MH370 becomes a ghost ship

It’s a sad day in commercial aviation history with the confirmation that the search for MH370 has been suspended.

The joint decision by the governments of Australia, China and Malaysia was inevitable and is understandable. It has been almost three years since the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER disappeared. The unprecedented search effort has painstakingly scoured some 46,000 square miles of ocean; every technology, expert and resource available has been applied. Everyone, not least the families, friends and colleagues of the 238 people onboard, wanted a different outcome and believed that the plane would be found.

All we have, however, is some 20 pieces of aircraft debris and no real knowledge as to what happened to that aircraft or why.

The tragedy of that reality is that the families of the victims have no closure and the wider airline industry – an industry that is so good at learning from mistakes – has no definitive answers.

After Air France flight 447 disappeared into the southern Atlantic in June 2009, there was talk about whether that aircraft, an Airbus A330, would ever be located and recovered. But almost two years later, the recovery effort did indeed find the aircraft and even located the data and voice recorders, which – remarkably – provided information crucial to determining why that aircraft crashed. It was a miraculous end to a tragedy and one that yielded answers that the industry could share and use to prevent a similar occurrence.

This will not be the case with MH370. Rumors and conspiracy theories will always be able to cloud the few facts that have been established. Books and movies will cash in on the open-ended what ifs?

What must not be overlooked, however, is the enormous human and technological endeavor that was made to find MH370. Australia, in particular, has been exemplary in its search effort coordination, provision of manpower (in an often arduous and sometimes dangerous mission) and documentation.

MH370 did prompt the industry to re-examine its commercial airliner tracking protocols. The technology was essentially already there; this event was a wake-up call about the gaps – literally – that airlines fly through and the need to close them.

That work must continue; it is simply not acceptable in this day and age for a modern airliner to be out of communication long enough that it can stray far from its flight plan, disappear, and controllers have little-to-no idea that something is amiss until it’s too late. That is something this industry can act on – and is.

But today, we should solemnly acknowledge that we have failed to establish the answers to the disappearance of a modern airliner that is an industry workhorse. We should all be haunted by the ghost ship that MH370 became today.

Karen Walker [email protected]