Curious case of MH370: The victims' families won't find any closure with just a part of the wing

By Bikram Vohra

Finally, after five weeks the French authorities have officially identified the flaperon that floated onto Reunion Island on 29 July  as being from the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

Whether this provides closure or not to the next of kin is questionable. While the confirmation does point to the fact that the Triple Seven, with its 239 passengers and crew on board, crashed in the ocean, it sheds no light on what occurred in aviation’s most mysterious disappearance.

Every accident teaches lessons and ensures higher safety standards are followed in the future. In this case, there is literally nothing but second guessing the loss, with scenarios that nibble more at flights of imagination than reality. It is impossible to trace the origin of this piece of wreckage a year on. The search grid has not changed and ocean currents could have taken the debris thousands of miles away from the crash site.

Experts have begun to re-examine the possibility that the eight controlled, but unexplained, turns the plane took meant it vectored under the command of a human hand and did not fly six hours on its own. Nobody can tell us what the heck was going on in that cabin for six hours. In many ways, it makes a mockery of air security as a Triple Seven leaves a large enough signature in the air.

So, did whoever was on the Flight Deck purposely fly this aircraft into the sea after dilly-dallying for six hours and made no contact in that time with ground control? It makes no sense. But what makes even less sense is the fact that an aircraft that was involved in erratic manoeuvres, which took it off the charted course, also disappeared without a trace.

Even if we assume that the person (a hostile) at the controls, having incapacitated the flying crew, wanted to crash the plane, why would he wait six hours and then land it on water in such a fashion that the plane’s integrity was not compromised and it sank with everyone on board without breaking up.

Even so, over the course of a year, the water pressure would have crumpled the hull and sent materials to the surface. Between luggage, seats, insulation and tonnes of cargo something should have been visible. There is just no precedent to such a disappearance. The irony is that neither the airline, nor the manufacturer and the air crash investigators can get on the same page with a plausible theory.

The scariest assessment comes from a Triple Seven pilot with 17 years experience.

“The Captain of the flight, Zaharie Shah, deliberately hid the plane from radar and flew it thousands of miles off course, before it came down in the ocean,” the pilot said.

He says the clues are in the route the aircraft took after it vanished from air traffic control’s radar. It turned back on itself and flew along the border of Malaysia and Thailand.

“It flew in and out of the countries eight times,” he says. “This is probably very accurate flying rather than just a coincidence. And both air traffic controllers in both those countries would probably assume that the aircraft was in the other country’s jurisdiction and not pay it any attention.”

Clearly, there will be no closure at present with families demanding something more definitive.

Can you blame them?