By Mayank Jain:
The world has progressed to new levels of technological prowess and digital warfare of all kinds and the problems we are dealing with include spying and tracking of whereabouts of common citizens but it all comes to a halt when a whole plane full of 227 people goes missing in a rather short 6 hours route.
Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, also dubbed as China Southern Airlines 748 flew under normal circumstances from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia towards Beijing, China for a journey with 227 people aboard and 12 crew members but lost contact with the Air Traffic Controller just 40 minutes after the takeoff.
The flight has been out of grid ever since and there have been all sorts of theories floating on the social media about what might be one of the biggest mysteries of this year. The Malaysian government has no clue whatsoever on the whereabouts of the flight. Adding to the mystery was the revelation that two people boarded the flight with stolen passports which fanned the theory of a terrorist or hijacking attack but the government has ruled out the possibility after tracking down identities of those two. A wide spread search operation has been launched that spans more than 30,000 square kilometers around the Gulf of Thailand, the Strait of Malacca (which is one of the busiest ocean highways in the world)and the South China Sea.
The Search and Rescue operation (SAR) is being carried out in the Vietnam waters as well where two oil spills were noticed by the government 140 kilometers off the coast and debris was also spotted in the sea.
The Malaysian government also finds itself in a tight spot right now as people are angry about the whole thing and a meeting with government raised more questions than answers. The government has responded by spending support and caregiver teams called “Go Teams” to support the families of those aboard the flight.
Indian Navy ships that are patrolling in the Straits of Malacca have joined the SAR operations and the satellite Rukmini or GSAT-7 has also been activated to pick up any clues that might lead to the missing Boeing flight.
The normal circumstances with no reports of technical glitches, bad weather or other problems of any sort make the incident a little more strange as there is hardly any evidence to attach to the theories and mounting international attention on the search operations have turned it into an issue of international prestige for the Malaysian carrier.
It is to be noted that all 12 crew members were Malaysian and most of the people onboard the flight were Chinese.
The agency, DigitalGlobe has turned to internet users for help in detecting clues that could point about the missing aircraft. The imagery of the ocean and area in consideration has been uploaded on the website where people can sign up and immediately start pouring over and look for signs. The crowd sourced search and rescue operation is being done to ensure faster results and an estimated 3200 square kilometers of imagery has already been published by now.