An enduring mystery

Four years after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which was flying between Kuala lumpur and Beijing, the Australian ‘60 Minutes’ news show is all but claiming that the commander of the plane Zaharie Ahmad Shah effectively did a murder suicide. The show with several aviation experts which analysed the flight pattern of the aircraft including the turns over Shah’s hometown of Penang as well as the area he plane was flown to, one of the most remote areas in the world seem to confirm that theory. It is still remarkable that as a species, in today’s day and age that we can lose something as large as a Boeing 777. At the same time it is horribly disheartening to hear, at least speculate, about a pilot suicide theory. These cases are not isolated anymore, the year after MH370, a Germanwings plane was flown into the French Alps deliberately by its co-pilot Andreas lubitz. Earlier crashes of an Egyptian, Mozambican and a Singaporean airliners can also be attributed to pilot suicide, and in all cases the pilots involved were suffering from depression due to various causes. 

But in the other cases, even though some investigating agencies questioned the suicide theories, the crashes and wreckage were found and the families experienced some sort of closure thanks to that. The case of MH370 endures because the aircraft has not been found. The new Malaysian government led by the country’s grand old man of politics Dr. Mahatir Mohamed must continue the search for the aircraft, because until we have the answers or have some clue of what happened we cannot put MH370 off our minds and quieten the conspiracy theorists who claim everything from aliens to the American Central Intelligence Agency that captured the aircraft.