The recovery of a right wing flaperon of a Boeing 777 aircraft, most probably that of Malaysia Airlines’ Flight MH370, may soon throw light on a mystery that has run 500 days already. The discovery of the part may well reveal the truth suspected all along of the plane having been deliberately sent diving into the sea in a high-speed spiral descent far away from its scheduled destination in China. Such a conclusion would, however, be of little comfort for the kin of 239 passengers plus crew who may have been hoping against hope for a miracle that had the aircraft landing on an inaccessible island and the survivors awaiting rescue.
Modern aviation has been priding itself on a greater accent on safety having paid off with there being loss of fewer lives in ideally inverse proportion to the number of flying machines and hours in the air. What it had not imagined, except briefly perhaps in the example of kamikaze pilots in World War II diving to their death, was that the human behind the joystick could have homicidal or suicidal tendencies. A couple of events in 9/11 aviation had already warned humanity of the dangers of terrorism.
The wing part, more than the remnants of a suitcase washed ashore near Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, is highly indicative of the scenario of deliberate action by the pilot, or pilots, to engineer doom. To deal with this emerging psychology of doomsday pilots is going to be the biggest challenge of an aviation industry already hit by so many fear factors.
