BALTIMORE, Maryland April 27, 2014 - Once again last week hopes were raised that some tangible connection to the missing Malaysian Airlines Jet with 239 people on board had been discovered. Debris washed up on shores in Western Australia, and local police were so sure it had come from the missing jet that they cordoned off the beach, took custody of the debris and rushed photographs of it to the Joint Agency task force that was coordinating the search in the Southern Indian Ocean. But it all turned out to be another false lead, another dead end. So irked were Chinese relatives of some of the missing plane's passengers that they briefly "kidnapped" Malaysian Airlines officials who had gone to Beijing to brief them on the search's progress and direction. In many ways all of this is predictable when, in a time when earth-orbiting satellites can identify a human being on the ground, a huge Boeing 777 Jet simply disappears off the face of the earth and the best minds in the world can't find it after nearly two months.
Last week, a thoughtful albeit reactionary column by the man who led Malaysia for some 20 years appeared in some newspapers, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere. The respected Australian Newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, has an extensive description of the piece at http://www.smh.com.au/world/former-malaysian-pm-lays-blame-on-boeing-for-mh370-disappearance-20140427-zr0cz.html#ixzz30625wmRt
In the article, Mahathir Mohamad, who from 1981 to 2003 served as Malaysia's Prime Minister, placed much of the blame for the jet's disappearance on its American Manufacturer, Boeing. At first glance, placing blame on the manufactuerer of such a high-tech, universally praised jet seems ludicrous. But Mohamad's point - that the complete disabling of an airliner with that many people on board should not have been possible in so short a period of time. For the first 42 minutes of the jet's scheduled flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China, nothing appeared out of place or abnormal. Then, suddenly, air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane and, within the next 30 minutes, so too did military radar. Searchers have used so called "handshakes" between the plane's data transmitters and earth-orbiting satellites to track the plane over what appeared to be a seven to eight hour flight south into the remote and uncharted Southern Indian Ocean, where the "handshakes" stopped. Because the stop occurred when technicians on the ground said the jet had to be about out of fuel, searchers have concentrated the international effort to find the plane on this area of the Southern Indian Ocean. Mohamad does not accept the fact that the plane is in the ocean, especially so far from land. He does not accept the fact that it sank to the bottom of the ocean without leaving debris. But most of his ire is saved for Boeing, who he believes is negligent for marketing a plane that could have all methods of tracking it disabled is so short of a time frame.
“Even if the pilot wants to commit suicide, the co-pilot and the cabin crew would not allow him to do so without trying something,” the 88-year-old still-powerful Malaysian leader wrote, first in his personal blog, then in a column picked up by many newspapers south of the Equator. “Can it be that the plane remained intact on crashing and sank with no trace and no one launching the lifeboat doors, as we are told all these aircraft are equipped with?” he asked. “Can one believe this plane quietly floated down into the raging sea and sank conveniently in the deepest part (seven miles deep) of the Indian Ocean?”
According to Mahathir, even if the Malaysian pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, wanted to disable the plane, “The co-pilot would notice and for his own life he would have tried to do something … was he disabled? Were all the crew members and the passengers disabled?”
The answer to all of these questions, Mahathir reasons, is that Boeing produced a plane that, against all common sense, was easily disabled by one person. “The loss of the plane is due to the makers, Boeing. How can Boeing produce a plane that is so easily disabled?” he said. “Either Boeing technology is poor, or it is not fail-safe.”
“I would not like to fly in a Boeing aircraft unless Boeing can explain how all its system can fail or be disabled.” He called on Boeing to demonstrate publicly "possible ways for the communication system to be disabled”.
“Boeing must accept responsibility for building an aircraft that can disappear in mid-air so completely,” he wrote.
Boeing has not responded to Dr Mahathir's comments.
The Sydney Morning Herald and other media outlets have reported that Malaysia plans this week to release a preliminary report into the disappearance. But people familiar with the findings of the report say it will contain nothing new, and will shed little light on what could have happened. Meanwhile, the respected aviation blog, Plane Talking, published in Australia by Crikey and authored by Ben Sandilands, reported today that the focused search of the ocean floor by the unmanned submersible, Bluefin-21, is now 95% complete with the final dive, its 15th, scheduled to begin today. The 13th dive was aborted for reasons connected to the vehicles software, a not unexpected development, Mr. Sandilands said.
When the focused search is complete, it is expected that the sub will begin searching areas deemed the next most likely for the plane to be at. But one of these next most likely sites includes one that the lead ship, the HMS Ocean Shield, identified after picking up a ping from what was believed to be the missing plane's black boxes.
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