April 2014- It is good to be reminded—although the reminder is a tragic one—that mystery and the unknown exists in what is arguably humankind’s most technological endeavor: aviation.
As I write today, weeks before you’ll read these words, my heart is with the families of the 239 passengers and crew of a Boeing 777 that has been missing and presumed lost for more than five days.
But my mind is in the sky, flying alone.
Excepting some miracle, if all aboard were killed, the loss of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200, would be the deadliest commercial airline accident since Nov. 12, 2001, when an Airbus flown by American Airlines crashed right after takeoff from Kennedy Airport (KJFK).
By the time you read these words you and I will probably know what happened to the jetliner. But as I follow the story of its disappearance with pilot friends and colleagues what keeps getting talked about is how the 777 has not been found after five days, despite all the world’s technology, sophisticated satellites, military radars and international search and rescue cooperation. My non-pilot friends keep asking me, “How is that possible?”
Because pilots are used to examining accident data to educate ourselves to fly more safely, those conversations have involved what the disappearance means to pilots of General Aviation aircraft, and have naturally also led to speculation about what went wrong. But strangely, in this weird new world of internet communication, it has also created increasingly wild theories.
For instance (and I am paraphrasing the conspiracy theories that abound in the blogosphere): Obama engineered the vanishing to take our minds off his loss of face to Putin; the jet was stolen by the Chinese so they can examine the United States’ advanced aviation technology; Flight MH370 is “cloaked,”—hidden with high-tech electronic warfare weaponry—the type of technology which is precisely the expertise of a company that has 20 employees on board the missing flight. And more folks believe the airliner was “taken” by aliens than I could ever understand.
Asked by a flight instructor friend what I thought happened, I said, “If it wasn’t terrorists or suicide by pilot, it’s a reminder that pilots are really on their own no matter what they fly.”
That’s what I take away from the news coverage, but more on that in a moment. First, in case any of you have not followed the story, here is what was known as this column went to press:
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the early hours of March 7, with 239 passengers and crew on board. No weather problems were reported at the time. The last coordinates automatically transmitted by the jetliner were from level flight at 35,000 feet halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam.
About an hour after takeoff, over the Gulf of Thailand, the jetliner’s transponder stopped signaling and the aircraft turned to the west.
Flight MH370’s route was to have taken it over the Gulf of Thailand across Vietnam and Cambodia heading toward China. But Malaysia’s military radar showed the Boeing 777 turning around over the Gulf of Thailand and flying at least 350 miles off its planned course when it vanished from military radar over the Strait of Malacca almost exactly two hours after takeoff.
Malaysia’s air force chief said the plane was last detected near Pulau Perak, a tiny island in the Strait of Malacca, a busy shipping lane on the western side of Malaysia. But no ship in the area reported seeing anything unusual.
Authorities investigating the disappearance of the plane have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure; pilot error or suicide; sabotage or terrorism. Both the Boeing 777 and Malaysia Airlines have excellent safety records.
As most pilots who have flown any distance know, neither radio nor radar coverage is universal, especially over water. In areas without coverage, airliners usually radio their positions at fixed times, to assure that controllers can keep aircraft separated. Flight MH370’s last transmission was one of those routine radio calls.
In addition to radar, transponders and radio, modern aircraft like the 777 have computer gizmos that send engine performance and other technical data to the airline’s maintenance base. Air France used such signals to help figure out what happened when its Flight 447 disappeared over the equatorial Atlantic.
Except for stories involving the Bermuda Triangle, there is no history of large aircraft just simply vanishing. But search and possible rescue can take time. Small pieces of debris from Air France Flight 447 were spotted in the Atlantic the day after the plane crashed in 2009, but it took five days to find the majority of that wreckage.
Small aircraft may be missing for much longer if they are lost in remote areas. Steve Fossett, who set many aircraft and balloon records, crashed in Nevada in September 2007, but the wreckage and his remains were not found until October 2008.
If Flight MH370 did not go down after it disappeared from radar two hours after takeoff, the Boeing 777 has the range to travel quite a distance before running out of fuel.
If the disappearance was a hijacking, based on the original flight plan and fuel, the search area could eventually become much larger—nearly 3,000 miles in diameter—or stretch as far as India or into China.
The area in question—Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam and China—is not unpopulated. I would think military air-defense radars from several countries would have been tracking the jetliner, however, if it continued past the Malaysian radar that lost track of it.
The missing plane, which according to Boeing has a 200-foot wingspan and is 209 feet long, with a takeoff weight of 545,000 pounds, has a maximum range of 5,240 nm.
One theory about the disappearance is in-flight breakup of such catastrophic power at flight level altitude that very little would remain of the jetliner for searchers to find. Those theorists point to the fact that the FAA has ordered checks on hundreds of U.S.-registered 777s after reports of cracking in the fuselage skin underneath a satellite antenna.
In an AD, it said the checks were needed “to detect and correct cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin, which could lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the airplane.” The AD was approved in February 2014 and was due to take effect on April 9.
The missing Malaysia Airlines jet, registration 9M-MRO, was 12 years old, the airline said. The airline also said the aircraft was serviced on February 23, 2014, with further maintenance scheduled for June 19. It is not know if the scheduled work was for the AD.
Most pilots tend not to give credence to wild tales, but the vanishing of Flight MH370 has enough untoward details to have even the most unimaginative among us scratching our heads.
There have been reports that the Malaysian Airlines pilots of Flight MH370 had a history of hosting young women in their cockpit while in flight. More than one passenger aboard was traveling on a stolen passport. And as I said above, I have even read theories about flying saucers and aliens absconding with the plane and those aboard for heinous experiments.
Complicating matters (and giving rise to rumors), military and civilian aircraft and ships from 10 nations are involved in the search but under United Nations rules if a plane crashes in international waters, the country where the aircraft is registered is in charge of the investigation. That’s Malaysia in this case.
Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, FAA and Boeing have traveled to the area and been talking with Malaysian investigators. But published reports indicate that search has been hampered by a lack of coordination among all the nations and agencies involved.
Orbiting spy satellites from both the United States and China have been re-tasked to search the area, and U.S. Navy ships there are using radars that could locate debris the size of a football. Yet other than an early report of an oil slick that didn’t pan out, and another unconfirmed report of a yellow life raft, nothing of the Flight MH370 has been located.
Thinking about this as it relates to me as a pilot makes me realize once again that one of the things I have always loved about flying is the sense of self-confidence and self-reliance it fosters in me.
With my hands on the controls, my life is literally in my own hands. The mysterious vanishing of Flight MH370 should remind pilots that we are eventually all on our own. That voice in our headphones can be a comfort, and there is technology that we have come to take for granted—from radio and air traffic control, to iPad apps and flight planning software, to GPS in our wristwatches and affordable personal emergency locator beacons. But electronics fail, technology can be offline, and governmental agencies can lose track of us.
I think that reminding ourselves of these facts is an important thing—a humbling reminder that at bottom, we are on our own with only our knowledge and training to keep us company in the sky.
David Hipschman is a private pilot, a U.S. Coast Guard licensed captain, a lapsed newspaper editor and retired police detective. He has taught journalism at the University of Florida, once served as the Director of Publications at EAA, and is the editor of the National Association of Flight Instructors’ publications. He lives in Fort Myers, Fla. in order to be near his sailboat, which is named Piper. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
