Black Box Found

With the recent location of the black boxes, news about the latest air traffic crash in Indonesia will soon draw to a close. However, we are reminded of several glaring problems as we look back.

For one thing, the island nation, the world’s largest Muslim country, is not too advanced technologically or procedurally. Handling a missing plane requires complex protocols, especially regarding timing and notifying the victims, and they still haven’t gotten it right.

The result is a lot of angry family members. At least this time, they were able to find the wreckage and the black box. That will take a lot of pressure off, and even that faraway nation should be able to interpret the results.

For a while, though, I thought we were going to have another Bermuda triangle. The conspiracy theorists were working overtime. One missing plane is about the quota, at least within the space of a year.

People forget, however, that our world primarily consists of oceans, and looking for a plane can be compared to finding a needle in a haystack. We need to update our technology to address this on every flying object.

Of course, the depressing thing about airplane crashes is that there are never any survivors. To think of a plane going into a tailspin and falling to certain death from 30,000 feet or more is chilling.

Everyone knows that they are about to die, and I’m sure there’s a lot of screaming and worse. At least, there may be some finality for the families now.