Despite the announcement by Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Najib Tun Razak last night that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had “ended” in the Indian Ocean, leaving no survivors, the mystery of what exactly happened on the doomed jetliner has yet to be resolved. Aviation experts say it might take months or years to find the plane’s black box and wreckage.
USA Today reports Shawn Pruchnicki, a safety expert with the Ohio State University Center for Aviation Studies, as saying, ” This answers some questions, but it also opens up lots of questions that aren’t close to being answered. We’re just scratching the surface now.”
Wreckage from the downed jetliner has yet to be found. If and when they are found and retrieved, the debris could provide preliminary clues as to what exactly happened on Flight MH370 and dispel speculation ranging from terrorism to suicidal pilots to mechanical failure. Pruchnicki said pieces of sheet metal and fabric could provide evidence of an onboard fire, or the rate of the aircraft’s descent, which might offer clues as to the pilots’ efforts to save the plane and how the passengers and crew perished.
However, investigative teams will face great difficulty in even locating, let alone retrieving, MH370’s debris field or multiple debris fields, as the plane’s remains have likely been spread out over hundreds of miles from the initial crash site over the past 17 days since its disappearance. Unfavourable ocean and weather conditions could hamper the search. According to Al Yurman, a former National Transportation Safety Board accident investigator, the depth of the Indian Ocean and the adverse conditions underwater could make the search for debris even more difficult.
Also key to the final investigtion is the recovery of Flight MH370’s “black box”, the data recorder installed in every commercial aircraft. “There’s about two hours of recording time on the cockpit voice recorder, so if there was an event going on, there’d be talk about smoke, about an intentional turn back,” said Pruchnicki.
“The worst-case scenario is if we don’t find the boxes and there’s limited wreckage because it’s so scattered, the search area is so vast and recovery is impossible,” he said. “There’s lots of work ahead before we find out what happened.”
Investigators are racing against time in their search – black box battery locators only have enough energy to “ping” for about 30 days, meaning the search for the plane’s black box will become exponentially more difficult after April 8.
Story: USA Today
