OP-ED: What’s Your Theory? The Malaysia Plane flight Mystery Continues On

 By Brandon Evans

Live Wire Staff Writer

 On March 8 2014, a flight heading toward Malaysia lost communications with air control. The flight is said to have gone down in an unknown location, but not even some of the best of experts can tell you exactly where the flight went down.

So what does this lead us to? Ridiculous theories about what happened with the flight. The theories are all over the spectrum of speculation, from a form of hijacking, to alien abduction, to theories of another Bermuda triangle existing around the Indian Ocean.

In our age of connectivity when a plane flight goes down, we really cannot discount any theories. Cody Wayne Richards, from Manchester Community College,  asked the question, “why didn’t they try to use the location services on anyone’s cell phone to find it?”

 A good standing theory is a pilot suicide. Although it’s uncommon, it has happened before. It happened to a Boeing 777 flight that was flying over Egypt, crashed suddenly. While Egyptian officials blamed mechanical failures, there had been a recording of the pilot of the aircraft saying prayers shortly before crashing. This should be disconcerting to anyone on an aircraft.

The theories only get increasingly bizarre. Some speculate that the pilots were incapacitated somehow and weren’t able to fly the plane, and so the plane went down. But what hard evidence does anyone have to prove so? If true, it raises concerns about enforcement of pilot regulations and code of conduct.

A couple of MCC students shared their personal theories on the plane flights disappearance. One, Ricky Downs shared his speculation, “while reading an article on aircraft, I read that ninety percent of all planes are never flown by the pilots themselves. They are flown by pre-programmed flight coordinates. In fact, the only flight commands that are in control by the pilot are the takeoff and landing commands. I believe that something went wrong with the programming and mechanics that caused the flight to go down.”

Alicia Analise theorized, “maybe there was no plane or passengers to begin with. Maybe it’s all a trick.” The Malaysia plane flight, what with little data experts have to work on, has become a world mystery that is on par with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937.

Many people, after two weeks of searching and with no concrete evidence of anything from the actual flight found, are beginning to think that covering the whole story is a little unnecessary.

News stations such as CNN have been reporting news of the plane flight, and the aftermath it has had on the community, at a seemingly tireless rate. The CNN news station has placed out story after story on the Malaysia plane flight to this very day.

Is it too much? I would say that it’s very easy to compare the CNN news updates to a crazed individual searching for the arc of the covenant. Which it is. The enormous amount of coverage it has gotten over the past two weeks, and the increasing number of false positives of findings from the plane, such as floating pieces of trash that might have been connected with the plane flight.

People have grown skeptical of anyone being found alive from the wreckage, and covering the story of the flight disappearance is only making the pain in the lives of the people who lost their loved ones in the wreckage stronger. The wall to wall coverage of a story that has not changed in the slightest way is breaking an ethical rule of journalism that a story is to remain accurate and relevant to readers and viewers.

However, the speed at which CNN is producing these stories, is prevailing over their accuracy. It seems as though CNN cares mainly for the speed at which news stories come out, to beat out the competition.

They have, as John Stewart put it, “turned their non-coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight into actual coverage of their non-coverage of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight.”

The plane fight has been broadcast to what seems like an un-ending extent, and while it brings up some concerns about aircraft technology, the only thing it does is raise speculation and anxieties. It does indeed. It raises it to a point where mourning the ones lost in the wreckage is no longer in anyone’s mind.