Malaysia Missing Plane: The full story

Malaysia plane departs Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and vanishes without trace.

THE FLIGHT

“All right, good night,” said the captain to the Malaysia air traffic controller as he was flying past about one hour after takeoff. It was routine aviation procedure to establish contact from the air to the ground operator. Just to know that all was well and that the pilot was on course.

It was late at night and the tower operator had told the pilot that he had to go home to meet his family and have a good night rest. And the pilot had given him his best wishes. The next commercial radar would have been in Vietnam. The pilot would have repeated the ceremonial greeting. But he never did. Those were his last words . . .

The pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (53) and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid (27) were flying a Boeing 777 aircraft from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China.  The Malaysia Flight 370 with a total of 239 people on board had left Kuala Lumpur 00:41 am March 8, 2014 to reach Beijing 06:30 am.

There was a potpourri of travelers in the flight. Some were travelling for the first time while others were regular travelers, and they were from diverse countries—mostly Chinese.

There were photographers who had come from China to look up Mount Everest and have a good time.

There was the Indonesian couple who had left their children at home for a longed-for trip to China to behold its Great Wall and the Forbidden City of Beijing.

There were the Chinese artists who had visited Malaysia for a painting exhibition.

There was Paul Weeks, an Australian mechanical engineer, who had left his wife and two sons for a mining gig in Mongolia.

And there were so many other people and their stories . . .

Some of the passengers did not leave without the usual departure dramas.

Act one: Three of the female photographers were excited about the tour and one of them, Yang Xiaoming, was dreaming of a future European tour.

Act two: The artists ate, drank, sang, and took pictures. One of the Chinese artists, Liu Rusheng, bickered with his wife for packing his paintings the wrong way. And another known as Zhao Zhaofang bought Malaysian chocolate gifts for folks back home.

Act three: Chandrika Sharma, conference delegate to Mongolia, made a last call to her aging mother.

Act four: The Indonesian couple, Sugianto Lo (husband) and Vinny Chynthya Tio (wife), reluctant to leave their children, kept calling the eldest, Antonio, to take care of his siblings.

Act five: Paul Weeks gave his wedding ring and watch to his wife to give to his two sons should anything happen to him.

That is how life is. Most times we are at the mercy of two things: time and unforeseen occurrence. Being at a wrong place and at the wrong time can be deadly. It was not all the members of the groups that came visiting that departed with the same plane.

And the sweetness or bitterness of air travel is equally dependent on these two factors. You are in a plane and you do not know where you are going until it lands. You are in that enclosed contraption, eating, playing games, watching videos, sleeping, or taking a walk. You do not know the path to your destination in the boundless sky. You do not know a thing on the plane’s cockpit. Only the pilot knows. Your destiny is in his hands. You trust him to take you to your destination.

If, however, the passengers and crew in this flight trusted the pilot to fly them to Beijing, they were greatly mistaken. Because not long after the pilot bade good night to the tower controller, he changed course, flying at a completely different direction.

But the innocent travelers did not know . . .
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Excerpted from Malaysia Missing Plane: The full story, by Arthur Zulu. Click below to download and read the full story free!

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