Lost - one large aeroplane

[Alkari]

These days we have come to expect almost instant communication around the world, so it is almost inconceivable to think that a plane with more than 200 people can just get "lost" here on earth.   Even when that Air France plane went down in the Atlantic a few years ago, wreckage was found within a couple of days.   Yet for nearly two weeks, there has been no sign of Malaysian flight MH370, originally bound for Beijing.  It just - vanished. 

News has just come through that commercial satellite imagery 'may' have found debris from the Malaysian plane in the Indian Ocean, some 2,500 kms south west of Perth.   The imagery is blurred and hard to analyse, but there are now four planes in the area, 2 from Australia and one each from the USA and New Zealand, though the weather is not good.   A couple of ships are also on their way.

More than 20 nations were involved in the original search, on the pathway towards Beijing where the flight was headed.   Gradually they came to think that the plane's tracking devices had been turned off and that it had changed course, so after a week of fruitless searching they started to look in totally different areas, in arcs to the NW and SW.    But what takes the story into 'just beggars belief' territory was the reports yesterday that BARELY TWO DAYS after the disappearance, Thailand apparently knew from checking its military radar that they had picked up an unidentified plane which was 'most probably' the missing plane on a changed course ... and IT DIDN'T TELL ANYONE.    Why? Because ... wait for it, folks ... Thailand hadn't actually been FORMALLY ASKED for the information!!   Can you actually get your heads around that?   This is a major airline disaster, hundreds of lives possibly lost, relatives and friends are desperate for news, thousands of person-hours and millions of dollars are being spent on search efforts, everyone is desperate to work out what may have happened - yet it seems that instead of bending over backwards to pool information and help in any way possible, some stupid, selfish, arrogant and completely idiotic national government simply sits there on potentially vital information and just waits to be asked.

Words nearly fail me.

Fingers crossed that the objects sighted ARE from the plane, because at least then there will be some closure and a chance of finding out what happened, and they may even be able to get hold of the black boxes (though it took them 2 years to recover the ones from the Air France plane). Australian search planes are used to looking for needles in haystacks in the Southern and Indian Oceans, as they have done more than a few searches and rescues, and they say that this looks like the most promising lead yet. So we can only hope. But if only the Thai authorities had got off their bureaucratic high horses and spoken up sooner ...  If there is any possible 'good' to come out of this tragedy, I hope that it will be improved procedures for sharing information quickly and efficiently between national authorities in the events of incidents such as this, as well as possibly requiring some better on-board systems for monitoring planes' locations.   

ETA:   Sorry I haven't been in Chat recently, but I have started learning German, and the course is on Monday mornings, which means I miss US Sunday evening chats.    A few more weeks and then we get a short break, but then I am back for term 2.    So I am scraping the rust off my 'languages' brain to deal with the intricacies of an inflected language, nouns of three different genders and verbs with four cases (which is better than the 6 in Latin, we assured our teacher!).    About four of us in the class have done some Latin, though I only did 2 years, but at least that allows us to cope with grammatical concepts such as the dative case, which we don't actually get to until next term       Maybe I will go back and tackle Latin again next year!! 

[DesertRose]

I've been following this news story, and yes, it does beggar belief.  I feel really bad for the families of the passengers and crew; I think I'd rather know that a family member or friend was dead than not have a clue what happened.

[Alkari]

Alas, even if it is chunks of the plane, I doubt there is any hope of survivors.  Yachtsman Tony Bullimore was rescued after 5 days trapped in the hull of his upturned boat, but it's been more than ten days now since the plane went missing and I can't see how anyone would have survived even if parts of the fuselage remained afloat or only slightly submerged.  But for all the waiting relatives, yes, I just hope it is the wreckage and they can finally get some small element of peace.  They'll resume the search at first light in a few hours from now, and hopefully with the resources now being thrown at a more clearly defined area, they can find out for sure in the next 24 hours.

[DesertRose]

Probably there are no survivors at this point; you're right.

Even so, the recovery of parts of the plane and perhaps human remains (as gruesome as that thought is) might bring some measure of peace and certainty to the families and friends.

[Aerlys]

I dunno, the way things have been heating up in Asia, I'm not really surprised at Thailand's actions--or inaction, if you prefer. A different mindset from Western thinking.

Our thoughts and prayers are with all those involved.