This has to be the iconic photograph for 2014: grieving family members waiting in airports for word on the fate of missing passengers.
Early morning last Sunday, Air Asia Flight QZ8501 from Surabaya to Singapore disappeared from the radar screen about halfway on its route. 162 passengers and crewmembers were on board. As this is being written, no trace of the missing plane has been found.
When news broke of the missing Air Asia plane, images from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flashed in everybody’s mind. MH370 flew out of Kuala Lumpur last March en route to Beijing with 239 people on board. For some mysterious reason, the plane took a big turn from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean, flying southwards instead of northwards.
Ten months after MH 370 disappeared under inexplicable circumstances, no trace of the aircraft has been found. Naval and air assets from several countries scoured the vast Indian Ocean with the best technology available to no avail.
Although the search for MH 370 is continuing, there is decreasing hope it will ever be found. The terrain underneath the Indian Ocean is rough and the waters deep. Undersea mountain ranges, as tall as the Rockies, rise from the ocean floor. With no land between Madagascar and Australia, the area is probably the worst place in the world for a plane to be lost.
The questions about what happened to MH 370 will haunt us for years. The vital equipment for recording the last moments of this ill-fated plane could deteriorate before they are found.
This was a bad year for Malaysian Airlines in particular and Southeast Asian aviation in general.
Shortly after MH 370 disappeared, another Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down over the battle zone in Eastern Ukraine. The plane flew out of Amsterdam en route to Kuala Lumpur when downed apparently by a missile. Corpses literally rained down from the sky in an area contested by Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels. It remains unclear who fired the missile.
Those now searching for the Air Asia plane are at least more confident of finding remnants of the lost plane. The Java Sea is much shallower than the Indian Ocean and the terrain underneath is flatter. The only thing impeding the search effort is inclement monsoon weather.
We do not know yet if the plane crashed into the sea or on any of the small islands dotting the area where the flight was last monitored. A day after its disappearance, however, there is little hope of finding any survivors.
Only the recovery of the plane’s “black box” will tells us with certainty if the crash was caused by mechanical defect, pilot error or, heaven forbid, terrorism. The more prevalent theory relates the disappearance to the harsh weather at the time.
Air Asia, a rising commercial airline in the region offering budget fares, is understandably anxious to find an explanation for what happened. It carefully nursed an unblemished safety record before this incident. Its business relies heavily on its credibility for airworthiness.
Airbus, the manufacturer of the plane, is as anxious to get the facts too. The Airbus 320 is one of the most advanced planes in commercial service today. It is even fitted to convert into a boat should the plane be forced to land on water. Any finding of an engineering flaw will deal the manufacturer a major blow.
Most anxious, of course, are the families of the missing passengers. Until the last corpse is recovered, they will cling to the slimmest hope their loved ones somehow survived the crash and are simply lost in some tropical jungle.
It is the sight of family members hanging on the slightest thread of hope about the fate of the passengers that pains most in the aftermath of tragedies like this one.
Incompetent
The country will not meet the 6.5% to 7.5% growth rate targeted earlier this year. The main culprit, according to most analysts, is this government’s incompetence.
Moody’s Investor Services assigns the blame to remarkably inferior budget management. Government failed to make the economic investments it should have to sustain the growth rate. By spending much less than it should have, particularly on urgently needed infra, this administration undermined the economy’s growth.
Instead of focusing on infra build-up, the administration seems preoccupied with converting budget resources into pork. Instead of efficiently managing public spending to achieve the best multiplier effects for the economy, this administration seems obsessed with expanding the mechanisms for political patronage — cynically calling this some sort of “budget reform.”
This year, the country attracted the least direct investment among the core ASEAN 5 economies. This, too, is attributable to government incompetence. While our neighbors are busy enabling business, our government seems inclined to hinder economic activity. The volume of Filipino capital flowing out to our neighboring business-friendly economies is testament to the problem.
The degraded commuter rail system, the costly port congestion, the decaying domestic airports and the retarded rehabilitation of the Yolanda-hit areas illustrate the tolls of incompetence that is now a curse on our economic growth. The centerpiece PPP is now derisively spelled out in the business community as “Power Point Presentation” because nearly everything remains on the drawing board and the projects that actually broke ground are much delayed.
The Aquino administration should not claim too much credit for the meager growth rate achieved. Given the convergence of factors, our economy had the opportunity to achieve a higher growth rate than targeted had incompetence not gotten in the way.
That beneficial convergence quickly passes and the opportunities are about to be lost.