With Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 still missing, many students have anxiously followed the up-to-date reports on the search efforts. When the plane disappeared on March 8 between 8:11 a.m. and 9:15 a.m., the world was bewildered, wondering where the plane could have disappeared to.
“At first I was convinced that there had been a hijacking just because the disappearance was so mysterious and there were so many conspiracies in the news,” senior Allie Hommel said. “So the anticipation of just waiting to find out where a hijacked plane would end up was really scary. Now that the Malaysian government has declared that it crashed a sea, I think it’s very tragic but it provides some sense of closure for the families of the victims. It’s still a big concern to figure out what caused the crash though.”
With the airplane disappearing at the beginning of Argyle’s spring break, many had to take into account of the unknown before boarding a flight. Senior Bailey McClure was informed about Flight 370 when she was about to board an international flight to Guatemala for a mission trip in Antigua.
“It made my parents and family very nervous that I’d be flying out of the country after this incident,” McClure said. “I wasn’t scared because hundreds of planes fly every day and the chances of that happening to my flight were very slim.”
Hommel had similar feelings about flying.
“It doesn’t make me more nervous to fly,” Hommel said. “If anything it makes me less nervous because airlines will probably take this case into consideration and update their regulations as best they can to prevent things like this happening again.”
To this day the guessing game of where the plane ended up and what truly happened continues. However, there is hope that on Friday the spotted objects in the ocean from satellite images will possibly be revealed to be debris from the flight. Until then, the students and the world can only wait.
“I think it’s unfortunate and wouldn’t have happened if better background checks or other security precautions were taken,” freshman Erin Eubanks said. “However, it does not affect my flying preferences.”
