Ten years after an airliner vanished – what allowed it to disappear from radar isn’t fixed
Malaysian Airlines 370 could happen again. There is still no sure way to track an airliner with a madman in the cockpit.
Ten years ago today, Malaysian Airlines flight 370 departed Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, checked in with an en-route center, then vanished without a trace. No wreckage was ever found, 239 souls lost.
Just after that terrible moment (that is, 10 years ago) I wrote an analysis for the New York Times showing the four hijacked aircraft of September 11th had something eerily in common with the missing Malaysian plane – transponders turned off as the cascades of terror began.
Graphic by Brian Stauffer, for the New York Times.
The subject was familiar to me. In the wake of 9-11 the Council on Foreign Relations published a report, How Did This Happen? I wrote the aviation security chapter, concluding the big flaws of commercial flying were flimsy cockpit doors and transponders that can be silenced.
The flimsy cockpit door problem quickly was remediated. When the Malaysian Airlines flight vanished, my Times analysis expressed outrage that 13 years after 9-11, transponders still could be muted, so air traffic controllers don’t know where a jetliner is. I wrote that in the aftermath of 9-11,
“I would have bet my life’s savings the transponder, which broadcasts an aircraft’s location and identity, would be re-engineered to prevent bad actors from turning such units off. Instead nothing was done. Almost 13 years later, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 sparked a lengthy worldwide search when the aircraft disappeared after its transponder was turned off.”
Now it’s a decade since MH370 -- and 23 years since 9-11. Still nothing done about the silenced transponder.
A pilot intent on suicide, or a terrorist intent mass murder, still can rotate a switch that deactivates the primary transponder, then not activate the backup. This prevents the aircraft from showing properly on ATC screens.
A decade after Malaysian Airlines 370 made this deficiency totally obvious – the flaw is still there.
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