Search effort for plane a disgrace

The vanished Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 airliner. The search and rescue operation has not been the Malaysian government's finest hour. Photo/AP

By the time you read this I am hopeful that the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 has been found.

And if it has, in fact, crashed into the sea, then like two other flights that hit the sea in the past few years, we will be arguing about the cause of the accident for years to come.

But whatever the cause, that ought not to put you off flying - the fact is that travelling by airliner is, on a mile by mile basis, about two hundred times safer than travelling by car, and 4800 times safer than by motorcycle!

The search and rescue operation for the missing aircraft has been a disgrace, with red herrings, hunches and dubious facts being followed with equal cavalier zeal. But not all leads have been followed up - an eye-witness account of an aircraft in flames above the South China Sea reported by a New Zealander working on an oil rig was ignored. This has not been the Malaysian government's finest hour.

No doubt when the wreck - if it has crashed - is found, the investigation by the authorities will soon identify all who were in the room at the time, and the "punishment of the innocent" will swing into full gear. Vindictive public demands for the spilling of the blood of someone in a suit for the deaths of 239 innocent civilians may well occupy the world's press for months.

But it may not have been a mechanical or electronic malfunction that caused this disappearance. Modern aircraft such as the Boeing 777 do not just fall out of the sky for no reason. When they are being designed, built and maintained, every action is checked, rechecked and monitored so that there is no doubt it will work ... for a long time. The guidance systems are so sophisticated that the craft effectively fly themselves. If there are other aircraft in the vicinity, their navigation systems query them automatically to find out where they are, which way they are going, and how high and fast they are flying. There can be a closing speed of over 1600km/h, so if there is a risk of collision then avoidance manoeuvres happen faster than you can think.

To counter the risk of hijacking, the flight deck of modern aircraft is a veritable fortress. No one gets in unless they are a crew member or, in rare cases, properly checked out. It has now come to light that the co-pilot of flight MH 370, Fariq Abdul Hamid, and, presumably, the captain of the flight had previously invited two pretty girls on to the flight deck and talked with them and smoked throughout the entire one-hour flight.

How hard would it be for a terrorist organisation to get an attractive female terrorist to gain access to the flight deck of an aircraft piloted by such a man, and take over the aircraft? If on at least one previous occasion Fariq and his captain have ignored their first line of defence against hijacking by allowing a stranger on the flight deck, is it not possible this practice is widespread and known by the friendly neighbourhood terrorists?

The rule against strangers on the flight deck is there for good reason, but lust has brought down governments before so there is no reason it shouldn't also bring down an aircraft.

From all other perspectives, Malaysia Airlines is a respected airline with a reasonable reputation, but one lust-bunny with a key to the cockpit could ruin it all.