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Major lessons from a tragic mystery

Much of the world has been trying to follow streaming conflicting reports on one of the greatest aviation mysteries, ever since the Wright brothers opened a new world of travel, by getting their primitive experimental craft to leave the earth for a matter of seconds, over a hundred years ago.

Since then, the aircraft gradually evolved into machines of war, and also a fascinating new form of travel for people around the world. After two world wars, the aircraft slowly took centre stage as a means to visit parts of the world where previous journeys took weeks or months by ship.

Constant modifications improved safety standards, and although air travel today is described as extremely safe, it was not achieved without mishaps and tragic incidents over the years, as modern science sought to make air travel as safe as possible.

Millions travel safely every day, and that is a credit to international guidelines to ensure nothing is left to chance, in keeping passengers and crew safe, in a sky with thousands of planes criss-crossing the earth every minute of the day.

However despite space age technology in modern airliners that have triple back up systems for potential failure, the Malaysian airline tragedy has baffled experts around the world, and the real answer could be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean in the memory brain of the aircraft, commonly known as the black box.

As the days slip by with no clear picture of what could have possibly happened to MH370 out Kuala Lumpur, headed for China, speculation with reams of hypothetical scenarios kept journalists scrambling in a maze of confusion, as they attempted to keep the story as accurate as possible, without crossing the line of inserting rumours for sensational purposes.

As the mystery continued to deepen, relatives of victims demanding information from Malaysian officials became enraged as they blamed the airline and Government officials for not revealing all they knew about what happened to the flight.

Some went as far as to accuse the airline of murder in moments of heated exchanges.

Much of the world watched with astonishment, as all this played out before the global spotlight of the electronic press.

As a frantic search for the missing aircraft began, something else also started to unfold that would see cooperation between nations that were not the best of friends in an effort to seek answers to a tragedy that left shattered families across the globe.

Finding the aircraft became vital in the search for answers as to why an airliner would change course, without any call that something was wrong.

Following the last words, “all right goodnight’ from the cockpit, experts are wrestling with every type of potential theory that includes massive mechanical failure, fire, terrorism, with even the mental state of pilots up for questioning.

However all this is pure speculation, as the truth about what happened remains a mystery.

It should be pointed out that both pilots had an immaculate record for performance.

As this story is yet to fully unfold, there are hard lessons in how information is handled on matters of public concern.

Although the Malaysian Government came under fire for being too slow off the ground in getting information to relatives, some observers concluded that they were ill prepared to deal with an event on this scale, and this left many victims in the dark.

Other observers felt Malaysian officials were caught off guard, and were in the dark themselves. It was a sad time for everyone.

Now with international cooperation from leading nations including the United States, a search for the missing aircraft is one of the biggest operations of its kind in the history of aviation.

Without the black box and whatever it is able to reveal, flight MH370 could be a mystery for ever.

The real lesson out of this, could be that cooperation should always override differences when the welfare of people and their lives is held as paramount.

Time is running out in trying to locate the black box through its beeping signal which is activated by exposure to water.

Although it could take some time, investigators still hope with new deep sea devices, eventually it will be brought to the surface and will provide an answer to this so far unexplained mystery.