The ever more complicated and deepening mystery surrounding the missing Malaysia Airways flight MH370 continues to grip the world – in equal parts empathy and morbid fascination – as the search now, having shifted yet again, focuses on the South Indian Ocean. At the time of writing the search for debris far off the coast of Western Australia continues.
It may seem odd to be writing about a missing passenger aircraft in this magazine, but this is firstly no ordinary circumstance and secondly, as we all know very well, passenger aircraft are also carry varying amounts of cargo in their bellies.
With absolutely every realistic possibility in the search for answers as to what transpired on that fateful flight open for consideration, cargo also logically comes under scrutiny. Could it be that new nemesis of the air cargo sector – lithium batteries – or perhaps some other hazardous cargo that resulted in an onboard fire? Or perhaps, as it was suggested in the mainstream media that the four tonnes of tropical fruit called mangosteens in the belly of the aircraft, could have concealed a bomb.
According to the carrier’s CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya the aircraft was not carrying any hazardous cargo: “We examined the cargo manifest, it carries no hazardous goods. They should actually be checked and screened according to the standard procedure,” he said, confirming that proper cargo screening had been undertaken. Subsequently the airline did say the flight was carrying a limited quantity of small lithium-ion batteries, but they were properly packed.
Nonetheless there are some important ‘take aways’ from this tragedy that should be acted on, even before the mystery of MH370 is explained. Why are vital systems like the transponder, able to be so easily turned off? While we do understand it’s for fire and electrical system protection, surely it can be designed differently making it impossible to deactivate this crucial device unless there are flight safety issues. This incident has also shown just how poor the ability is to track aircraft, despite the ‘next generation’ satellite-based GPS tracking systems, rather than the current ground-based radar tracking.
The accident, like others before it highlight the serious need to update the technology used in the so-called ‘black box’. Some safety experts have urged that it should be made to float, jettisoned from the aircraft’s hull through some form of barometric pressure system. And in this day-in-age where data storage is cheap and plentiful, the current limit of two hours of voice and data recording, which operates in a loop, thereby erasing previous data, is incomprehensible. This brings up another case in point – the ‘cloud’. Although granted there is a cost involved, why is crucial data like this not streamed to a cloud-based server in real-time?
And of course there are the security and flight safety issues how two passengers were able to board the aircraft using stolen passports and why the first officer, with a history of allowing passengers to ride in the cockpit, had not been disciplined and/ or barred from flying?
This is surely only skimming the tip of the iceberg and hopefully the aircraft’s black box will be found soon to help piece together what caused this terrible calamity, not least of all for the families of those onboard.
