The most baffling thing about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is that it is so difficult to draw parallels with other disasters. The plane vanished from air-traffic control screens on 8 March and as the New Statesman went to press it still had not been found. The airline, the civil aviation authority, the region’s air navigation service providers and even the aircraft and engine manufacturers appear clueless.
Modern planes don’t disappear. They are equipped with a range of hi-tech reporting and recording systems. However, as flight MH370 left Malaysian airspace en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, almost all communications went dead. This suggests that the aircraft’s transponder stopped working immediately, which is incredibly rare. Stranger still, even with the transponder switched off, the plane shouldn’t have disappeared completely; ordinarily it would have been picked up by civilian and military radars and data would have been sent regularly to the engine manufacturers and airlines through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (Acars).
Content from our partners
