I am disturbed by the rather harsh criticism laid upon Malaysia by China and Chinese families with respect to MH370.  I can certainly make allowances for people in distress and I have both empathy and compassion for those people.

But for China to imply that Malaysia has been irresponsible or incompetent is just grossly unfair.

For Chinese citizens to insist that the aircraft is intact and its passengers alive but hidden by Malaysia is . . . stupid. No matter how much grief you feel.

A person or person(s) commandeered an aircraft over a sea, artfully steered it past two nations and then steered a course into one of the most remote oceans in the world.

My point is that this wouldn’t be easy for anyone.  There have been up to 12 aircraft from at least 5 nations assisting in the search.   Nations with satellite imaging capability have scoured the seas over and over trying to sense wreckage and debris.  The United Kingdom and IMMARSAT went to great lengths to establish where this aircraft went and have continued supporting the search.

Many, many nations have lent support in a variety of meaningful ways.  If this airplane has not been found, it’s not because anyone is behaving slow, without care or without a sense of urgency.

It’s because this is a very hard thing to do.  Before anyone criticizes, we should remember that it tooks years to find Air France 447 in the middle of the Atlantic.  We knew far more about that flight and it was far easier to access the area and search.  Yet it was considered one of the toughest searches for an airplane done to that date.

What they’re doing in the Indian Ocean is nearly an order of magnitude more difficult.  The searches know next to nothing about flight path, motive or even the ocean area in which it went down.  But many nations continue going out day after day trying to find answers and doing so with utmost professional behavior.

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There has been some news now and in the recent past about a group of people (some originally from Eastern Airlines) forming a new startup in the Miami area (in the old Eastern building).  Most recently there have been reports about an RFP (request for proposal) for up to 10 used aircraft that this new company can purchase.

The company is to start as a charter and use either Boeing or Airbus equipment to start.  This would mean Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 aircraft.

Need I remind anyone how the charter world typically does for any new business?  Or how badly charter companies do when they attempt to transition to a scheduled carrier?

While these people may have some money and opportunity to get started as an airline, I’m extremely uncomfortable with the trade on the Eastern Airlines name to start with.  First of all, if anyone thinks that Eastern Airlines left people with great memories of travel, they would be wrong.  The airline left most people with a bad taste in their mouth and there is a reason why the airline went bankrupt.

That reason wasn’t Frank Lorenzo despite how many want it to be.  It had a lot to do with a bloated operation that didn’t focus on customer experience.  People didn’t fly the airline and didn’t like the airline.  There was no legend of greatness in that airline.  It never was known for that even when Eddie Rickenbacker led the airline.

New airlines can be great things to watch and I get excited by them too.  But this isn’t the one to get worked up over.

When someone like David Neeleman comes into the marketplace and starts using an innovative strategy focused on customer experience using the right aircraft, then we can talk.  That person hasn’t shown up yet.

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There is an opinion piece written by former Captain Les Abend on CNN’s website opining that the best explanation for what happened to MH370 is that there was a catastrophic event aboard the airliner that disabled all comms and then the pilots and that the plane simply flew itself until fuel exhaustion crashed the airliner.  You can read this opinion HERE.

Let’s review the ideas one by one:

1)  The airliner had a fire or similar event that disabled all radios and communications.

An event disabling all 5 radios would almost have to involve the cockpit being removed from the airliner.  We know this didn’t happen.  Boeing has built redundancy into these aircraft but has also gone to fair trouble to ensure that a problem in one part of the plane doesn’t take out all of a system.  Antennas are separated.  Power sources are different.  You really cannot lose all the radios simultaneously without something literally destroying the aircraft.  Could they go out one by one?  Yes.

2)  He suggests that the callout of 35,000 feet is what pilots do to remind ATC to give them a higher clearance.  Well, that’s true but what Mr. Abend neglects to mention is that 35,000 feet is a fairly high altitude and to go much higher so early in the flight wasn’t necessarily practical.  To make the callout several times when already at a very high altitude and when there was no weather to clear, is suspect.

