Missing Plane, Missing Answers

International News
Patrick Wolff
Staff Writer

The international search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 has yet to turn up any results. The Boeing 777, which had 239 people onboard and was traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared somewhere over the South China Sea early on March 8. The information surrounding the disappearance of Flight 370 has yielded more questions than answers and officials are scrambling to piece together what little information they have in an attempt to pinpoint the plane’s location.
The flight took off without incident from the airport in Kuala Lumpur not long after midnight on Saturday, but by 1:30 a.m. contact with the plane had been lost. No distress signals were ever activated onboard the aircraft, and there were no signs of bad weather or technical problems during the time that the plane was in contact with air traffic controllers. All aircrafts owned by Malaysia Airlines are outfitted with a system that feeds information about the status of an aircraft back to air traffic controllers, but apparently no information was relayed after the flight disappeared. Officials spent days searching the South China Sea and surrounding areas looking for any clues to the fate of Flight 370, but were unable to come up with answers. Chinese authorities thought they had found the location of the plane when one of their satellites spotted what looked like debris near the area where the plane went missing, but when investigators arrived at the site they found no signs of the aircraft. False leads and a lack of information have led to wild speculation about the fate of the plane. Officials are desperately piecing together what little information they have in an effort to locate the aircraft. Reports of the plane being spotted somewhere in the Strait of Malacca, hundreds of miles west of its intended flight path, have led officials to widen their search. An unidentified aircraft was picked up on radar heading in the direction of the Strait, and although officials are unsure whether the plane that they picked up on radar was Flight 370, they are taking all possibilities into account. The news that two Iranian men boarded the flight using fake passports has many people worried that this may have been some sort of terrorist attack, but aside from the fake passports, there is not much information supporting this theory. With the information available right now, hijacking, mechanical malfunction, terrorism and pilot error are all valid possibilities for the disappearance, making attempts at pinpointing the planes location that much more difficult.
Family members of those who were aboard Flight 370 are desperately awaiting any information on the whereabouts of the plane, but have been left feeling frustrated. Complaints have been pouring into the Malaysian government but despite the pleas of family members, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has called for patience. Razak reassured the family members and the millions of people around the world who are concerned about the fate of Flight 370 that they are doing everything in their power to find answers to this mystery.