Hostile Downing of Civilian Airplanes

I do not know who is to blame for the tragic crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government blames the pro-Russian separatists for bringing down the plane and they blame Kiev's forces. What we know for sure is that 298 innocent people aboard died at no fault of their own being the victims of one of the several conflicts on our planet.

In commercial aircraft cabins are pressurized to 8,000 feet above sea level, an altitude that lowers the amount of oxygen in the blood by about 4 percentage points. This may lead to some discomfort but no ill health effects for persons in good health.  If a gradual decompression occurs it may go unnoticed as instruments can only detect it. This type of cabin decompression may result from the failure of the crew to pressurize as an aircraft climbs to cruising altitudes. This is what happened in 2005 in Helios Airways flight 522, when the pilots failed to maintain proper cabin pressure resulting in loss of consciousness for crew and passengers due to hypoxia.  The blast from the SA-11 one of the most modern surface-to-air missile that hit flight MH 17, likely caused uncontrolled total decompression and dramatic deceleration rendering crew and passengers on board instantly unconscious or dead.  Research has found that trauma from a mid-air explosion occurs from the force of the blast, the massive deceleration when a plane cruising 500 miles an hour suddenly stops in mid-air, and the loss of cabin pressure that causes hypoxia within seconds at 33,000 feet, leading to loss of consciousness and/or death before the plane’s impact from crashing on the ground.

What is clear that MH 17 is the deadliest accident of a civilian passenger plane being shot down in modern times. Sadly, there is a long history of passenger airplanes that were shot down due to military force. Here are some of the worst events:

In 1954, a Cathay Pacific C-54 Skymaster carrying 19 passengers and crew was flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong when a Chinese fighter plane off the coast of Hainan Island shot it down. Ten people died.  China said it had mistaken the plane for a military aircraft on an attack mission.

In 1955, seven crewmembers and 51 passengers were killed when El Al flight 402 headed to Tel Aviv from Vienna strayed into Bulgarian airspace, an Eastern bloc country.  It was intercepted by two Bulgarian fighter planes that shot it down.

In 1973, a passenger aircraft heading to Cairo from the Libyan capital Tripoli got lost due to bad weather - a sandstorm - drifted into Israeli airspace.  Missiles from two Israeli Phantom fighters hit the Libyan Airlines flight 114 plane and led it to crash land in the dunes of the Sinai desert. Only five of the 113 people on board survived.

On June 27, 1980, an Itavia Airlines flight 780 plane left the northern Italian city of Bologna for Palermo, in Sicily. Wreckage of the plane was found in the Tyrrhenian Sea. There were no survivors among the 81 on board. Initial theories suggested a terrorist bomb blast on board, but subsequent investigations concluded the plane was likely caught in the midst of a dogfight between NATO fighter jets and Libyan MIGs.

In 1983, two Sukhoi SU-15 jets intercepted Korean Air Lines flight 007 from New York City to Seoul, after it had veered 800 miles off course and had entered Soviet air space. A missile strike sent the plane into the Sea of Japan as it was judged to be a spy plane resulting in 269 fatalities. Initially, Soviet Union denied knowledge of the incident. However, the pilot and Soviet leaders later admitted knowing that it was a civilian plane but insisted it could have been on a spy mission as it refused to change course or follow the soviet fighters and land as instructed.

In 1988, the United States Navy guided missile from USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air flight 655 from Tehran to Dubai.  All 290 on board died. The plane was mistaken for an F-14 fighter plane that had been sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution. Iran condemned the incident, calling it a "criminal act” while the US insisted it was a accident. The US has never formally apologized for the attack, but in 1996 agreed on a settlement of $66 million paid to the families of the victims.

In 1993, three civilian planes belonging to Transair Georgia were hit by missiles, killing 136 people altogether. Abkhazian rebel missiles hit two planes, with 27 people aboard one and 108 on the other. A third plane came under fire as it was boarded, leaving one crewmember dead.

