One jet requested to change their course because of weather, while another one was flying in fine conditions. One did not deviate from its flight plan and stayed in contact until the plane went down, while the other lost contact and continued flying off course for hours. Both were lost but only one has been found. What really happened to cause the Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia flights to disappear? Why was one lost and the other found?
On March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 departed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia headed towards Beijing. The 239 people on board never made it off of the plane alive.
Just ten months later, Air Asia flight 8501 departed from Indonesia headed towards Singapore never arrived: along with the 162 people that were on board. Both flights disappeared in south Asia, causing people to draw parallels between the two tragedies. Although the two planes have similar mysterious circumstances that surround them, one seems to be coming to an end with answers, while another remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries.
The Malaysia Airlines plane lost contact less than an hour after departure without a distress signal or message sent to air traffic controllers.
After the aircraft was lost, foul play began to arise in the theories of what may have happened to the missing jet. Malaysian authorities confirmed the last words heard from the plane, spoken by the pilot or co-pilot were “good night Malaysian three seven zero.” Moments later, the plane’s transponder, the device used to communicate with air traffic control, was turned off as the plane flew into Vietnamese airspace. The flight never checked in with air traffic control in Ho Chi Minh City. Thai military radar confirmed the plane turned west, drawing into question the exact location of where the missing jet may be found.
After the plane went off radar, a satellite above the Indian Ocean detected the plane by seven automatic “handshakes” between the plane and a ground station. The last handshake was a “partial handshake” indicating the airplane requested to log on, which investigators confirmed was normal when a plane’s equipment was powering up after an outage, such as an interruption to its electrical supply. There was no other responses from the aircraft after this point.
The plane’s location, based on these “handshakes” from the satellite, showed the plane was farther west than its intended flight path to Beijing, which is northeast. This indicated that after the plane lost contact with air traffic control, it kept flying for several hours and was off its original course, making the crash more puzzling.
On March 20, a satellite spotted two objects in the south Indian Ocean, determining that must be the place where the plane was missing after the search location was changed several times, but nothing was found. The pilots, crew and passengers were all investigated for a chance a source of foul play could be involved, but so far, authorities have found nothing, even after they searched the pilots’ homes.
Later that year, after requesting a flight plan change because of weather, the Air Asia plane lost contact with air traffic control over the Java Sea while on its way to Singapore from Indonesia on December 28 with 162 people on board.
Instead of having a changing, uncertain and general search area like Malaysia Airlines flight 370 had, authorities determined the search area to be much smaller, therefore increasing its chances of being found.
Search crews first located the fuselage on January 14 in the Java Sea, which was a huge breakthrough in the search for the rest of the scattered pieces and the passengers’ remains. Later in the week, they found the main body of the plane found at the bottom of the Java Sea. The plane’s tail section was lifted from the bottom of the ocean for further inspection, since that is where the black box supposedly remained.
Forty-eight of the 162 passengers and crew have been recovered, with only 34 identified and the rest missing. Those appointed to help with the investigation are currently looking into ways to safely remove the remains from the plane.
The cause of the crash still remains a mystery, but the flight recorders and cockpit voice recorder were recovered and are under investigation in Jakarta. Authorities said the full report could take up to a year.
The question of what exactly happened to the jet is still unanswered. In just the short weeks that the incident happened, the case is already nearing closer to a solved case every day, but Malaysia Airlines flight 370 still is under scrutiny.
Although these two incidents may be easy to draw parallels between, they have very different outcomes. One plane lays discovered on the sea floor, possibly holding the answers to the source of this tragedy. Another plane remains missing, carrying with it the secrets that caused the crash.