SACRAMENTO-

Malaysia’s civil aviation chief has called the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines jet an “unprecedented mystery.”  FOX40 sat down with a Sacramento-based pilot and flight instructor on Monday who agrees with that perspective.

“I had to do some pretty deep research to try to find that last time that an aircraft just disappeared,” said Professor Scott Miller of the flight technology department at Sacramento City College.

Miller, who also has 15 years of experience as a commercial airline pilot, said he had to look back to the 1960’s to find anything similar to the Malaysian Airlines mystery.  But he said this new case stands out, in part because communication technology has become so advanced in recent decades.  There should be more clues available to investigators.

The lack of a debris field is also extraordinarily strange.  Even if there was a catastrophic in-flight failure that caused the plane to disintegrate over the ocean, Miller said pieces of the aircraft would still fall to the water.

“And a lot of things that would float, seat cushions, magazines, other papers, would leave a fairly large debris field that I would like to think that, as this much time has gone by, would have been located by now,” Miller explained.

If the pilots tried to land on water, again, there would be evidence, according Miller.  “They would have had plenty of time to make a distress call that, if not received by air traffic control, might be received by another aircraft in the vicinity.”

The plane’s black box is designed to withstand all kinds of crashes.  “But unfortunately, if it is under water, you have to be pretty close to it to be able to track that signal,” said Miller.

Until searchers are able to find some wreckage, Professor Miller believes we will have no clear picture of what may have brought the plane down.