Thursday 20 March 2014

160 Years of Missing Aircrafts


#pray4MH370

Sadness, grief, and a burdening sense of missing someone you dearly love. That's how I imagine what the families and friends of the ill-fated Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Being a Malaysian, its the first time we had an incident this big involving our national carrier. And being in my 30s, its the first time I witnessed such a disaster albeit only on the media, however I can really feel how the whole nation is crying.

For the uninitiated, at 0122 8th March 2013 local time, Malaysia Airlines FlightMH370, a code share with China Southern Airlines lost contact with air control towers in Malaysia and Vietnam. After signing off with the Malaysian air traffic control, the flight was supposed to report their status with Vietnam air traffic control but never did. A few hours later, the Malaysian authorities made public the incident and droves of speculations poured in ever since. At this moment of writing, which is 13 days later, MH370 is still missing and it was reported that the Australian maritime found via-satellite what could be debris from the aircraft but are still unsure.

graphic credit to The Daily News

I do not want to delve into speculation, but there are quite some puzzling details that has turned this event into an international mystery. The fact that there are signs that the ACARS and transponder were deliberately turned off, how the flight immediately changed its direction westward across the Thai-Malaysian border undetected (well it was but the military didn't know what to make of it, both Malaysia and Thailand), and somehow the plane purposefully followed a route that made radar detection difficult and then off to either the Indian ocean or somewhere in Kazakhstan; Has definitely cranked up the rumour-mill and open the floodgates of endless debates and conspiracy theories  that only increase the anguish of the families of the victims. All I want to say is that I pray that whatever fate has befallen MH370, the answer would come soon and give closure to those affected, deep in my heart, I want this to be over soon.


Please feel free to check the Viz below, detailing aerial disappearances across different modes of air travel for the last 160 years. The bar chart represents the total number of victims, click each bar to isolate the map to each time period, drill down the period to see individual years. Click the bar charts to isolate the map to a particular period of time, hover on the aircraft icons to get more details.

MH370, please come home soon.

update on 25/3/2014: on 24/3/2014, the Malaysian Prime Minister announced that MH370 ended its flight in the Indian Ocean somewhere west of Perth. This is based on data crunching done by AAIB via inmarsat. However, no physical evidence yet available till now.


source: wikipedia
http://www.venturess.com
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