MH-370

As the ongoing tragedy that is the still unfolding story of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continues to roll towards its presumably inevitable tragic outcome, alongside my sympathy for the victims and their families, I can't help but be struck by how familiar it all sounds.

I'm not just referring to my own morbid fascination with all things ghastly when it comes to air travel, either, but to something much more fundamental and, unfortunately far more terrifying.

Do you remember the so-called "Shoe Bomber"…? Although I wouldn't normally want to mention his name and give him the satisfaction of the kind of notoriety he doesn't deserve, he is an English guy called Richard Reid, who first tried to blow up American Airlines flight 63 from Paris way back in December 2001, and only really failed because of foot sweat and the intervention of his fellow passengers.

I'm sure that you do remember him, especially if you have to fly anywhere, because it's thanks to this guy that you have to take off your shoes at least a couple of times every time you try to board an aircraft these days and then do that strange hopping dance as you try and put jour jacket back on, retrieve your keys and generally get your possessions back into some kind of order as you prepare for another slightly alarming journey through the air.

Anyway, five years later, and in events which were linked to the shoe bomber story, another plot was foiled in which "up to ten" transatlantic airliners were supposed to be blown out of the sky on a single day.

I remember that one particularly well as I had transatlantic flights booked for only one month after that and the notion of terrorism - i.e. to strike terror into the hearts of the general population - was certainly working on me that summer.

So, why am I thinking about all of these historic events today?

Well, one of the things that comes to mind, especially in the light of the "Air Indonesia" flight that "vanished" in January 2007, is that the thinking behind at least one of these plots - and there was at least one "trial run" done in the Far East for a much bigger plot - was the shattering effect of an aircraft disappearing with no explanation.

You see, if the aircraft were to explode over the middle of the ocean, the chances of finding significant amounts of wreckage are fairly slim, and so the reason behind the incident is likely to remain unexplained, and, if several of these incidents were to happen in quick succession, the "terror" aspect is likely to be turned right up to eleven and these bastards will have won.

It's about fear of the unknown and spreading confusion.

How can an aircraft completely disappear and, at the time of writing, simply vanish without a trace?

You'll already have seen from the many news reports how much we still fear uncertainty and the unknown in this age of rapid communications when we feel that we can know pretty much everything at the posh of a button or two, but this, this not knowing, even if it turns out to be because of a tragic accident and not other, more malicious means, is simply excruciating and far too difficult to bear.

And that's just for those of us who are just armchair observers. What it must be like for the authorities looking for the thing, or those hollow-eyed relatives who can do nothing but wait in both hope and despair… Well, I can't even begin to imagine what that feels like.

You see, for some of us, air travel is quite frightening enough when we just think about the science of the thing, or the engineering involved, or the computers built inside the beasts, or just the people being paid to fly the wretched vehicles. Add to the mix a little bit of dodgy weather, or geography, or the possibilities of human error when it comes to maintenance or manufacturing or just closing all of the right doors properly, and I'm surprised that we're not all gibbering away in our seats and gnawing away at our foldaway tables in blind panic anyway.

So if some bastard comes along and decides to take out the flight by other, more explosive means, the quaking fear soars up the scale into total terror and, unfortunately, the "terrorists" will have won.