Why so few clues about missing Malaysian flight?

CNN opinion columnist Bill Palmer explained why there are so few clues about the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, beginning with the lack of a distress call. Palmer is an Airbus A330 captain for a major airline and author of ‘Understanding Air France 447’. He said the lack of a call “is not particularly perplexing” saying a pilot’s “priorities are to maintain control of the airplane above all else” and an emergency could “easily consume 100% of a crew’s efforts.”From the point of view of a pilot, calls to ground personnel “could do little to help the immediate situation.” Palmer said the investigation may have parallels to Air France 447, an Airbus A330 that crashed in the ocean beyond radar coverage north of Brazil in June 2009. It was the last passenger jet to disappear in a mysterious crash in the ocean before the Malaysia Airlines tragedy. It took days for searchers to spot the wreckage and two more years to retrieved the jet’s black boxes from the sea bottom. Findings said electrical problems contributed to the disaster, and that the plane’s pilots struggled to control the aircraft after its autopilot function stopped working.

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