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03:07 PM
Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
March 25, 2014
The Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Razak has said the ill-fated Flt 370 dropped 12,000 feet and sank into the southern Indian Ocean. This is now official. But he cannot back it up with anything concrete yet.
The wreckage has not yet been identified if there is any wreckage at all and so no one can say with any guarantee that it is from the 777. It is a conclusion predicated to two weeks of plotting a chart from satellite data.
The plane made a turn at 35,000 feet then dropped to 12,000 feet where it flew on for some time, that altitude not being under the radar. What made it do that and why was there no Mayday call? There is no other information except what is a very sketchy statement, almost like let’s close it down and end the investigation.
Why is the airline reluctant or even refusing to be transparent about what was in the cargo hold of the aircraft by releasing the cargo manifest? This reluctance only adds to the mystery and makes one wonder what the heck is going on.
Was there a fire on board, ostensibly triggered by a burning tyre that on takeoff and smoke inhalation caused the pilots to suffocate and the aircraft just kept flying about till it ran out of fuel? Some pilots have suggested this scenario. Even then there would have been enough time to hit the Mayday 7700 code.
Other analysts say that there could have been a mechanical failure. In which case how did the aircraft stay airborne for so long?
There has been no further information about the two passengers on false passports or whether they had a role to play. It is like ho hum, that’s done and dusted, forget it.
Most pilots will accept that in any of these scenarios there is enough time to send out a Mayday call on the transponder at 7700 frequency. No one wants to talk about that.
No data is available at this moment to indicate any objects that came up in the Australian coastal area and even the 75 ft long ‘suspicious’ piece has become irrelevant.
There is no comfort to the next of kin of the passengers on what happened and it is still all a little more technical speculation and nothing else.
The feeling that nothing so fits into a proper grid will not go away. Something is not right. There are too many unanswered questions.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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