Non Habeus Corpus (Aircraft)
Some observations intended to prompt professional discussion....
1. SAR Meets Twitter. What that means is, this search for a "missing" airliner totally, thoroughly, completely breaks the mold for what has - until now - been known as Search and Rescue. That is, previously searches for crashed airliners (and related ops, freight primarily, but GA also and that balloonist guy too) have been operated in the realm of what I shall call "the physical" - where's the plane, looking for it in conventional ways. No longer. Not any more. No, this search has taken a great leap forward - it has jumped to what I shall call "the digital": ACARS pings, SATCOM receipt of same, HF and VHF signals, GPS data, the workings of cellular telephony, and likely other data categories whose frequencies were too high for my perception (or too low). This is quite different from conventional Search and Rescue. Closest possible comparator, AF 447, but not truly comparable. If qualified to point factual errors out, please do.
Corollaries of above premise include (a) that such a digital search is not one Malaysian authorities anticipated having to manage, and so let us understand the 'runaway train' this has become for them - as a point for context about their actions and pressers, only; (b) it is fair, reasonable, appropriate, and IMO necessary to enquire whether the current ICAO "air law governance" structure is optimized for such a higher-order search paradigm.
2. An Aviation Crime Investigation? It isn't the "traditional" investigation of a crash, paradigmatically exemplified by the intersecting of a T7 with the outer environs of a SFO runway. Nor is it within the parameters of the expected varieties of hijackings, commandeerings, or outright piracy and terrorist murderous acts. It's a different kind of legal problem set. Note, set, not merely one.
Corollaries are: (a) same two as above; (b) it is legally mandatory to acquire all evidence (the Capt.'s sim (further explicated below), both pilots' homes, the cargo manifest, the recent C-check records, the cellular numbers of everyone on the aircraft (hmm...fake passport info resonating here?), and anything else that could be relevant. As to the Captain's home simulator: it simply does not matter, legally, what anyone, and I mean literally anyone, thinks about his having a simulator. A very simple relevance claim is child's play to establish (i.e., it is neither unreasonable nor unrealistic to postulate that if bad-actors were involved in the incident, that they might have selected this flight in order to have this Captain's specific flying skills at their nefarious disposal; is there something in the sim which is consistent with this postulate?). In a criminal investigation legal counsel would never advise to forego evidence gathering on the premise that other members of a given profession think that an individual quite primarily and centrally involved was a regular guy and had normal interests. It's about the evidence, not the individual.
3. Public-private partnership. As we enter the second week of this incident I pause to kick the tires of an imaginary E-2C lumbering off the runway of what once was NAS Glenview (Illinois, USA), so that I may send a wing and a prayer to the fine men and women in the service of many different nations now engaged in the quest - for that is what it has become - for Captain Shah, his ship and crew, and the souls aboard. When their quest has been fulfilled, and they will find Flight 370, I have faith in their work and dedication, then the legal "fun starts." Later, I may post a legal advocacy theorem as to why, and how "the real juridical party in interest" is a legal and operational combination of the FAA and Boeing (as to form, 'public-private partnership').
Oh and a big Willow Run shout-out to WSJ writer Andy Pasztor, truly great work has he done on this incident! Kudos, mate! Now go find the aircraft.