By MIKE ORTEGA LIGALIG

A veteran flight engineer, once considered as the third pilot for earlier models of passenger planes, has decided to settle for good in a white-sand-belted town of Bohol, and in an interview, delved his thoughts on the fate of doomed Malaysia Airlines’s Flight MH370. Werner Moeller, who, together with his wife, Flor Garcia, started to construct the first room of Flower Beach Resort in Barangay Virgen, Anda town in early 2000’s, had worked with Lufthansa, the flag carrier of Germany and Europe’s largest airline, as flight engineer for 30 years. The municipality of Anda, 100 kilometers from Bohol’s capital city of Tagbilaran, and which has been heralded by Bohol Gov. Edgar M. Chatto as “the tourism jewel in the province,” has captivated Moeller’s heart since first setting his foot on the town’s powdery white sand beaches nearly 12 years ago.

“When I first came here, there were no Internet, no mobile phone signal, and no cable TV provider (except a wireless satellite TV),” Moeller told the Bohol Sunday Post during an exclusive interview. “And FloWer Beach Resort, a combination of my wife’s and my name, was among the pioneer resorts in this town.”Today Anda, two-time host to an international triathlon event, already has more than 20 world-class hotel resorts dotting around the town’s more than 5-kilometer stretch of glowing, flour-like white sand beaches. All the town’s resorts have banded together and formed Anda Accommodation Association, with Anda de Boracay White Sand Resort owner, Jun Daniel, sitting as the founding president, and Garcia as vice-president. Moeller said that long before tourism, which has gotten intensive promotions by the new young mayor of the town, Metodio “Dodong” Amper, became a byword in this eastern part of Bohol, he already had envisioned Anda’s great potentials endowed by God, inspiring him to pour in millions of pesos of investments by building a high-end resort with world-class diving facility.

At a recent international travel expo held in Berlin, Germany, Moeller joined Bohol’s contingent, with Anda as the center of his marketing pitch before prospective European travelers and diving enthusiasts. Mayor Amper and Dioscoro Ayag Jr., Anda’s tourism consultant, have lauded Moeller’s efforts in promoting Bohol and the town of Anda. During the interview with The Bohol Sunday Post, Moeller was generous in sharing his opinion on the fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 which had mysteriously disappeared from the skies on March 8 this year. No flight debris and crash site have been found. Moeller said that in his 30 years of work as flight engineer of Lufthansa, he has not encountered anything like the case of the ill-fated flight MH370. “It’s mind-boggling,” mused Moeller when solicited to comment on a topic close to his heart. “I am still puzzled how the plane got lost and left no trace despite the use of advanced technology.”

More than two months into the plane’s disappearance, any news on MH370 still rivets Moeller’s imagination.“On the first month since its disappearance, I read so many online news about MH370 every day and watch on TV any talk about the tragedy,” Moeller said. “But recently there is already little news about it.” As a flight engineer for three decades until his retirement, Moeller virtually knows the anatomy of an airplane, including the specific function of each of the plane’s physical part. Latest models of Boeing and Airbus jet planes, however, no longer need the presence of a flight engineer, and Moeller, before computers could take over his job, had to retire from Lufthansa. Asked whether terrorists had maneuvered the plane and succeeded in dodging satellite eyes, Moeller said he cannot rule out such possibility.

“There are so many smart, genius folks who can always outsmart aviation experts,” Moeller pointed out. “And there are so many conspiracy theories and stories but none could fully explain what had happened to flight MH370.” He said that clues to truth behind the disappearance of MH370 may only be unlocked when the plane’s “black box” is finally located. Though the 30-day lifespan of the black box’s pinging signal had expired, Moeller said, the flight data embedded in the black box can still be retrieved and analyzed many years later. As hopes to find the flight debris, including the black box, has started to fade, Moeller still believes that one day, in an unforeseeable future, questions about the fate of flight MH370 would eventually be answered. “It is expensive to sustain the cost of search operations,” noted Moeller. “But, for as long as the government is willing to spend for search, there is still hope that the black box, which is actually orange in color, will one day be found.