Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy disappeared seemingly out of thin
Speaker 2: air ten years ago. Aviation officials lost contact with the
Speaker 2: flight less than an hour after it took off from
Speaker 2: Kuala Lumpur. It is aviation's biggest mystery. The search continued
Speaker 2: so far forty eight hours on no sign of the plane,
Speaker 2: no debris. It's been really puzzling for the for the
Speaker 2: searches here. The two hundred and thirty nine people on
Speaker 2: board were never found, and over the past decade, only
Speaker 2: a few fragments of debris from the plane have turned.
Speaker 1: Up, confirming that the plane part found on the island
Speaker 1: of Reunion did indeed come from MH three to seventy,
Speaker 1: That missing plane that authorities have been searching for for
Speaker 1: a year now.
Speaker 2: It was a shocking event that sent ripples through the
Speaker 2: airline industry and around the world. Aviation authorities and manufactures
Speaker 2: alike were adamant that changes were necessary to ensure that
Speaker 2: it wouldn't happen again. They even had some potential solutions.
Speaker 2: But it's ten years later and one of those key
Speaker 2: changes hasn't been implemented, meaning the prospect of another MH
Speaker 2: three to seventy style mystery still looms on the horizon.
Speaker 2: Today on the show, remembering the tragedy of Malaysia Airlines
Speaker 2: Flight three seventy, how it prompted the promise of improved
Speaker 2: industry standards and what has gotten in the way from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News, this is the big tape. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: Malaysia Airlines Flight three seventy took off from Kuala Lumpur
Speaker 2: just after midnight on March eighth, twenty fourteen. It was
Speaker 2: a Boeing seven seven seven headed to Beijing, and at first.
Speaker 3: It looked like just a normal flight, and investigators have
Speaker 3: looked at the recordings, the audio transmissions, everything seemed normal.
Speaker 2: Ingerswitolee reports on the aviation industry for Bloomberg.
Speaker 3: And then within an hour there was a final recorded
Speaker 3: transmission from the cockpit, good night Malaysian three seven zero,
Speaker 3: and that was the last transmitted words from the cockpit.
Speaker 2: Minutes after that transmission, the plane disappeared off of air
Speaker 2: traffic control radars, and the big question was what happened
Speaker 2: to it?
Speaker 4: This is the question, my goodness.
Speaker 3: It's known as aviation's greatest mystery and we don't really
Speaker 3: know what happened to this plane, and ten years on,
Speaker 3: we still don't really know that. The so much research,
Speaker 3: so much science has gone into this missing plane, and
Speaker 3: I think it's for that reason it's really weighed on
Speaker 3: people's minds.
Speaker 2: The story was featured on nightly news broadcasts for months,
Speaker 2: but even as search and rescue efforts through in size
Speaker 2: and scope, there was nothing. Thousands of men and women
Speaker 2: scaring millions of square miles looking for a needle in
Speaker 2: a haystack.
Speaker 4: Twenty nine aircraft, fourteen ships.
Speaker 1: Still nothing. Looks now we're back to square one.
Speaker 2: It's kind of crazy that something like this happened today.
Speaker 2: I can find my smartphone almost instantly. How can it
Speaker 2: be that MH three seventy, which is a Boeing seven
Speaker 2: seven seven as long as a Manhattan City block, go
Speaker 2: missing so completely?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 3: Think this is why the industry was struck into action
Speaker 3: at the time.
Speaker 2: In most situations, when airplanes are traveling above land, air
Speaker 2: traffic controllers can track them pretty efficiently. Satellite communication systems
Speaker 2: can also beam out aircraft positions.
Speaker 3: Usually, aircraft are just handed off from air traffic control
Speaker 3: screen to air traffic control authority to the next one,
Speaker 3: or if it's a domestic flight, they'll be on the
Speaker 3: screens of air traffic or pretty much the whole way.
Speaker 3: So it is possible for airlines and authorities to pretty
Speaker 3: much know where every plane is. So that means in theory,
Speaker 3: you should not get a plane fall out.
Speaker 4: The sky and go missing forever.
