Today is Day 33 in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The discovery of any debris is still elusive to the searchers and a continued source of pain to the families and friends grieving their loved ones.

For me personally, every time I hear anything about the missing airliner, and the possible causes of its demise, I still think of the Hawaii Clipper and its similar fate. Whether it was a hijacking, a cyber attack on its control system or something else we have not thought of yet, the end is probably near and hopefully soon the world will know what might have cause this very reliable and safe aircraft to crash into the sea.

Chinese, Australian and other vessels first picked up the underwater pulses last week and then this week, nothing. On Tuesday however, the Australian ship Ocean Shield once again reacquired the signals. That’s four signals in the same broad area and all of the signals are within 17 miles of one another. There’s still no indication of wreckage from the plane so the visual search continues. The Ocean Shield signals were in water about 2.6 miles deep, meaning a number of things could literally get in the way of or otherwise disrupt the pulses and were thought to not be of natural origin. To put it in perspective, the area has been “localized” to a 29,000-square-mile zone centered about 1,400 miles northwest of Perth, Australia. That’s roughly the size of South Carolina.

When the level of modern equipment and effort helping with the search for the missing or hijacked Boeing airliner is compared to the effort to find the Hawaii Clipper, it is easy to understand why no debris was ever found. However unlike the Malaysian Aircraft incident, over seventy years has passed and I tend to believe some debris would have been found. Whether old debris would be confused as trash is a topic for another story.