Unbelievable. Who would have thought in less than four months we would be in the same press conference room again?
This time however, it was not for the disappearance of flight MH370 but of another Malaysia Airlines aircraft, flight MH17, which was shot down in Eastern Ukraine on Thursday.
I looked around. Everything looked familiar. The room, the seat I would normally sit during MH370 press conferences and the regular old faces. The reporters at this press conference were the same ones who covered MH370, a saga that began on March 8.
The Prime Minister getting ready for the emergency press conference at Sama-Sama Hotel in KLIA early Tuesday morning. - Pic by Tan Su Lin
As the moderator of the press conference, Jagjit Singh from the Information Department went on stage to brief reporters, I looked at the reporter seated next to me and shot her a look.
“This feels like déjà vu,” I said to her and she nodded in agreement. In a way, it was a reunion of sorts. I was glad to see old friends once again in the same room but at the same time saddened by the fact that we were brought together to cover a very sad news.
“I was shocked when I first heard about the news and I didn’t want to believe it. Who would have imagined in less than four months, another incident happened to another MAS flight?” said a fellow reporter.
“The mystery of MH370 is not even solved yet and then now MH17?” another reporter echoed.
If MH370 felt like weeks and months of press conferences on finding out what happened to the plane but for MH17, the circumstances are altogether different.
The plane was shot down and it crashed leaving no survivors.
In the press conference room, reporters were eager for confirmation on the incident.
Reading out a statement, the Prime Minister told reporters that Ukrainian authorities believed the Boeing 777 aircraft, on its way to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam, was shot down by a missile.
He said Malaysia, at that point of time, could not verify what caused the plane to crash but confirmed that it had not made any distress call.
It was also established that the flight route which MH17 took over the “conflict-zone” was declared safe by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
A few hours later at another press conference, Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai fielded a barrage of questions from local and foreign reporters as to why the Malaysia Airlines flight passed over a warzone.
He had to reiterate about a dozen times that MH17 was following "the right route on the right path."
On the second day of press conference, few questions still revolved around the flight path.
“People want to hear what they want to hear," I told my colleague when asked about why reporters kept harping on the same line of questioning.
Perhaps they want to put the blame on the airline or someone for sending the aircraft on a flight path that eventually exposed it to danger and caused the death of 289 passengers and crewsof the fateful MH17.
But one should not stop to question the 5W and 1H - Who shot the plane? What brought the plane down? When will the bodies be brought back? Where exactly is the black box? Why did it happen and how do we move on from here?
Some questions may never be answered. Deja vu indeed!
