This morning I woke up to the horrifying news of the MH17 crash.
The general consensus among the reports (although still not 100% confirmed) is that the plane was brought down by a surface to air missile from a tank that looked like this.
Like many other shocked Malaysians I spent much of my day waiting for more updates on what happened. Everyone that I met in LA and knew I was Malaysian asked me about it too.
For a brief moment I thought about what it must be like to be in that plane when it went down. What was the last seconds or minutes like? How did people in the plane react and most importantly… did the passengers suffer or was death quick for them?
So I went and did some Googling and this is what I found (Note that I’m no aviation or military expert. The following points are based on articles that I found online that I have linked below).
The following articles here, here and here explains some of the below points:
1) Passenger jets have no way to detect that a missile is heading for them. The only way they could tell if the missile was heading for them is if the pilot saw it launch from the ground some 30,000 feet below.
2) Even if the pilot did see the missile there is low chance they would be able to outmaneuver it since it’s a passenger jet, not a high performance jet and the pilots aren’t trained to avoid missiles.
The rest of what happens depends on what type of missile it was and where the missile hit.
3) If the missile had hit the fuel tank then an explosion would have ripped the plane apart. The plane would come down looking like a fireball.
4) The plane however came down in black smoke instead of a fireball so that’s indicative of the fuel tanks still being in tact. So chances are the plane just hit the ground and fell apart upon impact.
5) Does that mean the passengers were conscious the entire time ?
It depends. If the cabin was breached by the explosion and lost pressure, most passengers will pass out from a lack of oxygen within 15 seconds if they don’t put on a mask.
Right now the reports that are coming in still indicate that the teams on site haven’t seen any sign of survivors. So while I hope that we have many survivors, we know that chances of that are slim.
So my other hope is that whatever the circumstance… that all the passengers on board didn’t suffer. That the whole thing was quick or they all passed out within seconds before they knew what was happening.
My parting thought is not far from what the Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott had to say.
I quote
”As things stand, Madam Speaker, this looks less like an accident than a crime,” he said.
That’s my thought exactly. If it is proven that MH17 was shot down by a SAM, this isn’t an accident. It’s murder. 295 people were murdered and I hope justice will be brought to the people responsible.
My heart goes out to the passengers of MH17.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space