Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur’s
International Airport shortly after midnight on March 8 carrying 227
passengers and 12 crew members.
It disappeared about 50 minutes later.
Beyond that, there’s little investigators know about the flight, what
caused its disappearance or even where the plane may have ended up.
Experts say the mystery surrounding Flight MH370 shows the limits of
modern aviation technology — and perhaps even more, it highlights the
public’s unrealistic expectations about what can immediately be known
about airplane incidents in an age when most information is just a few
clicks away.
First, what officials do know: The Malaysian Airlines Boeing
777-220ER left the airport with no signs of distress and stopped
transmitting data somewhere over the South China Sea, possibly south of
Vietnam’s Ca Mau peninsula. The flight was reportedly at a cruising
altitude of 35,000 feet, and the weather was clear. No abnormal calls
were made by the first captain, who had 18,000 hours of flying
experience under his belt.
Mostly everything else remains unclear. As Malaysia’s civil aviation
chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said after the crash, “There are many
theories that have been said in the media. Many experts around the world
have contributed their expertise and knowledge about what could happen,
what happened ... We are puzzled as well.”
But some say aviation disasters don’t have to be so mysterious.
Flight data are stored in black boxes (they’re most often actually
orange), which go down with the plane in the event of a crash — one of
the main problems with relying on the technology.
Calls for a change to industry reliance on black boxes became
especially strong after an Air France flight between Paris and Brazil
crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009. It
took investigators two years to find the data recorder.
Several institutions, including the U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration, have spent millions of dollars to develop technology to
supplement or replace black boxes. Some have called for a satellite
system that would relay information in real time from planes to the
ground.
But many experts say these systems would be impractical or simply not
worth the cost. They point out that in disaster investigations, the Air
France flight was the exception, not the rule.
“If you look at the history of accidents — even in very difficult
cases, the flight data recorder was ultimately recovered — so the case
for safety isn’t really there,” said R. John Hansman, a professor of
aeronautics and astronautics at MIT.
A
study by L-3 Aviation Recorders found that
a major U.S. airline would have to spend $300 million a year for
real-time recording. Many say its advantages aren't worth that cost,
considering how rare airline accidents are.
“Everything is a cost-benefit analysis,” said George Bibel, a
professor of physical engineering at the University of North Dakota. “But so far, investigators have never failed to find a black box.”
Krishna Kavi, director of the
Net-Centric Software and Systems Center
at the University of North Texas believes that with the right
government initiative, satellite information systems would eventually
become affordable and practical for use on airlines.
"Until FAA and sister agencies in other countries mandate steaming of
data, commercial airlines will not implement them," he wrote in an
email to Al Jazeera. "Remember how opposed automotive industry was to
air bags and even seat belts?"
But Bibel, Hansman and others believe the public’s thirst for data
immediately after crashes and disappearances and the dozens of theories
that spring up around those incidents say more about human nature than
about aviation safety.
“In every instance like this, for the few days when you don’t have
data, people come up and say, ‘We should have real-time data
downstreaming,’” Hansman said. “The only advantage is you’d find the
data maybe a few days earlier. Is that worth hundreds of millions of
dollars?”
The mysterious circumstances surrounding Flight MH370 make it easy
for the public to jump to conclusions. In the two days since the
disappearance, people have posed theories ranging from pilot error to
mechanical failure to hijacking to terrorist attack. But experts warn
that the best thing to do in situations like this, no matter how hard it
might be, is just to wait until concrete data emerge before drawing
conclusions.
“Until then, it’s just a bunch of talking heads, and I’m one of them,” Bibel said. “It’s pure speculation.”
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/10/why-do-we-know-solittleaboutmalaysiaairlinesflightmh370.html
