As my colleagues might tell you with a weary grimace, I’m something of an aviation nerd. Most people would regard an unsolved plane crash as a tragedy. I do also regard it as a tragedy, but also as an opportunity to review several hundred pages of engrossing technical documentation.
This explains my excitement at Newsweek’s coverage of the latest expedition to find Amelia Earhart’s missing Lockheed Electra. First, researchers set out for a remote Pacific island to investigate a mysterious object in satellite photographs. Then the expedition reached a critical phase, and the aviation world waited with bated breath.
Finally, the discovery: it was a collection of trees. Nearly 90 years after Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared, the Pacific Ocean (soon to be renamed the Trump Ocean, perhaps) has yielded another disappointment. The thing is, we were always going to be disappointed.
Did Earhart run out of fuel? Was she lost because of a navigational error? Did she land safely and survive for a time?
Was she captured by the Japanese? The wreckage may yield answers to some of these questions. Everything else would remain unknown.
Plane crash investigators are careful not to jump to conclusions, but to weigh the evidence. Imagine applying that principle to American politics. Now that’s a real plane crash.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