In 2001, 78 passengers and crewmembers were killed when Ukraine accidentally shot down a Siberian Airlines flight 1812, sending it plummeting into the Black Sea.  A S-200 rocket hit it during military exercises.  The plane was on route from Tel Aviv, Israel to Novosibirsk. Ukraine officials denied responsibility for the incident.  However, they later admitted that its military had mistakenly shot the plane during training exercises.

In 2014, the Malaysian Airlines flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was flying over Ukraine when it disappeared from radar.  According to Malaysia Airlines, flight MH 17 departed Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport at 10:15 GMT on 17 July and was due to arrive at Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 22:10 GMT.  The airline lost contact four hours later at 14:15 GMT.  There were 283 passengers and 15 crewmembers aboard the Boeing-777. The crash of MH 17, in which 298 died, is the latest and deadliest in the series of such tragic incidents and hopefully the last one.  As in similar events there are many touching stories as the Dutch father who lost his only teenage daughter who wrote an open letter to President Putin.  In recent days hundreds of flowers have been laid outside Departures 3 at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam in remembrance of the victims of flight MH 17.

Two additional crashes in the days that followed that of TransAsia airlines ATP 72 and Air Algerie AH 5017 together with the mysterious disappearance of flight MH 370 raised questions about the safety of air travel in the lay press.  According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) 3.1 billion travellers flew on 32 million flights in 2013. During the entire year there were 90 accidents that resulted to 9 deaths.  This makes flying on commercial airlines clearly the safest way to travel by far.

It is with sadness that I join in grief the relatives and millions of non-relatives alike and dedicate this writing in the memory of the 298 innocent victims of flight MH 17.

What Caused the Mysterious Disappearance of MH370?

Flying is one of the safest forms of transportation.  It is safer than walking or driving or bicycling or boating, according to the US National Center for Health Statistics.  Studies from the US Department of Transportation and the University of Michigan show that flying is 29-33 times safer than driving.  According to the US Federal Aviation Administration’s database pilot error is the most common cause of accidents.  Although people believe that all crew and passengers perish in an accident, this far from the truth.  Of the 53,487 people involved in airplane crashes 51,207 survived based on data collected between 1983 and 2000 by the National Transportation Safety Board, a survival rate of 95.7 percent.  In 2011, there were 31 accidents in the US, with no fatalities, in a year of more than 17 million flight hours.

An incredible number of theories have been advanced in the effort to explain Malaysian’s flight MH370 disappearance.  Some are credible while others border on the ridiculous.  I will present those I consider credible:

1.    Catastrophic structural failure of the aircraft may have caused decompression and incapacitation of crew and passengers due to lack of oxygen.  Although one of the aircraft's wings was damaged in the past, it was repaired and the aircraft had passed several inspections after that incident successfully. This particular model -Boeing 777- has an impressive safety record and the only recorded accident at San Francisco's airport, in 2013, was due to pilot's error.  U.S. officials report that the the plane's two communication systems -data reporting and transponder- were shutdown at 1:07am and 1:21am separately.  This information makes catastrophic structural failure unlikely. 

2.    Pilot's error is highly unlikely as both pilots were experienced and skillful.

3.    Weather related failure is highly unlikely as the reported weather conditions in the area were good.

4.    Terrorist act.  A large explosive device can cause an airplane’s disintegration with parts spread over a large area but none have been found as of today.  At the time of the last communication, made halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam, the plane had reached high altitude and was off the primary radar.  A military radar recorded an abrupt change of the course from northbound to westbound. It is likely that the blips observed on the radar were pieces of a disintegrating plane flown to different directions.  Recent information reveals that the plane was sending signals to a satellite for four hours after it went missing.  The plane could have flown on automatic pilot for thousand of miles even without anybody at the controls.

