Monday, March 9, 2015

One Year Later, Vanished Flight 370 Still A Mystery

The Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished from the skies one year ago Sunday with 239 people on board remains the greatest commercial aviation mystery ever.
Not a single scrap of debris has been found despite a non-stop search along the depths of the southern Indian Ocean, where authorities believe the airliner crashed after it ran out of fuel. But evidence of the plane's route is so scant that even the suspected crash region could be off the mark.
Flight officer Rayan Gharazeddine on board a Royal 
Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion, scans for the missing 
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the southern Indian Ocean.
And without any evidence of a crash, some relatives of the lost passengers cling to faint hope that the plane will yet be found with the passengers alive.
"The reality is there's no proof they're dead or that the plane crashed," said Sarah Bajc, a U.S. citizen whose partner Philip Wood, 50, an IBM executive from Texas, was the only American on the flight.
Flight 370 disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with no signals or warnings of anything wrong. Air traffic controllers didn't even know where it went. Radar and satellite data suggest it veered west off course and then south toward the Indian Ocean.
In late January, the Malaysian government declared that the plane was lost in an accident with no survivors, a move that allows families to receive death benefits. The same officials will release an interim report Saturday, one day before the anniversary, yet little new information is expected.
"Not knowing is not an 'accident.' They've taken the easy way out," said Bajc, 49, a former Microsoft executive now based in Kuala Lumpur. "It's still a possibility it's at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. I just feel it's a very remote possibility ... and based on very circumstantial evidence," she said. "In every other crash, there's always been debris."
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Bajc continues to press the Malaysian government for more information and even just a meeting, but "they avoid us like the plague." She said family members have various theories, such as the plane was kidnapped or accidentally shot down, and that is being covered up.
"If people were being held, we would have expected to hear about it. That's what most dashes my hope," she said about a possible kidnapping.
So far, the sonar search of the ocean floor hasn't found anything appearing to be debris from the airliner, said Dan O'Malley, spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which is leading the search.
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