Malaysia Airlines have been in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons of late, and through no fault of their own. Having had one plane, the MH370 go AWOL in March, flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and resulting in around 239 deaths, the airline has faced further trauma in the form of having another plane, MH17, shot down by Russian terrorists whilst taking its usual route over Ukraine. This crash has resulted in a further 298 deaths, causing 537 deaths in total, spanning a time period of only four months.
Although now four months ago, the disappearance of flight MH370 in March is never far from our minds. Rare is it that a plane can disembark and never be found – but the chances of recovering the flight are now lower than ever. New reports claim that passengers are likely to have suffocated after the plane crashed into the ocean on autopilot; although, truth be told, nobody can be positive that this is the case. At this stage, everything is speculation, although the death toll of 239 is definite, and clearly devastating for the families of those deceased. The disaster, which led to mass searches to find the missing flight, is now suspected to have fallen further South than originally anticipated – and Australian officials believe that searches need to continue on a 60,000 square kilometre area further South in the Indian Ocean – although, of course, there is no guarantee that here we will find the answers we seek.
However, although this will forever go down in the record books as a disaster, there is, of course, chance that it wasn’t an accident. Having looked closer into the course of the flight, officials have discovered a few abnormalities – including absence of communications and no steady flight path as well as other deviations to correct and proper procedures. Flights go down for many reasons, but this one, which was diverted thousands of kilometres off route into one of the most remote areas of the planet, is suspected to have been a deliberate and planned attack. Pilot Zaharie Shah is said to be a prime suspect after files on his computer suggest that he practised landing on small airfields in the Indian Ocean – where the flight was last detected by satellites. Sadly, though, we’ll never know for sure. Let’s all just pray against the odds and hope that the missing airline is found in order to uncover more vital evidence.
Devastatingly, after this major incident, another hit came as the Malaysian flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a ground-to-air missile. This detonation, which saw the demise of flight MH17, occurred only four months after the first incident, and will prove to cause further problems for the airline, who are speculated to be struggling now after the death of 298 more passengers. The flight apparently ‘exploded’ shortly after the hit, meaning that passengers and crew had little time to register what was happening to them in their final moments. Malaysia Airlines released a statement saying: ‘With immediate effect, all European flights operated by Malaysia Airlines will be taking alternative routes avoiding the usual route’. This, of course, is set to avoid future trauma, but the airline are still said to be under major distress following another huge disaster so soon. According to Mohsin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank, ‘in the history of aviation, no airline has gone through two tragedies of this magnitude in a span of four months’. However, I’m sure that I can safely say, this is a historical record that the airline didn’t want, or intend, to break.
Reportedly, among those killed in this incident are 150 Dutch, 27 Australians and 9 Brits – meaning that this trauma is widespread and affects people almost all over the world. However, as the news has become worldwide, and everyone knows of these incidents, it is likely that more and more people will now choose other companies over Malaysia Airlines, on the simple basis that they’ve had an unfortunate bout of bad luck. As a result, analysts are predicting that the airline won’t survive past the first half of 2015, having already suffered massive losses in relation to the incident. This, paired with dwindling custom, could send the Airline under – but, only time will tell.
Shares in the airline have already dropped by 35 percent since the first incident, and are predicted to take another dip once people have the chance to react to July’s disaster. This may be the beginning of a slippery slope for Malaysia Airways but lets hope that they find a way to recover and finally see some light at the end of the tunnel.
References:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/recap-malaysia-airlines-plane-crash-3875008
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Kelly Smith
19 and studying English Literature and Creative Writing at Northumbria University.