Speaker 3: It's so it comes down to the idea of it,
Speaker 3: can you lose a plane if there's some sort of
Speaker 3: foul play.
Speaker 2: Investigators suspected that there could have been foul play involved
Speaker 2: in the case of the Malaysian plane, that perhaps the
Speaker 2: communication system was intentionally switched off. They couldn't say for sure,
Speaker 2: but it was this speculation and the urgency of the
Speaker 2: plane going missing that fueled calls for better systems, systems
Speaker 2: that could prevent a plane from going dark in any circumstance, and.
Speaker 3: So there was a movement to see how the industry
Speaker 3: can better track its aircraft and also how they can
Speaker 3: make these tracking systems more resilient. One of the things
Speaker 3: that was proposed and decided on after M three seven
Speaker 3: went missing was that there must be a system in
Speaker 3: place where we can track aircraft that is autonomous. So
Speaker 3: irrespective of what happens on the aircraft or whether it
Speaker 3: loses power, there must be a system that's triggered if
Speaker 3: the plane is in trouble, we're in distress as they
Speaker 3: call it in the industry.
Speaker 4: It must be a way of.
Speaker 3: Beaming that position to authorities and search and rescue authorities
Speaker 3: so they have a better idea of where it is.
Speaker 2: Malaysian authorities and global regulators proposed a new standard. A
Speaker 2: specific range of scenarios would activate a tracking device that
Speaker 2: would broadcast a plane's position at least once every minute.
Speaker 3: And the idea of that is, if it goes down,
Speaker 3: we'll have a pretty good idea of where it's gone
Speaker 3: down in a remote part of the earth.
Speaker 2: And to a lot of officials, this seem like a
Speaker 2: great idea makes sense right in an emergency, have planes
Speaker 2: automatically put out their location minute by minute, even if
Speaker 2: systems shut down or power goes out. But the deadline
Speaker 2: set by officials for the aviation industry to impleat that
Speaker 2: backup has long passed and most planes still don't have them.
Speaker 2: Why not when we come back? How bureaucracy and financial
Speaker 2: pressure slowed these efforts to a halt. We're back. Malaysia
Speaker 2: Airlines Flight three seventy disappeared from radars on March eighth,
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. Two hundred and thirty nine people were on
Speaker 2: board and none were found. In the aftermath of the tragedy,
Speaker 2: aviation officials made calls for emergency systems to be installed
Speaker 2: on all new jets, systems that would send out a
Speaker 2: plane's location every minute in case of emergency, but that
Speaker 2: didn't exactly go according to plan. Bloomberg reporter Ingus Whitley
Speaker 2: told me about the plan set in place by the
Speaker 2: International Civil Aviation Organization, a group that sets aviation standards,
Speaker 2: and how the goalposts have continued to shift right.
Speaker 3: So this happened in sequences and I guess so sort
Speaker 3: of if I've been looking at old the regulatory amendments
Speaker 3: since twenty fourteen and MHTRE seventy went missing.
Speaker 4: And the first.
Speaker 3: Deadline for the implementation of one minute tracking as it
Speaker 3: became known, was in January first, twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 3: it was at that point where a rule was meant
Speaker 3: to come into force where large passenger planes would have
Speaker 3: to beam their positions at least once a minute when
Speaker 3: they were in trouble, and that was in January twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. Now as it got closer to that deadline,
Speaker 3: merged that this wasn't actually going to be possible. Australians
Speaker 3: submitted this submission to KO, which is the global agency
Speaker 3: which makes aviation standards, and that they suggested that actually
Speaker 3: the industry was not ready for this new standard, and
Speaker 3: they said that there had been miscommunication between KO and
Speaker 3: search and rescue authorities. They suspected it wasn't going to
Speaker 3: be possible to meet this January twenty twenty one deadline.
Speaker 3: So that saw the standard push back to twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: The up to twenty twenty three, the COVID pandemic upended
Speaker 2: commercial air travel.
Speaker 4: And that was an enormous blow.
Speaker 3: And so not only did that leave sort of air
Speaker 3: travel essentially crippled and fleets granded, but it also saw
Speaker 3: brand new planes that weren't equipped with this tracking device
Speaker 3: sent into the desert put in storage. So it really
Speaker 3: made it very difficult to hit that twenty twenty three standard.
