Families of passengers on the doomed Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are understandably upset with the decision this week to finally call off the search for the plane.
Crews have spent nearly three years combing the Indian Ocean and its deep sea bed without finding the missing Boeing 777. One of the aviation industry’s greatest disasters and mysteries appears as though it will go unsolved.
The most complex and expensive search in aviation history, costing more than $200 million, not only failed to find the plane, but also failed to answer the questions surrounding its disappearance in March 2014.
The governments of Malaysia, Australia and China issued a statement calling off the search. Despite every effort using the best science available, cutting-edge technology, as well as modelling and advice from highly skilled professionals who are the best in their field, unfortunately, the search had not been able to locate the aircraft, the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre in Australia said in a statement.
The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly or without sadness.
The jet carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, to Beijing vanished from civilian radar in the early hours of March 8, 2014, with not so much as a distress call from its pilots.
There were several false starts to the search. Scientists decided the plane had turned south and flown towards one of the remotest places on Earth. They directed the search to a vast swathe of ocean well away from the west of Australia.
Last month, officials investigating the plane’s disappearance took another look at the satellite data and modelling of the ocean currents and decided they may have been searching in the wrong place. They recommended the search move north. However, the three governments paying for the search had already decided it would end unless there was convincing new evidence pinpointing the plane’s location. The new evidence failed to appear.
Families of the missing passengers were subject to a roller-coaster of emotions. Hope turned to despair, only to be replaced by elation when debris washed up on a beach. Most of the debris turned out to be trash, again dashing the hopes of the families.
The flight is still subject to conspiracy theories about whether the plane was hijacked by the pilot or he was affected by a lack of oxygen, or there were fuel problems. Now, it appears there will never be an answer, something unacceptable to the families. Voice 370, a support group for Chinese passengers’ relatives, said extending the search to a patch of seabed recently identified by Australia’s Transport Safety Bureau was an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interests of aviation safety. Commercial planes cannot just be allowed to disappear without a trace. Having already searched 120,000sq km, stopping the search at this stage is nothing short of irresponsible and a shocking lack of faith in the data, tools and recommendations of official experts assembled by the authorities themselves. New Zealand has a similar, but no less upsetting situation, for the families of Pike River mine explosion victims. As with the promise to return victims to their families, politicians promised to return the passengers to their families, a claim which never really held up to scrutiny.
The end of the search for the plane was inevitable, despite the three governments saying they would not give up. Grieving families will be left with many unanswered questions about the disappearance of Flight 370, and the lack of political will to keep funding the search will add to their sorrow. There must come a time when some things have to end, even if the families are left to wonder why the search was suspended. Money appears to be the issue, leaving those waiting with many questions unanswered and without the closure they deserve.
