Last year, within five months of each other, two Malaysian Airlines aircraft fell out of the sky and a total of 537 passengers and crew members perished. Both airliners were built by Airbus. It is not apparent that either plane suffered a technical fault. Solving the mystery of the disappearance of flight MH370 with 239 people aboard a scheduled service from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014 may have come a little closer with the discovery of a small piece of wreckage on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion. More debris, yet to be confirmed as part of the doomed aircraft, has been washed up on the Maldives. Both locations match those of a computer model of ocean currents, which predicted where pieces of wreckage might be washed up. If the second discovery is also confirm to have come from MH370, then it may be that the search area for the main fuselage can be narrowed to a specific region. Until now subsea vehicles have been diving in a vast arc of deep ocean. The location of the wreckage of the other Malaysian airliner MH17 has always been known. It came down in an area of Ukraine bitterly contested between Russian-backed rebels and the Ukrainian government. A Joint Investigation Team involving the Dutch government - two thirds of the 298 passengers were Dutch nationals - has just delivered an interim finding on this disaster. They say that they have discovered parts that could be from a Russian surface-to-air rocket among the wreckage. There were already suspicions prompted by punctures in the wreckage of the airframe, that it had been hit by projectiles from an airburst close to the aircraft. Such a warhead would be typical of the Russian Buk missile system. However, even now, investigators are refusing to reach a firm conclusion. They say they are now calling for assistance from experts in surface-to-air weapons systems. It took days before independent investigators were allowed by the Ukrainian rebels to reach the crash site. This reluctance has never been explained. It gives rise to the notion that the wreckage was being combed to remove incriminating evidence. It is, however, certain that no proper attempt was made to secure the area where the airliner came down. It was evident when experienced crash investigators reached the site that looters had worked over the wreckage of both luggage and passengers stealing anything of value. While the truth about what happened to MH370 may never be established, there is a high probability that it will be discovered how MH17 and nearly 300 people met their grim fate. Moscow has vigorously denied that it shot down the plane. It claims that the Ukrainians fired the missile. Various Buk systems are used in 14 countries, including Russia and Ukraine. It may well be that the international investigators are holding off confirming that the Malaysian plane was hit by a missile because they hope to be able to identify who actually fired it. However, given the likelihood that the wreckage was combed carefully to remove any telltale evidence, such as missile parts with identity numbers, this may be a hard finding to make. The crash site remains in a war zone and no further, wider examination seems possible. If they are responsible, the Russians are not about to confess after so many stout denials. Therefore, the full truth about what happened to MH17 may remain as unresolved as that of MH370.
