The biggest tragedy for the relatives of passengers on ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is that full closure may never come. The aircraft going down in icy cold waters of the southern Indian Ocean’s most desolate part is itself a surmise based on satellite images of possible debris. The sad clincher of the bad news is a whole new set of satellite images showing over 100 objects that could be plane debris in an area twice the size of France.
Based on circumstantial evidence, Malaysia was driven to bring some sort of early closure for grieving relatives whose nerves was anyway frayed by the agonising wait. Coming on top of all conspiracy theories and madcap conjectures that had a free run in the two weeks-plus after the jetliner went off the radar, there is further conjecture that it gave a final unexplained signal eight minutes after its final electronic “ping”, possibly when it was in its “last catastrophic moment”.
Flight MH370 could well remain the biggest unsolved mystery of modern times. Time is running out for the recovery of the “black box” and cockpit voice recorder that will have vital onboard aviation data, but how useful they would be in decoding the mystery is anybody’s guess. So remote is the chance of patching together any kind of conclusive information that modern man can only kick himself for not caring more for aviation safety and keeping satellite tabs on flights until they land, or in worst-case scenarios, come down for any reason.
