Showing posts with label Indian Ocean. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Ocean. Show all posts

If You Want To Play With Big Boy Toys........

Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian Minister for E...
Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian Minister for Education. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Acting Transportation Minister of Malaysia, Hishamuddin Hussein, today announced that the "raw" Inmarsat data is to be released perhaps within the next twenty-four hours or so in an effort to maintain transparency and to establish truth as to how searchers for the MH 370 arrived at their conclusions that the doomed flight ended in the south Indian Ocean. I was under the impression that this information would be released last week but then perhaps I was confused yet again by the inept and downright dishonest way that Malaysia has handled this entire matter and the total disregard with which the families of the passengers have been treated.

This latest debacle has become just par for the course in terms of the mismanagement of this investigation. It is clear that the Malaysians are idiots and that any attempt on their part to interpret the Inmarsat data for the public is as doomed as their investigation into the disappearance of the Boeing Triple Seven.

The plane is gone without a trace. Not a seat cushion, a plastic cup or a laminated baggage tag, attributable to the missing flight has been retrieved from the multiple search sites in the south Indian Ocean despite assurances from Malaysia and the Australians (who are looking like as big a bunch of losers as the Malaysians right about now) that the "data" was being constantly refined and that there were countless trained pairs of eyes aboard ships, choppers, P3s, New Zealand Air Force planes...the list of resources goes on and on. All of the ELTs apparently failed on this aircraft and there was no infrared satellite event that would have indicated a crash. The supposed experts laughed when the Chinese reported pings from the black boxes but did not doubt the results from their own pinger locater despite the fact that they were not the correct frequency for black box transmissions but were the correct frequency for fishing net locators used by south Indian Ocean fishermen. One might ask why no one in Malaysia or Australia knew about these pingers on these fishing nets...presumably no one in either country knows fuck all about fishing or perhaps they're all too busy being all too important to concern themselves with such mundane matters. In any case the plane is still gone without a trace; the investigation is hopelessly botched, the families are pissed and the Bluefin 21 (the wrong equipment for a search of the deepest parts of the south Indian Ocean) is not available after the end of this week. The Aussies believe the search will be delayed until perhaps August!

What do we know for certain in all this mess? We know that grief in any language looks and sounds the same. We also know that government officials, no matter what country they represent are all a bunch of entitled, condescending, emotionally retarded nut jobs that should not be trusted with the very simplest of tasks (folding laundry in a locked psychiatric ward comes readily to mind). We know that investigations of this scale are perhaps best conducted by impartial, private sector companies less concerned with how things look and more concerned with how things really are. What is not so clear, to my mind at least is why a company like Boeing with its reputation is selling Triple Sevens to Banana Republics incapable of tracking, servicing, flying or maintaining them let alone conducting an investigation when (notice I did not say if) something goes terribly wrong and dozens if not hundreds of souls are lost. Selling a Triple Seven to Malaysia seems to me as irresponsible as giving a BMW to a two year-old and instructing him to "have fun". To date, I do not know of a plane with training wheels  but if Boeing makes one, I would recommend they sell it to Malaysia!

More about the big boy toys in my next post.......
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Malaysia Releases Preliminary Report On Flight MH 370

The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld (left), Secre...
The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld (left), Secretary of Defense, and Najib Tun Razak, Malaysia Minister of Defense, pose for a photo at the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. on May 2, 2002. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Eight weeks after the disappearance of fight MH 370, Malaysia released the preliminary report to families of the passengers and to the media. It contains timelines, maps, passenger manifests, cargo manifests, ELT maintenance reports...in short, a great deal of information that answers many of the families' questions about the doomed flight. Malaysia had stated last week that it would not make the report part of the public domain. What changed their minds?

I cannot help but think that this change of heart came about due to the interview late last week, conducted by CNN's Richard Quest of Malaysia's prime minister, Najib Razak. Now Richard Quest is certainly not my favorite aviation authority. His accent, loud and blustering voice and his general demeanor (that of a pompous, arrogant horse's ass) make me want to rub my eyes with sandpaper but be that as it may, he did effectively goad Malaysia's prime minister into making this report public. He was however unable to gain an admission from the prime minister that flight MH 370 is lost when a month ago the prime minister in a badly botched move on the part of the Malaysian investigative team announced..."flight MH 370 ended in the south Indian Ocean".

The report went on to recommend that all aircraft flying over vast seas be tracked in real time. The technology exists.. The cost, about $100,000 per plane for retro-fitting is however prohibative according to airline accident investigators and aviation specialists. This is bullshit! Would you pay $10 more for your transcontinental airline ticket to have it tracked? Would a $10 increase in airfares ground flights? This is ridiculous!

The most disturbing piece regarding the release of this preliminary report is that Malaysia announced that as of next week the centres where families are staying for support, briefings on the progress of the investigation, etc. are being closed in an effort to get the families of the passengers to go home. This poses a problem for many who live in rural or remote parts of China and Malaysia where there is no television or wireless internet. Families feel that this move isolates them from others who share their fear and grief and is a deliberate attempt by Malaysia to spinter and fracture the cohesiveness and comfort of the family groups that have formed thus thwarting their efforts to remain informed and actively participate in the investigative process.

While I understand that this type of support cannot last indefinitely, this is an unprecedented occurrence. There has been not one shred of evidence found that MH 370 even crashed! And from the report it is clear that Malaysia waited some four hours before anyone clued in to the fact that the plane was lost! Couple that with lies and misinformation, ghastly and insulting public relations and a badly bungled investigative process during the first few weeks, I believe that Malaysia better rethink their strategy regarding the family members of those passengers on flight MH 370.

Finding the plane and caring for the families are all that count....the rest is bureaucratic bullshit and I for one am sick of it!



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