QZ8501 – Another statistic in air accident?

When news of the missing Air Asia QZ8501 hit the airwaves, it was greeted with sadness that another bad accident happened. It was just that except for the shock and the thoughts of the grief of the affected members related to those on board. Painful yes, and the attention would be at the families and friends and how to help them cope through this period of uncertainties, and a likely tragedy. A couple of hours after the aircraft was declared missing, and missing the ETD at Changi, everyone was preparing for the worst. It looked that way, and any hope was for miracles to happen.

36 hours have passed, the dust settled, and the picture becomes clearer. Bits and pieces of the story came together. The families and friends are not going to have high hopes by now. What appeared to be another air incident is starting to look not so ordinary again. The initial failure of a May Day call could have been due to many reasons, lightning strike or an air explosion that did not give the pilot a chance to make the mandatory call they were trained to do in an emergency.

Scores of ships and aircraft have been searching the area for more than one and a half days and came up with nothing. No debris, no oil slick and most of all, the fail safe beeping from the black boxes were also not detected. This is mysterious. The boxes were programmed to do exactly this, to beep when in the water or there is a crash. This is one of the most vital functions of the black boxes, to lead the way to the crash site, to help and facilitate in locating the aircraft and the boxes. What is happening?

To reconstruct, there are some uncanny similarities to MH370. The aircraft was approaching mid point between Jakarta and Singapore and an air traffic handover was expected soon. It was in the early hours of the morning, in darkness. The aircraft made changes in heading and flight levels though the circumstances in this case were established, due to bad weather. And the aircraft was gone and no longer on radar. There was no May Day call in both incidents. And early searches proved in vain, no wreckage, no debris, no oil slicks. Now to look at the air traffic communication and radar recorders to determine the exact sequence of events and what transpired between pilot and air traffic controller. No terrorist agencies claiming responsibility for a job done.

Some of the dissimilarities, so far nothing confirmed, were that there was no mad or suicidal pilot flying the aircraft. No sensitive equipment on board or confirmed yet. No cargoes of mangosteens mentioned. The passenger manifest was mostly Indonesians, no sensitive PRC Chinese scientists that could link to international espionage and intrigue.

Here are some unusual news bits. An Indonesian who was supposed to be on the flight but cancelled his trip, received a strange farewell message from his friends on board saying ‘Goodbye forever’. Was this meant to be a cheeky message among friends or something else? Another piece of news, a sister of a passenger received a message saying that aircraft had landed in Belitung East and all passengers were safe. This latter message should be easy to confirm and by now when nothing is heard, is likely to be a hoax.

Kopi Level - Red