Missing AirAsia plane: strange parallels with MH370
Missing AirAsia plane: strange parallels with MH370
The disappearance of an AirAsia flight between Indonesia and Singapore has, perhaps inevitably, prompted comparisons with the unsolved case of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Flight 370 vanished without a trace on March 8 as it carried 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
An initial multi-national operation to locate the wreckage far off Australia's west coast turned up empty, without a single piece of debris found.
After a four-month hiatus, the search resumed on October 4 with new, more sophisticated equipment. The hunt is ongoing and answers are yet to be found.
Officials initially ruled out terrorism, but conspiracy theories have endured.
Although details of the latest disaster to befall an Asian aircraft are still unfolding, there do already appear to be a number of parallels between the two incidents , beyond the fact that both involved Malaysian airlines.
Pilots discussing the case of AirAsia flight QZ8501 in online forums have pointed out the time lapse between the moment the plane lost contact with air traffic control and the declaration of an emergency.
The Airbus A320-200 took off from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, at 5:31am local time and the last communication between the pilot and Jakarta’s air traffic control was at 6.13am.
All contact was lost by 6.18am, with only the flight plan view remaining on the radar screen.
At 7.08am, air traffic control declared “INCERFA”, meaning that the aircraft’s position was uncertain.
At 7.29am an emergency alert was announced and at 7.55am air traffic control reported “emergency distress.”
Almost 10 months earlier, it was not until nearly four hours of fruitless efforts to locate MH370/MAS370 had passed that officials activated an emergency response effort.
One pilot going by the name Hempy, posting about the AirAsia flight, suggested there were “shades of MAS370” apparent, claiming that “INCERFA would have been declared by 06.26 in any western country.”
The area where the AirAsia aircraft went missing was not far from the Indonesian island naval base at Bangka Belitung.
It remains to be seen whether this will fuel the kind of speculation that followed the disappearance of MH370, which according to one conspiracy theory had landed on Diego Garcia, the British-owned island in the Indian Ocean that is home to a major US military base.
US officials denied the missing airliner was there, but still not everyone was convinced.
There have also been business links between the companies behind the two missing planes.
In 2011, AirAsia and its rival Malaysian Airline System agreed a share swap deal, which they hoped would boost growth.
Tune Air, the parent company of AirAsia, was to exchange 10% of AirAsia shares for 20.5% of MAS stocks.
The two carriers also announced they would be co-operating in areas such as buying aircraft and launching new routes.
But the deal was short-lived: nine months later, the companies scrapped the proposed share swap following pressure from the employees’ union at MAS, who feared such collaboration could spell job losses.
As hopes begin to fade for the passengers of flight QZ8501, their relatives will be praying that their fates, too, do not mirror those of the vanished on board MH370.
Missing AirAsia plane: strange parallels with MH370 - Telegraph
