It's been nearly 48 hours since Malaysia Airlines MH370 with 239 people on board has gone missing and more questions about its mysterious disappearance are being raised.
The Malaysia Airlines departed from Kuala Lumpur at 12:41 a.m. Saturday (16:41 GMT, Friday) and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6.30 a.m. on Saturday (22:30 GMT, Friday). However, the commercial jetliner went off the radar over Vietnamese airspace.
Interestingly, no distress signals appeared to have been sent by MH370, as well as no wreckage and aircraft malfunction have been identified, raising further questions about what went wrong.
As the search for the missing aircraft continued, two oil slicks in the Gulf of Thailand, which is 90 miles south of Vietnam's Tho Chu Island (same place where MH370 vanished) were found. The oil slicks stretch between six and nine miles. However, there were no signs of the missing plane or any wreckage.
Moreover, reports have surfaced that two of the passengers aboard were traveling on stolen passports, fueling concerns of foul play. One of the stolen passports belonged to Christian Kozel, an Austrian, whose passport was stolen two years ago. The other belonged to Luigi Maraldi, an Italian citizen, whose passport was also stolen last year.
U.S. administration officials in Washington revealed that the authorities were aware of the stolen passports issue and were looking into the situation.
"We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it's still very early and that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking the situation," said an official.
With few answers and questions aplenty, the mystery surrounding the MH370 has led authorities to fear the worst, especially considering that it had been over 24 hours since the aircraft's disappearance. On the basis of the last contact with the pilots, it is being presumed that MH370 crashed off the coast of Vietnam.
"Aircraft do not crash while en route like this," said Paul Hayes, Director of Safety at Flightglobal Ascend, a British-based aviation consultancy. "It is an extremely unusual event."
Aviation experts are of the opinion that an explosion on board may have caused the disaster.
"It was either an explosion, lightning strike or severe decompression," said a former Malaysia Airlines pilot. "The 777 can fly after a lightning strike and even severe decompression. But with an explosion, there is no chance. It is over."
At this juncture it is unclear which country will take the onus to unravel the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the MH370. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization rules, the government of the region where the crash occurred usually has jurisdiction over the wreckage and heads the investigation. Therefore, in this instance it is likely to be Vietnam. However, if the airplane went down in international waters then the U.S. will be involved as well since the aircraft was U.S. built.
The Malaysia Airlines incident will likely reignite the debate whether black boxes on flights should be replaced by satellite-based systems that are equipped to send back telemetry real time.
