It’s 2015 now, but 2014 was the year of missing planes. And it seems odd that we are still unable to find a missing plane nowadays. With all of our technology–namely satellites, drones and radar–we’ve still been incapable of finding two passenger jets that went missing last year.
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 departed from Kuala Lumpur and traveled north. Forty minutes into its flight, it disappears. Today, we still don’t have answers. The wreckage still hasn’t been found. Something I find interesting is the fact that there was no distress signal from MH370 before it disappeared. What caused it to disappear? Was it engine failure? Was it a storm? If so, there should have been at least enough time to send out a mayday call.
Adding to the mystery of MH370 is the very recent disappearance of AirAsia flight 8501. Dec. 28, 2014 AirAsia 8501 departed from Surabaya, Indonesia again, traveling north, and disappeared about forty minutes into its flight. The similarities are there. But what caused these two aircraft to disappear? And why can’t we find any trace of them.
Although we may never figure out what exactly happened to MH370, there’s still time to find AirAsia 8501. You have to keep in mind just how big the ocean is. In both of these cases, the possible crash zones are huge. That means that searching the area where they think AirAsia 8501 may have gone down is a long process.
In the case of MH370, the most plausible explanation is that it was hijacked. But AirAsia 8501 shows no signs of a hijacking….yet. We’ll just have to wait and see if any debris turns up. In which case, we’ll probably be able to figure out what happened to the plane. If the searchers never find any debris, then you can just assume that there’s some very complex conspiracy going on.
Whatever happened to these two flights is a tragedy. Hundreds of people lost their lives and their families may never be able to bury them.