Today marks two years since MH370 disappeared from radar with the loss of 239 passengers and crew. That is, if you believe it crashed. The best estimation of the plane's fate is that it accidentally or intentionally veered off course, eventually crashing somewhere in the Indian Ocean but there are others who think the plane safely landed in the Middle East and is sitting safely in a hangar somewhere. Meanwhile other conspiracists believe the plane was abducted by aliens. Wreckage found last year and again last week provide vital clues but without more wreckage being found, including the essential black box flight data recorders, it is likely that the decision will be made to end the search.
“It’s absolutely vital to find this wreckage,' said Al Diehl, a former investigator for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, speaking to reporters from USAToday .
As reported: 'The search will ultimately cover 46,000 square miles of ocean floor. Then they plan to stop.
“In the absence of credible new information that leads to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft, governments have agreed that there will be no further expansion of the search area,” the search group says with its weekly updates.
Daniel O’Malley, spokesman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), which is leading the operation
Dave Gallo, of Columbia University, and who had been involved in the search and discovery of Air France Flight 447 at the bottom of the Atlantic Oceanin 2011 after a two-year search, said the search should continue, perhaps with private groups taking up the challenge if the governments of Australia, Malaysia and China quit.
“You can’t let this go unsettled, not in this day and age when there are thousands of planes criss-crossing the oceans with hundreds of thousands of passengers every single day,” Gallo said. “We need to know what happened.”
Relatives of the missing are desperate for an explanation.
“They want to know what happened to their loved ones,” said Justin Green, a lawyer with the New York firm Kreindler & Kreindler who represents 20 families. “They haven’t had funerals. They haven’t cleaned out rooms of people who were on that airplane. They want answers, and the last thing they want is for this to happen to someone else.”
Some families, without certainty about the fate of the plane, cling to hope that the passengers may still be alive somewhere, said Steven Marks, a Miami lawyer at Podhurst Orseck who represents 40 families.
“I think that will continue until the wreckage is found and the answers are revealed,” Marks said.
Bloomberg report the costs to date of the search to be in the region of US$130 million. Getting buy-in from all the countries currently contributing to the search is complex given the time that has now elapsed and the unknown time frame ahead. As with any resourcing issue, it gets hardeer to justify funding where there is no return, and the money could be used elsewhere.
There are certainly arguments for and against continuing the search.
Should it?
What do you think?
It is proposed that the search for MH370 should continue until the black boxes are retrieved.