Three months ago, a Malaysian Airlines plane carrying more than 200 passengers and flying between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing lost contact with flight controllers and failed to arrive at destination. Since then, there has been a multi-country search on both sides of the destinations with no success. As it stands now, the plane is missing and there is no clue about what happened to the aircraft and its passengers.
Understandably, the relatives of the missing passengers together with individuals do not believe official claims that this plane is missing and that nobody has found it. This state of affairs presents a fertile ground for all manner of conspiracy theories about what happened to the plane, its cargo and final resting place. All this is not helped by another statement such as that covered in this NYT piece stating that the search area has been changed once again. In short, the level of confidence in official statements and whether a proper search is being made in good faith is low.
I am not too familiar with flight science and therefore unable to find reason to distrust official statements from the airlines and the malaysian government. It is clear to me that many more people in that government are just as clueless but issue statements with more confidence than is warranted.
To my mind, the insurers of this airline together with the government would be best served to crowd source the finding of the aircraft. The incentive for them would be to display their own good faith and support that with a monetary incentive to ask teams of engineers and meteorologists who understand flight science to either find or suggest the final point of the fuselage. With these parameters broadly drawn, I am sure that a prize of up US$ 10 million would be placed out there to be claimed by the first team that provides the most useful answer or identifies the location of the flight.
This approach would serve the Malaysian Airlines and the government well because it would buttress their claim that there is no conspiracy to cover up the accident and provide relief to waiting families. The sum suggested here is affordable for both the airline, its insurers and the government of Malaysia. With that prize established, the governments that are assisting in the search could continue to conduct searches based on the best information at their disposal.
Understandably, the relatives of the missing passengers together with individuals do not believe official claims that this plane is missing and that nobody has found it. This state of affairs presents a fertile ground for all manner of conspiracy theories about what happened to the plane, its cargo and final resting place. All this is not helped by another statement such as that covered in this NYT piece stating that the search area has been changed once again. In short, the level of confidence in official statements and whether a proper search is being made in good faith is low.
I am not too familiar with flight science and therefore unable to find reason to distrust official statements from the airlines and the malaysian government. It is clear to me that many more people in that government are just as clueless but issue statements with more confidence than is warranted.
To my mind, the insurers of this airline together with the government would be best served to crowd source the finding of the aircraft. The incentive for them would be to display their own good faith and support that with a monetary incentive to ask teams of engineers and meteorologists who understand flight science to either find or suggest the final point of the fuselage. With these parameters broadly drawn, I am sure that a prize of up US$ 10 million would be placed out there to be claimed by the first team that provides the most useful answer or identifies the location of the flight.
This approach would serve the Malaysian Airlines and the government well because it would buttress their claim that there is no conspiracy to cover up the accident and provide relief to waiting families. The sum suggested here is affordable for both the airline, its insurers and the government of Malaysia. With that prize established, the governments that are assisting in the search could continue to conduct searches based on the best information at their disposal.
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