The state-owned Ethiopian Airlines has long had the reputation for high quality service compared to other African airlines, with only three notable crashes in more than 60 years.

The crashes Ethiopian Airlines has incurred includes: the 1988 crash that occurred shortly after taking off when a flock of birds flew into the plane’s engine, disabling it and killing 31 of the 104 people on board; the hijacked plane that crash-landed off the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean when it ran out of fuel in November 1996, killing 126 of the 175 people aboard; and the recent accident that occurred on December 25, 2010 when the plane crashed into the Mediterranean Sea just off the cost of Lebanon, killing all 90 passengers on board.

In the aftermath of the tragic crash of the Ethiopian airplane en route to Addis Abeba from Beirut, the world has been fixated on news outlets to understand what really happened.

Speculation after speculation and unfounded allegations were made regarding the causes of the accident.

Any hopes of finding answers to such inquiries currently rest in a single technological system, the black box of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft. This 8.2kg, 10.2cm wide gadget is believed to hold the keys to the mystery of ET 409.

The fact is that the gadget was located two days after the accident, but now it has been almost two weeks and still there is no information about it.

The thing that one must remember about a lock is its uselessness without a key. Obviously, the black box, also known as the flight data recorder (FDR), is the key that will open the lock on a treasure trove of answers as to why the aircraft accident happened. Every investigation has to start with finding the FDR.

This device, used to store specific performance parameters of an aircraft on a set of recorders, is a virtually indestructible unit.

But the query arises here. With all the sophisticated and technologically advanced systems of the 21st century, how in the world could it be so difficult to recover something that has already been located?

Why are the authorities not pushing harder to understand what really went wrong? 

For the record, research shows that there have been 10 un-recovered flight recorders from 1965 to 2009 out of which seven were Boeing airplanes the last one being an Air France Airbus A330-200 that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago Islands on June 1, 2009. In this case, neither flight recorder was ever found.

The Boeing 737 is considered to be one of the safest planes in airline service according to aviation experts. The jet was first introduced in the 1960s and today is the workhorse on many short and medium-range routes.

Still, over the past 15 years it was involved in a series of incidents and crashes linked to problems with a valve in the rudder assembly. The valve reportedly would malfunction and cause the rudder to turn independently of the pilot’s commands.

The problem was considered resolved after operators of older Boeing 737s were ordered to carry out inspections and upgrades of the critical rudder control systems.

There remain some lingering doubts as to the final minutes of Flight ET409.

The answer to the mystery of the accident is obviously a big concern to three major parties: Ethiopian Airlines, Rafik Hariri International Airport, and Boeing.

But the current situation seems to suggest that all three have chosen to ease up on the issue. The fact of the matter is that this fiasco, in the wake of the accident, is not a spur-of-the-moment thing, and, truth be told, the lives of 90 individuals were forfeit.

It is an obligation and courtesy to try to explain to the family of victims what has actually happened.     

The responsible parties at least owe this to the victims’ families, so why procrastinate? The black box has been located, after all.

What should be done is to work faster and prioritise this agenda. It should be on top of the three parties’ lists of things to do.

Why are the officials all of a sudden silent about the black box recordings? And why did several eye-witnesses report seeing a fireball in the sky?

Maybe the information is not disseminated for different reasons, like the sensitivity of the issue, trying to protect the families of the victims, or, in the worst case scenario, plain old negligence.

Hoping that it is not the latter, this important information should be publicised giving the benefit of the doubt to the public.

The force of a high-speed, nose-diving jet impacting from thousands of feet above is likely the cause of the tiny fragmented wreckage, and it is likely that the wind carried the crash debris over great distances.

However, there remains a lot of uncertainty and many unanswered questions surrounding Flight ET409.

Whatever the situation, the task that ought to be executed has not been done. This is a travesty for the families of the victims and should be scrutinised to the last detail.

These observations represent only some of the issues that will likely form the future relationships between organisations and their customers.

Most of the drawbacks further support the viewpoint on the subject, which can best be described as practical, as well as comprehensive, in that the communications breach must satisfy various requirements: operational continuity, situational awareness, and above all, safety.

Whether the information contained inside the gadget on the floor of the Mediterranean is secure or not remains to be seen.

It is to be recalled that in the last Ethiopian accident in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros, the black box was never officially disclosed to the public.

It seems like history may be repeating itself.

Picture these issues as balls a juggler must keep airborne. That is what airlines and officials like Girma Wake must do when making major decisions. Only for them, dropping a ball has much greater consequences.