3)  It’s suggested that a smoldering fire began to insidiously take out comms slowly, one by one.  What this ignores is the fact that the electronics bay doesn’t just provide communications.  It houses systems for the instrumentation of the entire aircraft.  A “smoldering fire” would have been taking out other systems that would have caused alerts left and right.  This aircraft is also a “fly by wire” system and those electronics reside, in part, in the electronics bay as well.   Fires aren’t selective in what they impact.  And electronics bays are heavily monitored for fire and smoke.

4)  A degraded autopilot maintains course to the next waypoint and then remains in “heading mode” at high altitude.  Pilots to do not stay at 35,000 feet in an emergency that they have to get an airplane onto the ground.  To the contrary, they descend, work the checklists and start communicating their descent so that they don’t collide with other aircraft.  Furthermore, the “nearest airport” wasn’t actually southwest and on the other side of the island.  One with a really long runway was in that direction.  Other commercial airports with sufficient runway length for landing existed.

Navigation of the airliner is dependent on many systems that include the autopilot and instrumentation such as GPS and other nav aids.  Absent these aids, that airliner will become lost.  A smoldering fire that disables pilots, doesn’t continue to smolder without affecting the airframe for 6 to 7 more hours.
I realize that its hard for commercial pilots to accept that a fellow pilot would do something nefarious.  Yet. . . . we know that that has happened many times over the course of commercial aviation history.  It happens.  it’s ugly and it’s terrible.  But it happens.

I also realize that it’s nice to make pilots out to be heros who die in action.  Yet, we also know that not every pilot is a hero.  There are limits to every person.

We don’t know what happened.  And we won’t know what happened over the Gulf of Thailand ever.  Not in the cockpit.  The voice recorder doesn’t record that long.  We will have some record of what was programmed, what the flight control inputs were and what was alarming and what wasn’t.  It will tell a story but it won’t tell the whole story.  It will tell the “what” but not the “why”.

And only if we find the aircraft.  But suggesting that this airliner was a ghost ship that crashed is foolish and fantastical does no one any good in looking at this event.

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What I’m about to write could be seen as harsh but it needs to be written.

When people talk about their being no data about this flight, we have nothing but data.  In fact, we are in the unusual position of being able to only talk about the facts that we have rather than speculating on emotions and personalities.

Emotions and personalities will come later and actually be an important part of the conversation and investigations.

But today, when people say that there is no evidence. . .

You are wrong.  There is nothing but evidence.  And the evidence says this aircraft was commandeered, flown by programmed waypoints at high altitude (30,000 or more) to  a point in the southern Indian Ocean approximately 1200 to 1800 miles west of Australia where it ended flight.

Because it is impossible, not merely improbable, for an aircraft such as the Boeing 777 to land on an ocean and keep afloat, all passengers must be presumed as dead.  The southern Indian Ocean is no place for human beings without protectioin, shelter and sturdy watercraft, they would not survive.  They would not survive even on a life raft.  Hurricanes have passed over this area already during this search.  This is not a hospitable place even for United States naval vessels.

For those who think the 777 can survive a water landing such as the A320 that landed in the Hudson River:  there couldn’t be a greater difference in the circumstances between two such events.  Civil commercial aircraft are not designed and are not capable of surviving a landing in the seas and weather offered by the southern Indian Ocean.  This area is considered one of the most dangerous areas of ocean in our world.

For those of you who believe this must be a hijacking and that this aircraft and its passengers are being kept hostage somewhere. . . you only do a disservice to the loved ones of those passengers to promote hope with this theory.

The science and mathematics used to track down this airplane are irrefutable.  Even if we did not have such information, hostage takers don’t take 230+ people and hold them incommunicado for 2+ weeks.  In fact, you really can’t hold a 777 without it being seen for 2+ weeks.

This aircraft went into the southern Indian Ocean.  All lives were lost and it’s a very sad moment for their families and friends.

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