It's now been eighteen days since Malaysia flight 370 went missing en route to China. For much of those eighteen days, the families of those on the missing flight have been in hotel rooms in Malaysia awaiting news on just what happened to their loved ones. I feel like not knowing what happened to your loved one, if they're kidnapped and never found or, in this case, on a plane that disappears, has to be worse than knowing they're dead. Because you have no closure, really. You don't know what happened to that person or where they ended up, whether they're alive or dead. There have been reports that the families were hoping it was a hijacking of some sort and that their loved ones were still alive, but I don't know that I'd wish for that in their situation. You have to figure that if it were hijacked and they were on an island somewhere with those responsible, they wouldn't be treated very well. And there wouldn't be a lot of reasons for the hijackers to keep 239 people alive. I would just want the plane to be found at all, even if there are no bodies recovered (and there likely wouldn't be now). I would want to know for sure that this person died in a plane crash. It's awful, yes, but knowing they are gone is better than trying to move on without any clue at all as to what happened.
All of that said, Malaysia Airlines, and Malaysia as a country, has handled this situation extremely poorly. Everyday there's been "new" information that's leaked out or been released "accidentally" and inevitably it gets people's hopes up. And then they are let down when the info is retracted or proved false. First, the plane went down along its scheduled route, then it took a turn that was called intentional by some and unintentional by others. Then, it was hijacked. No, wait, it wasn't hijacked, it was a statement being made by the pilot over the politics of his country. And now, almost a month later, they are still no closer to an answer. No one knows what happened, no one can say for sure if it was a hijacking or a statement or a mechanical issue. Yet there is still information coming out about "probabilities" and "assumptions". That's not evidence. That's a hypothesis. And if I'm a family member waiting on word about what happened, I am not interested in hypotheses. Show me evidence. Show me why your logical conclusion is that it crashed and then explain to me why it took you nearly a month to figure out it likely crashed in the Indian Ocean. Explain to me why you wasted valuable time searching everywhere else and waiting way too long to involve other countries who had much more sophisticated equipment that would've made it somewhat easier to try and find a trace of the plane. Malaysia has kept those families on a string for the past eighteen days. And today they cut them loose in absolutely disgusting fashion. Malaysia Airlines sent a TEXT to the families saying that the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean and their loved ones are dead. Can you imagine?? Eighteen days waiting on news about your loved one and then with one text you're dismissed and told that's that. Who the fuck thinks that's the proper way to inform someone that a loved one is dead? That flight was full of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, grandchildren, husbands and wives. And those left behind deserve to be told in person what the conclusion of investigators is, as well as having the reasons for that conclusion explained to them. Having lost a loved one in tragic and unexpected way, I can tell you that you really don't hear much after the initial confirmation that the person is gone. You go numb and everything else that's said sounds as if it's being spoken in slow, blurred motion. But you still need to hear it. It's ridiculous that Malaysia thought this would be acceptable. In hindsight, they're saying they "tried" to reach the families in other ways but were unsuccessful and thus sent the mass text. I don't buy that. Those people have been on pins and needles waiting, all they had to do was gather them in one place and explain everything to them. Surely they all could've congregated within an hour's time. All the Malaysians would have had to do was keep the info close to the vest and make sure it didn't leak to the media before they told the families. Instead, they were cowards. They knew those families had a very negative opinion about them and didn't trust them. They just didn't have the balls to face them one last time before they shipped them off to Australia to sit around and wait some more. I just don't know wtf is wrong with some people. I hope the families can find a way to deal with this, whatever the outcome, in spite of how poorly they've been treated throughout.
