Local Aviation Attorney Questioning What Happened To Malaysian Flight 370
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - When Malaysia's Prime Minister announced that all indications are that Malaysian jetliner went down in the Indian Ocean but Miami attorney and aviation expert Steven Marks still has a lot of questions.
"I view everything with a great deal of skepticism," said Marks.
Marks has investigated plane crashes and represented crash victims for 30 years. His biggest question right now centers on radar.
"You would see a track," he said. "You would have returns that would indicate an unidentified aircraft."
For much of this investigation, Malaysian officials show the plane heading north, then west, then either north or south.
"Governments are very careful about controlling their airspace," Marks said. "Any unidentified object without permission to fly into the airspace--even if they didn't have a transponder at all--it would be picked up on radar."
Even more baffling to Marks, how could that plane have flown so long unnoticed, especially going directly opposite of where it was supposed to be heading.
"You would hear radio communications to the military advising them of this aircraft in their airspace and there would be a lot of chatter about it," he said. "It would not have gone silent for 7 hours, you would not have gone over multiple country's airspace without any activity what so ever."
Marks brings up the scenario of when golfer Payne Stewart's plane crashed in 19-99 after losing cabin pressure. When air traffic controllers could not contact the pilot, fighter jets were sent to investigate. "They followed that aircraft," he said. "The fighters came up to the aircraft to verify that the pilots, the crew were out, they could see through the window that they were not alive."
He says had anyone noticed the Malaysian Airlines plane as an unidentified blimp on the radar, as they should have, fighter jets would have investigated quickly.
Marks would like to see the Malaysian government release all the radar data and satellite information they've complied so the NTSB can do its own review.
