The search is over. No less than Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak stated that flight MH 370, which has been missing since March 8, has ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean. After satellite data more or less traced the plane's path and pinpointed the location of debris most likely associated with the Boeing 777, they broke out the sad news. They don't see the possibility of survivors. After more than two weeks of searching, guessing, theorizing as to where the plane could have gone, or gone down, we have an answer.
This may bring some form of closure to most of the relatives of the passengers and crew of MH 370, but definitely not all of them. The blame game and anger have commenced, not unexpected. Families have been waiting, even tormented by various information and theories as to what happened to the aircraft. They have been through a roller coaster of emotions, ending in the sad news. The harder, more daunting task of finding the exact location of the plane, and the retrieval of the cockpit voice and the flight data recorders is underway, although the weather is not making it easy, not to mention the depth of the ocean.
So many questions remain unanswered. It was established early on that the plane changed direction, which could only have been done by the flight crew. It flew on its new heading until it totally disappeared from all radar. Search teams looked like headless chickens not knowing where to go. Until an unprecedented analysis of satellite data never before done for this kind of task managed to trace the plane's final leg of the flight. But then there are even more questions.
What was it doing there, so far away from its intended destination, even from its point of origin? Was it flying blindly? Why did it disappear from radar? It has also been established that the plane descended to twelve thousand feet. This is usually done so the plane need not be pressurized. In other words, this is the altitude where a person can breathe normally. So did the aircraft suffer from some form of decompression? If it did, why no distress calls? If the pilot was able to divert from its flight plan and even descend, surely he must have had time to call in the problem.
It will take months, even years before definitive answers are available to everyone. The disappearance of MH 370 has been the most mysterious incident in aviation history in the past decade or so. So we definitely need answers. We definitely need to know what exactly happened to flight MH 370, and learn from it as we always do. How to prevent it, how to improve aircraft design and safety. Even improve security measures and aircraft location in the event another plane just "disappears" from radar. All these can be improved, once we have the answers.
Lives depend on it.