Excerpt
SUMMARY: The black box from AirAsia Flight 8501 provided some answers about what caused the crash, but also opened up questions about automation and why mistakes from past accidents haven’t been corrected. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Gwen Ifill to discuss eerie similarities between AirAsia’s flight and past crashes and why the still-missing Malaysia Airlines flight was declared an accident.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now an update on aviation stories from around the world.
In Malaysia, the government has officially declared the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 last March an accident. In Indonesia, investigators now say the co-pilot was in control when AirAsia Flight 8501 crashed into the Java Sea last month. And U.S. officials are reporting a spike in online threats against major airlines.
I’m joined now by science correspondent Miles O’Brien.
Let’s take these one at a time, Miles.
Declaring this flight an accident, is that something we kind of knew?
MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour): Yes, we did.
And, really, this is not based on any new information about the investigation. This is more bookkeeping. There are international treaties which require airlines to declare an aircraft missing or an accident or whatever the case may be. And this makes it possible for the victims, for the families to seek redress. And so…
GWEN IFILL: We should remind people, this has never been found, this particular air…
MILES O’BRIEN: That’s correct.
So, I mean, missing is considered an accident, by technical terms. Here we are approaching the one-year anniversary of this event, and I think that it was time to allow these families to move on and seek their claims.
And so, meanwhile, the search continues in the Southern Indian Ocean. That will continue until the weather gets too bad, probably in May or so, but we don’t know anything new. So when people say it’s been declared an accident, remember, it’s based on the same information we have had for quite some time.
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