5.    Pilot suicide.  While exceedingly rare for a pilot to kill himself — and everyone else on a plane — there are several well documented cases.  I will mention only few.  In November 2013, the Mozambique Airlines flight 470 went down in Namibia.   The cause of the crash was a mystery as the plane was only one year old, flown by an experienced pilot, in good weather.   According to cockpit voice recordings, the co-pilot left to use the bathroom, and when he returned, he found the door shut. Inside, the pilot had switched the plane’s altitude reading from 38,000 feet to ground level, and a recording of someone pounding on the door of the cockpit as the plane plummeted was made. Investigators later concluded the plane had crashed because of intentional actions of the pilot.  In 1999, the Cairo-bound Egypt Air flight 990 plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean. During the plane’s tailspin, its pilot, whispered in Arabic, “I rely on God,” traditionally uttered moments before death.  In 1997, Silk Air Flight 185 took off from Indonesia, bound for Singapore. Thirty-five minutes later, the aircraft mysteriously and suddenly dove vertically into Musi River in Sumatra. All on board perished.  While only audio recordings and black box data about the position and aircraft’s mode of flying such as sustained nose down without engine malfunction can lead experts to a conclusion that the pilot may have committed suicide. 

The lack of radio communication with the ground as the plane may have continued flying for hours and the lack of transponder sending info as of its location and altitude are suggestive of an act of terrorism  or pilot's suicide, as the plausible scenarios for the mysterious disappearance of flight MH370. 

Malaysia Airlines said today it would retire the flight codes MH370 and MH371 "as a mark of respect" to the people on board its missing passenger jet. 

We, the people, will keep the families of the crew and passengers of MH370 in our thoughts and prayers. 

A Sad Day for World's Aviation

Flight MH370 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew aboard, went missing on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.  It is presumed to have crashed off the Vietnamese coast.  Search and rescue operations were initiated by many nations.  Vietnamese pilots report two large oil slicks in the region of the presumed crash.  I am writing this post as a memorial to those who perished and to express my sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones.

The deadliest aviation-related disaster of any kind, considering fatalities on both airplanes and on the ground, was the destruction of World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  On that morning two hijacked airplanes crashed into the towers destroying and killing 2,752, the vast majority of them occupants and or emergency personnel responding to the disaster. In addition, 184 were killed on the hijacked plane that crashed into the Pentagon and 40 were killed on the fourth hijacked plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field.   The total number of fatalities that day was 2,977.

The collision between two 747 airplanes that occurred on March 27, 1977 on the runway of Tenerife North Airport, on Tenerife, one of the Canary islands caused 583 fatalities, and is the deadliest accident in aviation history. 

The following is partial list of major air-disasters of the last 30 years.

The crash of Japan Airlines 123, on August 12, 1985 due to an explosive decompression made the 747 uncontrollable and caused the demise of 520 passengers, which is the highest number of fatalities in a single aircraft accident

On 25 July 2000, Air France 4590, a Concorde flight, crashed, resulting in the death of 109 people on board, as well as 4 people on the ground. Although Concorde had a very good safety record, this event was the beginning of the end for supersonic plane.  

On 31 October 1999, Egypt Air 990, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 217 people on board. The National Transportation Safety Board report concluded the First Officer intentionally dove the aircraft into the ocean.

On 12 November 1996, a mid-air collision between Saudia 763 and Air Kazakhstan 1907 was the result of the Kazakh pilot flying lower than the assigned altitude. All 349 passengers and crew on board the two aircraft died.

On 17 July 1996, TWA 880, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board. 

In Greek mythology, Icarus (Ancient Greek: Ικαρος) is the son of Daedalus, a talented Athenian craftsman, who built the Labyrinth for King Minos to house the Minotaur.   While father and son attempted to escape Crete with feathers attached to their arms, Icarus ignored his father instructions not to fly too close to the sun that caused melting of the wax and made him to fall into the sea and drown.  The nearby island, Ikaria and the sea were named after him.  Icarus is the first man who flew and the first air fatality.