Quest for answers

It is human nature to look for closure after any tragedy. The bigger the tragedy’s impact, the higher our need to look for a way to make sense of it. It ties to the discomfort triggered by confronting our own mortality, something most of us would rather not dwell upon. Not many tragedies leave the kind of void and yearning for closure that air accidents do. There is the loss of life on one hand — the nature of air travel is such that any accident is more likely to be fatal than not. But there is also an emotional side, even on the part of those who lose nothing in such tragedies.

A fatal air accident, in a sense, is a journey that will never be fulfilled. It also reminds us that there is little any of us can do to change our fate in a similar situation. So we seek answers and we seek explanations. In Pakistan, the reaction to air accidents plays out almost identically. In the media and among the public, the demand for explanation is always vociferous. The technicalities involved in flight, however, mean that simply knowing what went wrong does not satisfy most. So instead we ask whose fault is it.

In a recent development in the case of PK8303, which crashed in a crowded locality in Karachi just two days before Eid, the CAA wrote a letter to PIA that suggested the pilot of the flight did not follow the instructions of air traffic controllers. The letter prompted a sharp rebuke from the government with the aviation minister saying such information should only have been shared with the inquiry board since investigation into the crash was still open.

On this, as much as we may be tempted to think otherwise, the government appears right in this instance. Already there has been a lot of speculation by non-experts, fueled by supposed leaked recordings and other pieces of information. While our yearning for answers is understandable, due process in such matters must also be respected.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 7^th, 2020.

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