| ABC News | - |
The
disappearance Sunday of AirAsia Flight 8501 was the third air incident
this year involving Malaysia, where budget carrier AirAsia in based.
Missing Flight Is 3rd Malaysia-Linked Incident
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MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT 370
The disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 on March 8
triggered one of modern aviation's most perplexing mysteries. Flight
370, carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, vanished without a
trace, sending searchers across vast areas of the Indian Ocean. 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 hunt resumed Oct. 4 with new, more
sophisticated equipment, including sonar, video cameras and jet fuel
sensors aboard three ships that will spend up to a year in a desolate
stretch of the sea, about 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) west of
Australia.
The 60,000-square-kilometer (23,000-square-mile) search area lies along
what is known as the "seventh arc" ? a stretch of ocean where
investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed, based
largely on an analysis of transmissions between the plane and a
satellite.
Officials initially ruled out terrorism, but conspiracy theories have
endured. Until the wreckage is found and examined, it will be impossible
to say for sure what happened to the plane.
———
MALAYSIA ARLINES FLIGHT 17
All 298 passengers and crew aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were
killed when the Boeing 777 was shot down over rebel-held eastern Ukraine
on July 17.
The plane was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when, according to
Dutch air crash investigators, it was likely struck by multiple
"high-energy objects" that some aviation experts say is consistent with a
missile strike.
Hunks of the wreckage were transported to the Netherlands by trucks and
will be reassembled in a hangar. However, international teams seeking to
retrieve remains and salvage evidence have had difficulty reaching the
crash site due to clashes between Ukrainian government and
Russian-backed separatist rebels. Six victims have yet to be identified.
A high-ranking rebel officer has acknowledged that rebels shot down the
plane with a ground-to-air missile after mistaking it for a Ukrainian
military plane. Russian media, however, claim the plane was shot down by
a Ukrainian jet.
The Dutch Safety Board's final report may rule out one or the other scenario, but it will not seek to attribute responsibility.
Dutch prosecutors, meanwhile, are coordinating an international criminal
investigation into the downing, but have yet to name any suspects or
say when or how charges might be brought.
———
AIR ASIA FLIGHT 8501
An Indonesia AirAsia flight with 162 people aboard, most of them
Indonesians, disappeared Sunday over the Java Sea, triggering a search
involving several Southeast Asian nations.
Contact with Flight 8501 was lost about 42 minutes after the
single-aisle, twin-engine A320-200 jet took off from Surabaya airport in
Indonesia for Singapore.
It was not immediately clear whether it had any satellite tracking devices on board.
Malaysia-based AirAsia, owned by Malaysian businessman Tony Fernandes,
has dominated cheap travel in the region for years. AirAsia Malaysia
owns 49 percent of its subsidiary, AirAsia Indonesia. It said the plane
was on the submitted flight plan route when the pilots requested
deviation due to weather before communication was lost.
AirAsia, which has a presence in most of Southeast Asia and recently in
India, has never lost a plane before and has a good safety track record.
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