Opinion

Malaysia should not quit over Flight MH370

August 12, 2018

Even though there were only four French nationals aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 when it disappeared more than four years ago, French aviation authorities want to open a new investigation after the Malaysians shuttered theirs.

While there is yet to be an official announcement of the investigation from the French government, according to a report in Le Parisien newspaper, the Gendarmerie of Air Transport wants to examine data from satellite operator Inmarsat, which tracked the plane before it went missing in March 2014.

On the other hand, even though there were 50 Malaysian passengers aboard, Malaysia’s 400-page final report issued on July 31 closed without being able to explain what happened to its Boeing 777 with 239 aboard.

Four lives from one country versus 50 from another but it is the former that won’t stop searching and investigating until it finds an answer. Are French lives more important than Malaysians? That shouldn’t be the case; however, seeing that Malaysia closed the file on one of aviation’s biggest ever mysteries before it could be solved gives the impression that it does not seem to care as much. That’s not good optics by the new Malaysian government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The government was formed only in May - before the final report came out - and has a host of thorny problems it must address. It needs some time to get itself organized, but after it settles in, it should reopen the investigation and this time, keep looking until the plane is found.

The report did effectively clear the pilots of any deliberate act to bring the plane down. That was one of the more popular conspiracy theories shortly after the plane went down as it flew to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur and supposedly plunged into the southern Indian Ocean. Other theories abounded: Russians stole the plane and few it to Kazakhstan, the plane was used by terrorists for a suicide attack on the Chinese Navy, and the US shot the aircraft down fearing a terror attack on Diego Garcia. These theories have no credibility but one more is a realistic possibility: the aircraft suffered a major power failure that led to undetected depressurization which slowly depleted the plane’s oxygen supply and sent all on board into a coma before it crashed.

The report, though, cannot support or reject the claim because it cannot say definitively what happened to the jet. The investigative report, prepared by a 19-member international team, said the cause of the disappearance cannot be determined until the wreckage and the plane’s black boxes are found. This is the crux of the matter. Not knowing what happened is not only a non-answer, but also a dangerous one. Malaysia’s air crash investigators should never quit until they have the answer. As the owner of the involved airline, Malaysia led the investigation and under the rules of the International Commercial Aviation Organization, it could not conclude the investigation without issuing a report. But the report cannot end with fill in the blanks.

Relatives of the missing passengers have expressed disappointment that no conclusive explanation for the disappearance of their loved ones has yet been offered. They have every right to feel that way and more. The Malaysian aviation industry’s attitude appears to be that this was a freak accident with its own peculiar circumstances that cannot possibly happen again. It is, therefore, not worth spending any more time and money on. But Malaysia has an obligation to discover what happened so that it does not recur, and especially since no other countries are currently probing the flight.

Malaysia’s new government has said it might resume the search if more credible evidence emerges. Actually, it should resume right now. It should learn from the crash to make future flying safer everywhere.


August 12, 2018
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