Post-black box investigations

Three days after the plane crash in the Margallas there is still mystery over what happened and why. But now with the plane’s black box having been found, some answers may be in the offing. However, that may still take some time because deciphering its contents, we are told, is time consuming.  Also, as is said in aviation parlance, when a plane crashes a lot of answers die with the pilot, since he or she is the one person who could provide perhaps the most answers. In this context, we hope that the Airblue chief’s remarks that the decision to land is always taken by the pilot is not taken as a means to deflect blame away from the airline, especially in terms of compensating the families of the victims for the loss of life.

That said, the deciphering of the black box will be key. It could perhaps explain why the pilot was flying so low and so off course and why he apparently did not heed air traffic control’s directions. Alternatively, since the black box has a record of conversations between the pilot and ground control it may it may perhaps reveal whether there was more to it than — as is being widely debated and discussed, and implied — pilot error and misjudgment. It may eventually prove instrumental in ensuring that the whole truth emerges and that we discover what went wrong and why. Theories about the presence of jamming equipment in Islamabad interfering with airplane navigational systems certainly need to be explored, if only so they can be safely put to rest. The questions being raised over the safety of Islamabad Airport too need to be answered as do others about the real age of the pilot or the number of flying hours he had put in.

Some of these questions have been raised simply because there is in our country a huge fascination, indeed even an obsession, with conspiracy theories of all kinds. But one of the reasons why this exists is the failure in the past to come up with the truth. Even now many believe that we will never know what happened. The airline involved, the government and the CAA can all play a role in altering this. They can do so by carrying out an independent investigation. Ideally, as we have said before, an independent statutory body should be set up to investigate all aviation accidents because the CAA cannot be expected to be impartial simply because it should not be asked to be in a position to judge its own actions.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2010.