Speaker 3: Not least, there were huge financial pressure on the aviation
Speaker 3: industry from airlines to suppliers. There was a shortage of
Speaker 3: labor and so this implementation deadline for the one minute
Speaker 3: truck and rule was pushed back again and it's not
Speaker 3: going to come into force until January twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: That's left us in a situation where ten years after
Speaker 3: the crash, we still haven't got this rule in place
Speaker 3: that was deemed so urgent, you know, shortly after Image
Speaker 3: three seventy went missing.
Speaker 2: I mean, you mentioned COVID as one reason for the
Speaker 2: hold up, but besides that was stopping the aviation industry
Speaker 2: from adopting these tracking measures. Based on what your sources
Speaker 2: have told you, aviation is.
Speaker 3: A very slow moving beast, and they operate under a
Speaker 3: set of global standards.
Speaker 4: What people tell me is there may be some.
Speaker 3: Countries that are perfectly able to implement a standard at
Speaker 3: a certain time, but they operate under the lowest common denominator.
Speaker 3: So it's a global industry and they have a set
Speaker 3: of global operating standards. I think it has to be
Speaker 3: said that ematurally seventy was an extremely rare event, and
Speaker 3: it's the only one of its kind I can remember
Speaker 3: in modern aviation. So the chances of that happening again
Speaker 3: are almost by definition, very very rare, and I think
Speaker 3: with time, the urgency to address what happened and the
Speaker 3: urgency to prevent another thing happened has dimmed, as essentially
Speaker 3: the shock of it.
Speaker 4: Has worn off.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the regulator amendments sort of
Speaker 3: chronicling these delays that I've talked about, some of them
Speaker 3: mentioned that the cost benefits of delaying the implementation of
Speaker 3: this standard, that the industry saved several hundred million dollars
Speaker 3: in delaying this.
Speaker 2: These proposed requirements will only apply to new planes when
Speaker 2: they come into effect by that delayed deadline. Twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News reached out to more than a dozen major
Speaker 2: airlines and asked how many planes of theirs met the
Speaker 2: requirements already. Of the airlines that applied, very few planes
Speaker 2: were compliant.
Speaker 3: We were told by two or three that they had
Speaker 3: a handful, no more than seven. In one case of
Speaker 3: Air France told this they had seven jets that were
Speaker 3: compliant with the standard. In air France had more than
Speaker 3: two hundred and fifty planes in operation last year. Korean
Speaker 3: Airlines so it had three planes compliant with the standard,
Speaker 3: and Korean air has more than one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: planes in its fleet, so the indications are that the
Speaker 3: standard is really in very few planes in the air
Speaker 3: at the moment. There are twenty thousand planes that are
Speaker 3: already in service before this year that don't have the
Speaker 3: device as well.
Speaker 4: So there's a.
Speaker 3: Huge, big hole in the kind of tracking ability of
Speaker 3: the global commercial fleet, and those planes are going to
Speaker 3: be flying for decades without this tracking device because there's
Speaker 3: no requirement to retrofit this tracking device. The lack of
Speaker 3: answers is still weighing on people ten years on, not
Speaker 3: least the families. I mean, this is a human tragedy
Speaker 3: and hundreds of families.
Speaker 4: Are still left with no answers.
Speaker 3: But when I speak to people involved at the time
Speaker 3: who were searching for the plane now, it still weighs on.
Speaker 4: Some of them even now.
Speaker 3: And I spoke to an Australian's air safety investigator you
Speaker 3: join the international team investigators up in Kuala Lumpur, and
Speaker 3: he told me he still thinks about MH three seventy
Speaker 3: every day.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Alex Suguiera. It was edited
Speaker 2: by Aaron Edwards and Katrina Nicholas. It was fact checked
Speaker 2: by Tiffany Choi. It was mixed by Alex Zuguiera. Our
Speaker 2: senior producers are Naomi Shaven and Jill Duddy Carly. We
Speaker 2: get editorial direction from Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole beamsterbor is our
Speaker 2: executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks
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