On January 23, 2008 a very peculiar thing happened.
Commercial airspace at one of the world's busiest airports was shut down for
over 50 minutes. On that day, an aircraft without an approved flight plan
entered Singapore's airspace. Immediately, the Republic of Singapore Air Force
dispatched a pair of F-16D fighter jets to intercept the aircraft and escorted it to
land at Singapore Changi Airport. Upon landing, airport police immediately surrounded the plane.
The above incident
highlights the standard operating protocol an Air Force, Civil Aviation Authority and Local Police Force needs to follow in the
event of an unidentified aircraft entering it's airspace without an approved flight plan.
However amidst this
hoo-ha, there was one small detail worth noting. The plane took off from Koh Samui, Thailand. And
running the full length between Thailand and Singapore is the land mass of Peninsular Malaysia.
In essence, this
means that the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia and the Royal Malaysian Air Force had allowed an unknown aircraft to invade over 131 thousand square km of sovereign Malaysian territory and despite this occurring over a period of 3 hours, did not lift a finger to respond.
This incident
highlighted a huge security flaw in Malaysia's Air Defence umbrella. One that
if it had patched during any of the subsequent 6 years that followed, would have prevented
a bigger tragedy that came with greater embarrassment, scrutiny and loss.
6 years later on 8
March 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpar
International Airport for Beijing. It never landed at it's intended
destination. Instead, less than an hour after take off, the transponder was
turned off and 3 sets of military radars tracked the plane flying past Penang
and across the breadth of Malaysia from the Gulf of Thailand towards the Indian
Ocean.
Unlike the
Cessna airplane in the earlier example which was intercepted by the RSAF, 3 sets of people manning
Malaysia's military radars never sounded any alarms. The RMAF never dispatched any
fighter jets on standby and the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia never shut down Malaysian airspace when a rogue
plane very much larger than a Cessna aircraft flew across it's airspace.
Suffice to say, had the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia or the RMAF been doing their job properly as exemplified by the example given above, we would not have gone 9 days and counting into a search for a missing and possibly hijacked plane.
Investigators may have recently concluded that the plane had it's transponders deliberately turned off and it's flight plan deliberately altered but it is the greater observing public who have the biggest conclusion of all; that Malaysian leadership is sorely incompetent when it comes to handling a crisis. In this respect, Malaysia has much to learn from it's Southern neighbour. Had the supposed hijackers targeted a plane flying through a more efficient jurisdiction, the outcome would have been very different today.
L.A.M.
Note: My heart, hopes and prayers are with the crew and passengers of MH370. I wish for a speedy and desirable conclusion to this incident and hope beyond all hope that Malaysian authorities will finally learn how to effectively handle crisis and prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
To view a list of statistics on air crashes since the 1980s see:
http://johnislam.blogspot.hk/2014/04/lams-statistical-dump-of-fatal-air.html
Note: My heart, hopes and prayers are with the crew and passengers of MH370. I wish for a speedy and desirable conclusion to this incident and hope beyond all hope that Malaysian authorities will finally learn how to effectively handle crisis and prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
To view a list of statistics on air crashes since the 1980s see:
http://johnislam.blogspot.hk/2014/04/lams-statistical-dump-of-fatal-air.html
