery of a 24 meter object that could possibly belong to MH370, in the southern Indian Ocean.

Colorado, US-based DigitalGlobe's Worldview-2 satellite that took images of ‘objects’ 2,500km southwest of Perth, Australia, has ignited a thorough search of the area.

The Chinese satellites on Saturday later detected a new sighting measuring 22 meters long and 13 meters wide off the Southern corridor.

"Gathering of assets"

It’s amazing how a missing plane has brought together all the military know-how and assets from around the world, in particular China.

The search for MH370 has revealed that global superpower have deployed 21 of its satellites to try and find the aircraft.

China might even have the largest number of satellites in the world after the United States which has approximately 50 percent of the 1071 operational satellites in orbit around the earth.

With the combination of Malaysia’s five MEASAT satellites and Australia’s eight satellites in space, the search continues for the missing aircraft

"Faking passports has never been easier"

Two passengers were discovered to have boarded the MH370 using stolen Austrian and Italian passports

As of March 2014, INTERPOL said that more than 40 million travel documents (passports, visas, identity documents) were reported lost or stolen by 167 countries.

However, INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble said that 40% of passports around the world are not checked against the INTERPOL database.

“This is a situation we had hoped never to see. For years INTERPOL has asked why countries should wait for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates.

“If Malaysia Airlines and all airlines worldwide were able to check the passport details of prospective passengers against INTERPOL’s database, then we would not have to speculate whether stolen passports were used by terrorists to board MH 370,” said the INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble, in a statement.

The question is, are the stolen passports related to the plane’s disappearance? We can only answer this question once the aircrafts black box is found.

"Finding a plane that doesn’t want to be found"

We live in a world where technology can track a person’s whereabouts, what they like, what they eat, and what they buy. It is mind boggling to think that we can’t find a plane!

But in this particular case we know that the flight’s electronic transmitters were disabled and this ceases its communications with the rest of the world.

It definitely makes it difficult to find a flight that does not want to be found.

With radar and satellite technology, aircrafts and ships deployed to the area in the southern Indian Ocean authorities may still need to rely on the human eye to locate the plane.

"Managing a crisis"

Arguably, trying to manage all information from over 20 countries including top secret military information is definitely difficult.

Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman says it is a tremendous effort, but the advantage is that Malaysia has cordial ties with all the countries involved.

With these ties it was no obstacle for cooperation to be gained, as stated by the Prime Minister's office.

Former army field commander Lt Jen (Rtd) Datuk Seri Zaini Mohd Said pointed out that the first three or four days of any crisis “are always spent trying to get a grip on things. If this had happened to any other country, about 80% of them would have had the same problems that we are having.”

Taking the Air France crash in 2009- where an Airbus 330-300 disappeared mid-ocean as an example - it took authorities around six hours to concede its loss - and another several agonizing days, of tracing a plane which has disappeared. It also took them 2 years to find the black box which unlocked the mystery of their disappearing flight.

The missing MH370- like Air France- is an unprecedented airline crisis that the world has never seen before.

Now that the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is handling the SAR in the southern Indian Ocean, we have complete transparency on the SAR operations as provided by on their website.

"Conspiracy theories"

It is only human nature to want to find an explanation for something seemingly unexplainable like the missing MH370 plane.

Due to lack of information, many have come up with theories ranging from the plausible hijack theory to the downright crazy such as aliens.

Here are some of the more extreme theories:

The claim is that the phone can be used to wireless hack into the plane’s system and "change the plane’s speed, altitude and direction by sending radio signals to its flight management system. It could then be landed or made to crash by remote control."

This is one of the more plausible explanations as MH370 is one of the first iterations of a ‘smart plane’ a fly-by-wire aircraft controlled by electronic signals.

We have heard reports that MH370 had 20 employees from Texas based technology firm Freescale Semiconductor and the plane was used to test “cloaking technology”.

This caused the plane to disappear from radar and be almost impossible to spot with the naked eye.

Two theories stem from this ‘explanation’: The Chinese got wind of the technology and diverted the plane to get their hands on it, or the US realised the Chinese might get hold of the technology and shot the plane down.

Another possible theory was hijacked and the plane was landed in a remote airport, hidden from the eyes of the world, awaiting use in a future terrorist attack.

It is hard to rule out anything. No governments are necessarily open to sharing all their information, especially when it comes to their military radar capabilities.

All will be revealed when the blackbox is found.

This is definitely an interesting one. What if a black hole caused the disappearance of missing MH370? Prior to the discovery of ‘objects’ in the Indian Ocean, as highlighted by CNN anchor, Don Lemon asked his guests if a black hole possibly sucked the plane in and is now in another dimension.

"A small black hole would suck in our entire universe, so we know it’s not that," responded Mary Schiavo, a former Inspector General for the US Department of Transportation.

Mysterious disappearance? No logical explanation? Must be aliens!

Some people have been going as far as to say that a UFO was spotted on radar prior to the plane’s disappearance.

Alexandra Bruce, of Forbidden Knowledge TV, used flight mapping website Flightradar as an example of extra-terrestrial involvement in the disappearance of MH370.

Citing a video by “citizen reporter” Youtube user DAHBOO7, Bruce claims radar readings in the clip “captured signals from what for now, can only be termed a UFO.