Friday 28 March 2014

Malaysia 370-Three weeks On.


Three weeks after the disappearance of MH 370 some parts of this very large jigsaw are beginning to come into better focus.

Through the fog , emotions, rumours, millions of words from speculative "experts" and despite continuing uncertainty about almost everything, five things things in particular now stand in better perspective.

First it is doubtful if anyone would have done much better than the much criticised Malaysians in the handling  the public relations aspects of the tragedy. Nobody would ever have got it wholly  right even in the western world of professional spinners and high technology media. In the world of vastly different oriental cultures, western media and commentators in particular have been sharply critical . This stance ignores the reality that  with few facts or certainties to work on and no sighting of the aircraft, it was always going to be a Herculean task to keep such a large number of affected families informed and looked after. Any large gathering of dissatisfied and unhappy people easily takes off in unpredictable or unreasonable directions. It's bad enough when an airline has a delay.  Self selected vociferous leaders and groups thrust themselves forward and vie for dominance. Voices of calm and reason are pushed aside  and go  unheard. When foreign liability lawyers add themselves to the mix additional, unwelcome pressures start to work. They aren't there out of love and sympathy. A general necessity in such situations is to talk to those affected in small , separated groups. It has been impossible to achieve this in either Beijing or Kuala Lumpur , so the Malaysians have had to do the best they could with very large ,increasingly suspicious and hostile, groups. The mainland Chinese in particular have gone deep into denial and see through whole affair as an anti-Chinese act . That doesn't give a lot of chance for calm and dignified mass meetings. The press conferences were lifted to the highest government level to give them the necessary " face" and gravitas. This reached a peak with the Prime Minister announcing this week that with enormous regret the aircraft, its passengers and crew must now be assumed to be lost. His delivery was clear, apologetic, thoughtful and above all sympathetic. From here on though most of the daily briefings, entirely correctly,will be led by the airline although it is likely that anything crucial such as the confirmation that wreckage has been retrieved and identified as belonging to MH 370 will again be subject of a top level government announcement to the families and  the media. Presented with an almost impossible task of simultaneously managing and organising the incoming flow of military, air traffic control and  private satellite data, keeping confidences and protecting sources where necessary and demanded ,then as quickly as possible distilling it all into public statements, Malaysia hasn't done badly.They were not sure footed at the start but once they had a few days behind them they become better organised. Mainly through a lack of understanding about the needs and power of global presentation ,they had a few PR disasters. Allowing people to be dragged out of meetings (probably with the intention of avoiding mass hysteria) was the low point since which with more grip and almost certainly more advice they have done much better. The Prime Minister's own speech would rate as excellent  anywhere.

Secondly the wide and often wild speculation as to what happened  has broadly settled into two possibilities. One is an extremely well planned suicide, with everything done and timed to remove identification of the aircraft's movements, literally take it off radar and minimise to a brief few minutes while crossing the Thai/Malaysian peninsular in the middle of the night any opportunity for any one to alert friends on the ground by using a mobile phone. The other is a serious malfunction probably centred around the front of the aircraft which knocked out communications, oxygen and other systems and left the crew unable to do anything other than try to turn back or towards Langkawi or Kuala Lumpur before they lost consciousness.  Our own money is on the latter. Establishing what did happen will be enormously difficult but in view of the enormity of the event there is every chance of eventual success. Location and recovery of the black boxes won't be easy and will be more of a problem if they are not located before their batteries give out, probably in about nine days time. Even if found ,the Cockpit Voice Recorder -CVR,- which is on a continuous self erasing 2 hour loop will have overwritten the crucial period between the last routine call and the time when the aircraft turned onto its final south westerly course. Forensic technology may still be able to recover something from it. Certainly everyone will want to find and retrieve it if they possibly can.

Next, some mostly unsung heroes are already emerging . First up could still be the two pilots if they do emerge as having had to contend with an unimaginable and impossible situation. Next come the large numbers of airline staff and others who have worked with the families and friends of the crew and passengers and tried to give them the support they need . Then there are the intelligence ,satellite and computer experts , photo interpreters and mathematicians who have bust everything to try to find the aircraft and anything that may have belonged to it. They will not have had much sleep since they first got their calls. Finally there are the crews of the search aircraft and ships. There are internet video clips of the young Australian Orion Commander whose words of  enthusiastic dedication to the job  deservedly went viral .He is utterly on top of his job, loves it and is unstintingly up for challenge of this mission. He radiated confidence and personified professionalism and expertise. He was justly applauded. Interestingly he hasn't been on screen since. Hopefully his superiors were not miffed by his sudden fame. He did a great deal for the image of Australia, Australians, its armed forces and air crew.

Fourthly comes the search operation, its organisation and coordination. Malaysia sensibly delegated this to Australia ,the country nearest to the presumed site of the eventual crash site. Despite being grounded by weather on two days and the US aircraft also having two days on the ground for crew rest (why didn't it bring more with it?) , the patrols have done well in difficult conditions and flying weather. The one disadvantage of aircraft is that while they can see and record things they can't pick them up from the water. That needs ships, lots of them ,and helicopters but the search force has been very short of them. Australia has sent two and China  now five or six, one from the Antarctic and the others from China. Why not more and none from India or well equipped South Africa, around a week's sailing away?

Finally for the future, there are some massive intelligence, technical, and procedural questions and  lessons to come out of all this. All sorts of black holes in radar and communications cover have come to light. Many of them may not be admitted but all will get attention. Then there are the questions of how much automation or ground intervention could do to rescue aircraft in trouble in flight, especially when the crew can't or won't intervene. These are relevant whatever the facts of the MH 370 case. Even if it does turn out to be a suicide case, - and those are the most difficult/even impossible to predict, -most  aircraft losses are not. As in our previous post, technology does have some possible  answers to the situation where the crew can not function or even be in the cockpit. These need urgent examination and delivery. Then there is the question of how to  mobilise and organise a massive international  maritime search in the shortest possible time, what resources are vital and how quickly they, particularly ships and helicopters, can get to the scene.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.