On The Face of the Earth or Below the Sea

"It's about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it.
"We owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on Flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Papua New Guinea

Captain Allison Norris scans the ocean from the bridge of HMAS Success in search of missing flight MH370. Photograph: Abis Julianne Cropley/AFP/Getty Images

If anything can be said of the disappearance from the air and telephonic and radar contact with Malaysian air traffic by Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, it is that the mysterious events leading up to its vanishing act has captured a rapt audience worldwide. While at the same time leaving the families of the primarily two-thirds-Chinese passengers on the flight in deep, anxious mourning for the plight of their loved ones. Demanding answers, and receiving puzzled shrugs in return.

The Government of Malaysia has been accused of failing to share intelligence it has gathered, both on its own and through the helpful auspices of the various nations involved in assisting it with satellite images, surveillance aircraft and the most up-to-date methods that can be shared to help find the mystery of what happened to a normal routine flight that took off two weeks ago and failed to arrive at its destination.

There is no end of questions, and a singular lack of answers. None of the sightings of floating objects in the immense expanse of ocean has yet given any clues of what might have occurred to the ill-fated flight. Theories abound, many of them emanating from the experienced minds of those acclaimed for their knowledge of flight trajectories, airplane structure and dynamics, and the unexpected potential for accidents to occur.

Needless to say, the spectre of fear associated with malevolent actions by those who might deliberately attempt to destroy an airliner full of innocent people to make an impression on the international psyche in defence of their extreme, malign ideology of religious-based insanity is always going to crop up as a possible cause. Nothing has as yet been ruled out as a possible cause of the plane's disappearance, and nothing as yet has cropped up to lead to any conclusion.

 

One of two Japanese Government P-3 aircraft arrives at RAAF base Pearce March 23, 2014 in Bullsbrook

Surveillance planes have scoured several oceanic regions, returning with not one iota of information that might be helpful to the cause of discovery. Chinese and Japanese technologically advanced aircraft and search equipment have been added to the Australian planes searching thousands of kilometres southwest of Perth. A flotilla of Chinese ships is under sail to the region. Poor weather conditions have closed in, hindering the search.

In Kuala Lumpur, where the plane took off on its flight to Beijing, Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein spoke of the over two dozen countries involved in a search whose area stretches from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean. The search area represents a four-hour round-trip flight from western Australia, leaving planes with fuel to search only for about two hours before having to turn back.

"Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday (Friday), we have replanned the search to be visual. So aircraft flying relatively low, very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows and looking to see objects", explained John Young, manager of the maritime safety authority's emergency response division. Malaysia is awaiting undersea surveillance equipment from the U.S., a technology only it possesses.

Sunday's search, according to Flight Lieutenant Russell Adams of the Royal Australian Air Force, was frustrating, because "there was cloud down to the surface and at times we were completely enclosed by cloud", speaking of the planes taking off from Perth, working for the search mission.

Meanwhile, satellite and meteorology experts have doubts of the prospect of finding those objects in the Indian Ocean believed linked to the missing flight, spotted by satellite, pointing out that debris might have drifted hundreds of miles on strong currents, since first detection.