Wilona Karimabadi I don’t like not knowing why things happen. I don’t like unanswered questions, and I don’t like uncertainty.
In June 2009 when Air France Flight 447 carrying 228 passengers and crew disappeared off air traffic controllers’ radars, I joined many around the world in dearly wanting to know what happened. How did a sophisticated aircraft run by computers and a skilled crew take off from Rio de Janeiro on the night of May 31, 2009, and fail to land as scheduled the next morning in Paris?
When wreckage of the plane began surfacing in the swells of the Atlantic off South America, and then 51 bodies emerged, it seemed answers were forthcoming. But then, nothing. The rest of the plane, its passengers, and, most important, the black box and data recorders that would have answered questions were gone.
Experts speculated the wreckage could have easily slipped into crevices in a rocky range of mountains miles beneath the surface, and searches over the next few weeks turned up empty. Those bodies that had been recovered were buried, and for those families closure might have been achieved. But for the others—the families of the passengers and crew still unaccounted for—there was nothing.
Then in early April of this year, a huge break in the story. Underwater robotic submarines found the wreckage of the plane 12,800 feet down, and with it, bodies still trapped inside a significant portion of the fuselage. As of this writing, there is still debate from victims’ families as to whether to raise the bodies of their loved ones or keep the area intact as an underwater burial ground. The data recorders, now found, have been brought to the surface to complete the investigation.
Maybe now we’ll know everything.
Throughout this saga, though, Someone has known everything. And we must remember that in times when the answers remain elusive, that has to be enough.
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Wilona Karimabadi as an assistant editor of the Adventist Review, and marketing and editorial director for KidsView. This article was published June 9, 2011.