Shaken hearts and a ‘handshake’

This article was published in The Ethiopian Herald on 20 March 2014. 

This photo of the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that went missing on 8th March 2014 was published in www.thehindu.com yesterday. The photo was stated as taken by Laurent Errera on 26th December 2011 at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport, France. 

Usual evening chat at our home was almost over. Yet we friends had something grave to share between.  We wanted all of us to be wary of recent glitches of Air India flights. We were possessed with a long list – all newspaper reports. If once it was a piece of tiles covering the aircraft was separated and flew into the air; another time there was a problem of some other sort; then there was an untoward skirmish between the crew and passengers... Majority's opinion was not to opt Air India until its lost repute is regained. But anti Air India comments awakened the chauvinist in me. I made a futile attempt to save the prestige of India’s official carrier. Mine was a common man’s attempt to keep intact the prestige of one’s country. It was an ant’s effort to save the elephant’s dignity. Alas! I could not get even my wife’s support!! Akhila sided with the majority and made a stubborn conclusion that as long as such reports continue to appear in the media, Air India should not be our first priority. With a good sleep in the night, chauvinist in  me went for its usual hibernation.  

One week prior to this discussion, we also heard the news of a co-pilot hijacking an Ethiopian Airlines flight on its way to Italy and landing it at his own in Geneva. The hero of this high drama, after making a rope dive himself from the cockpit of the landed aircraft surrendered before the security personnel and right away sought a Swiss asylum. Later he was adjudged mentally devastated out of his intimate uncle's demise. 

Hardly a couple of weeks later, the shattering news of Malaysian Airlines’ missing flight hit us. The Malaysian aircraft has become a painful mystery. Wherever people with sense exist in this world, the incident continues to be a patch of sorrow in their minds.

I’m more or less a big nothing with technology. My major familiarity with technology these days is limited to driving a car or operating my laptop, mobile or at the most some household gadgets. An induction cooker in the kitchen extremely mesmerizes me. But the reports over the missing aircraft continue to provoke many technological thoughts even in my lay mind. Thanks to myriads of news that appear. 

How large a gap the space-age technology has got to let that flying machine elude! All surveillance mechanisms were annulled before the MH370 got its 239 people onboard land over a thoroughly anonymous tarmac!! 

I always had a conception that the space-age technology has already put the entire world, the skies and the depths of seas under its scrupulous surveillance mechanisms. While reading some defence publications about how Saddam Husain was spotted precisely at his hideout, I thought of a world of no more hideouts. When pilotless ‘Drons’ bomb terrorist hideouts in Pakistan and when a ‘ruthless’ Osama was knocked down accurately by a ‘righteous’ Obama, my humble imagination drew the picture of an inescapable and inevitable mesh of technology that has already been spread over humanity. 

But the Malaysian aircraft has devastated those technology towers of my layman imaginations. The missing aeroplane has taught me that the technology’s mesh is too large at least for a big jet to zoom into a world of obscurity. 

'Handshake' 

Even after the civilian air control room lost transponder contact with the aircraft, the Malaysian military radars could spot the flight as flying far above the heights told for it! Even after the Malaysian military radars lost a clue of the aircraft, there was satellite named, Inmarsat that was collecting beeps from the flying aircraft. The satellite was just sensing a partly functional transponder flying in the sky. Many speculate that the transponder system of the missing aircraft was partly made inoperative by someone in the aircraft. No location was recorded, no human voice was received, but the satellite continued to sense the flying of a plane at an interval of each hour or so. Such hourly connection between a flying aircraft and a remote satellite is known as ‘handshake’, a newspaper quotes US scientists. 

What a satellite’s ‘handshake’ could offer in search operations? When the satellite establishes a 'handshake' with a moving aircraft, automatically its radars twist/turn in the direction of the aircraft’s position to make it either receive a message or send one. In case of the missing Malaysian flight, no message was sent or received. But the ‘handshakes’ repeated at every one hour or so. Now the scientists can check at which angle and how many times the Inmarsat’s antenna turned to establish 'handshake' with the missing plane. This would give enough information to know where in this vast sky was the aircraft when it was sensed by the Inmarsat. 

The scientists have already prepared two broad arcs based on the antenna positions of the satellite. One arc begins from northern Thailand and ends somewhat over Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan; the second arc begins from Indonesia and ends over southern Indian Ocean. See, how extensive the matter is!

If the flight has sunk into the sea, it is already time for the remnants and human bodies not tied with seatbelts to float over. Had the flight being engulfed by Indian Ocean, the vastness and the undercurrents would be among the biggest challenges.  Now the speed, force and direction of the sea currents should be analysed to make estimates about probable position of debris. 

Reports say that shortly before the plane disappeared, its Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid said with a conspicuous calmness ‘all right, good night’. Was the calmness prelude to a catastrophe? Behind the mystery curtains, could there be something to smile? Something to swab the tears? 

News articles on the missing plane is elevating our thoughts over the skies and lowering at times into the depths of vast oceans...! Ashore, in reality, I’m perplexed... Which science would finally spread an arch of solace for the aching hearts!! 

K.P. Sivakumar