For the past 10 years, it has remained one of the modern era’s greatest mysteries.
A commercial airliner with a strong safety record carrying 239 people vanished from the map, spawning a wide variety of competing theories, books and documentaries and leaving the families of those left behind asking themselves every March 8 – what happened to those aboard Malaysia Airlines flight 370?
In an era when black boxes have been successfully hauled up from the very depths of the ocean and whole chunks of a downed airliner painstakingly pieced back together to determine what caused a catastrophe, the fate of MH370 remains infuriatingly elusive.
It is a plane crash without a plane. A disaster without conclusive proof of what happened to its victims. A story that anyone who embarks on a commercial flight can instantly relate to but one that, for now at least, doesn’t have a closing chapter.
Yet many experts believe there is still a strong chance MH370’s wreckage could be located, if someone looks hard enough and – crucially – coughs up the staggering amount of money that might be required to achieve that goal.
For Jiang Hui, who lost his mother in the disaster, this time of year is especially tough – and not just because of the March 8 anniversary.
Qingming, the annual festival when Chinese people visit and clean their ancestors’ graves, falls in early April.
“But we never found MH370. I never found my mother,” Jiang told CNN. “I can’t commemorate my mother just like everyone else.”
His mother, Jiang Cuiyun, is still listed as “missing” back home in China, he said. “I will only find my mom if I can find MH370,” he added.
Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines flight 370 dropped off the radar shortly after departing Kuala Lumpur in the small hours of March 8, 2014.
The take-off was uneventful. The flight reached its cruising altitude of 35,000 feet and the pilots spoke briefly with Vietnamese air traffic as the plane headed on its standard route.
After that the aircraft stopped communicating, then vanished from radar when it made an unexpected turn to the west.
Apparent fragments have since washed up on the eastern coast of Africa and islands in the Indian Ocean, where the aircraft and those on board are believed to have met their fate.
But to this day, the body of the aircraft and its black box has never been found. It’s believed to have crashed. But we still don’t know why.
A new search?
This week, many loved ones of those missing returned to Malaysia to urge local authorities to relaunch a search ahead of Friday’s anniversary.
“There have been ships lost that are found after hundreds of years. So, we cannot say that this plane will never be found,” one family member V.P.R. Nathan told Reuters during a recent commemorative event. His wife Anne Daisy was on board MH370.
“Of course, it can be found. It is a matter of time,” he said.
Aviation experts tell CNN that improved detection technology will likely bring families closer to the missing plane than they ever have been, if a search were to be relaunched.
But that will not be cheap.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent scouring more than 710,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean until 2018 but nothing transpired that moved our understanding on from that already available since the very early days.
United States-based sea exploration firm Ocean Infinity is offering the Malaysian government another “no-find, no-fee” deal – like they did in 2018 – but experts noted the authorities would still have to pay up if the aircraft was found.
To families’ encouragement, Malaysian authorities have made some positive remarks about the prospect of a new search. On Sunday, Transport Minister Anthony Loke said his country would “do everything possible to solve this mystery once and for all”.
He said his ministry is “ready” to discuss a new “credible” search proposal with Ocean Infinity and will do “everything possible” to get Cabinet approval for a new contract with the firm.
“As we approach the 10 years remembrance of this heart-wrenching tragedy, it is a painful reminder of the decade-long journey of grief and resilience that loved ones of the victims have endured,” he said.
Source: CNN
