A Prize Would Speed Up Search for Malaysia Flight 370

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.

Airlines Getting Top Class Menus for Paying Fliers

In my view, air travel in economy class is burdensome and uncomfortable because of poor air circulation, cramped seating space and terrible food. I have sought a simple model of economics to explain this fact and sometimes conclude that space and air circulation are real problems but that food is a less genuine challenge but driven by the need to save funds since most travelers will not eat much anyway. I have had in mind that it is possible to vastly improve the quality of airline food but that it is not feasible immediately because of the conditions of its preparation, packaging and storage. As a result, I have often confirmed to myself that the incentive to create better food would not yield much advantage due to the thin margins that exist for this industry.

Reading this article in the NYT, I have confirmed a few of my hunches and also been vastly educated on some very brave assumptions that I made earlier. For instance, it appears that food changes taste dramatically with elevation and this may part of the problem in perceiving food quality in the air as less sumptuous. The taste buds and the nose, which are important for detection of flavor are changed substantially when a plane cruises miles high. And so this shows that it is not for want of effort but that one should not anticipate that dining in a plane will be as pleasurable as it is in one's kitchen or favorite restaurants.

That notwithstanding, selected airlines are attempting to improve the experience of business class passengers by consulting highly-regarded chefs to design menus for their airlines. The business case for this attempt is clear as there is a quest to improve the experience of the higher paying fliers. and so one sees competition among airlines in Europe and the United States in securing the services of top chefs to improve the food and beverage service. It is noteworthy that the economy class and domestic fliers are not going to partake of the same pleasures. The signal to the latter is clearly that an upgrade gets you eat from a menu designed by Gordon Ramsay. Payment for the activation of a discerning palate is available on the ground and coming to the air too.

I do not begrudge business class travellers at all. If only similar dedication was placed on solving the other problems of the freshness of cabin air and the more leg room.