Malaysian flight with 239 people aboard missing, including 153 Chinese nationals

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Malaysia Airlines crash: terror fear over four mystery passengers on missing plane MH370

Air safety experts investigate whether terrorism was behind the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines flight which vanished over the South China Sea

By Malcolm Moore, in Beijing, Robert Mendick and Patrick Sawer
6:20AM GMT 08 Mar 2014

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Air safety experts are investigating whether an airliner that mysteriously vanished in the Far East could have been the target of a terrorist attack.

More than twenty-four hours after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea, the only clue to the fate of its 239 passengers and crew was the revelation that the identities of four people on board, including two using stolen passports, were being investigated.

The disclosure raised fears that terrorists could have used false passports to board the craft, which vanished with no prior signals of trouble to air traffic controllers.

Those fears increased when Malaysian authorities later confirmed that they were liaising with the FBI over the suspect identities. The four under suspicion had all bought their flight tickets through China Southern Airlines, said a security official.

The plane was heading from the Malaysia to China, where last week 33 people were killed and 143 injured in a terrorist attack in the south-western city of Kunming. The attack, in which a gang of men ran amok in a Chinese railway station, was blamed on pro-separatist ethnic Uigurs, who come from the mainly Muslim areas of the Xinjiang region that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some Chinese media have branded it the country’s own “9-11”.

An aerial view of an oil spill seen from a Vietnamese Air Force aircraft

Officials stressed that it was too early to say whether terrorism was a likely cause of the Malaysia airlines crash. But US officials said the FBI was checking passenger manifests and going back through intelligence.

“We are aware of the reporting on the two stolen passports,” one senior official told NBC news. “We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it’s still very early, and that’s by no means definitive.”

A leading aviation safety expert also said that it was “extraordinary” that the pilots of the jetliner did not have time to make a distress call.

David Learmount, of the specialist aviation magazine Flight Global, said that as the plane was cruising at about 35,000 feet when it lost contact over the South China sea, the pilots would normally have had “plenty of time” to radio in any technical problems before the plane hit the water.

Chris Yates, another aviation expert, said: “There will be two areas for the investigation: the maintenance of the aircraft and also possible terrorism.”

The last reported position of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 (flightradar24.com)

As darkness fell over the South China Sea last night, rescuers using boats, helicopters and planes had spotted two long oil slicks in the area where the Boeing 777 lost contact with air traffic control.

No wreckage, or survivors, were spotted during a rescue mission that involved five countries and lasted roughly seven hours before the night closed in.

When dawn broke, rescuers widened the search area to Malaysia's western coast after the country's military said its radar indicated that the missing aircraft may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before vanishing.

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realised there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told a news conference.

The wide-bodied jet's sudden disappearance was followed by another ominous surprise when Malaysia Airlines released the passenger list for Flight MH370, a red-eye between Kuala Lumpur and the Chinese capital.

After checking the names of passengers 63 and 101, Christian Kozel and Luigi Maraldi, the Austrian and Italian governments said that neither man was on board.

A woman cries in Beijing airport as she waits to hear information about her family (Reuters)

Both had their passports stolen in Thailand over the last two years, and Mr Maraldi had been issued a new one according to the Italian media.

China Southern, which operated a codeshare on the flight, said the passengers using stolen passports had booked through its ticketing office.

Asked in the wake of the revelations whether terrorists had seized the plane, Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister said: “We are looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.”

An unnamed senior American intelligence official told the New York Times that “at this time, we have not identified this as an act of terrorism. While the stolen passports are interesting, they don’t necessarily say to us that this was a terrorism act”.

Malaysia's Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities were looking at four possible cases of suspect identities. He said Malaysian intelligence was liaising with their international counterparts, including the FBI.

"All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies," he said. "We do not want to target only the four; we are investigating the whole passenger manifest. We are looking at all possibilities."

It was 1.20am on Saturday morning when Flight MH370 simply vanished, in clear weather and with no distress signal, over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Two thirds of the 227 passengers were Chinese including one infant, travelling on what has become one of the most popular tourist routes in Asia. There were no British passengers on board.

The pilot, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had more than 18,000 flying hours under his belt and had been flying for Malaysia Airlines for more than three decades.

Data from the plane showed no cause for panic. After a steady climb to 35,000ft, the Boeing 777 jet levelled off and then abruptly stopped sending its location, speed, and altitude. There was no sign of any sudden descent.

The absence of any signal from the plane particularly troubled experts; even if both engines on the jet had failed, there should have been time to issue a distress call as the plane descended.

Family and friends waiting for the plane to arrive break down as they hear the jet has gone missing (AFP)

It was five hours before Malaysia Airlines issued its first statement, simply saying they had lost contact with their plane and had begun a rescue operation.

In Beijing, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi broke off a press conference to deal with the crisis. “We are extremely worried,” he said. Shortly afterwards, Xi Jinping, the president, ordered “all-out efforts” on a rescue operation.

An efficient police operation at Beijing airport shuttled relatives away from a scrum of Chinese and foreign journalists and to a conference room in a downtown hotel, where they sat and waited.

It was six more hours before the search began focusing on the last point of contact from the plane, roughly 120 nautical miles south west of Vietnam.

At 12.15pm, an emergency message was broadcast to all ships in the area asking them to “keep a sharp look out and assist immediately”.

China dispatched two ships from its naval base on Hainan island, while the Vietnamese and Malaysia navies both sent helicopters and ships. Singapore sent C-130 Hercules planes to search from overhead.

A Vietnamese journalist aboard a search and rescue helicopter said they had spotted oil slicks on the waters.

The arrival board shows the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, top in red, cancelled at Beijing International Airport (AFP)

But the Malaysian transport minister, Hishamuddin Hussein, said it was too early to confirm a crash and that there were no signs of wreckage.

“We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane. We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed,” he said.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record; it last lost a plane in 1977. The Boeing 777, equipped with twin Rolls-Royce Trent 892 engines, is also one of the world’s safest planes. Its only fatal crash in a 19-year history came last July when an Asiana Airlines jet missed the runway in San Francisco and three died.

Experts said that investigators would concentrate not only on whether the plane had suffered some catastrophic structural or engine failure, but also on sudden and unforeseen turbulence, some sort of attack on the plane, or even the suicide of the pilot, which has caused previous crashes over water.

But, a full day after the tragedy, the only news that Malaysia Airlines could issue was that “at this stage, our search and rescue teams from Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam have failed to find evidence of any wreckage”.

“The sea mission will continue while the air mission will recommence at daylight,” it added.

By then, the relatives of the passengers in Beijing were furious, having been held throughout the day in the hotel with minimal information.

The only information the relatives had gleaned, complained another man named Mr Jia, was from the internet.

At the end of the day, the relatives retired to rooms in the hotel, still without any news, their hopes fading.

Additional reporting by Adam Wu

 

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Malaysia Airlines crash: the victims and the tears of their families

Distress at Beijing airport as 239 passengers and crew are feared dead after Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared mid-flight

An information board indicating that flight MH370 of Malaysia Airlines is delayed, at Beijing Capital International Airport, China
Patrick Sawer

By Patrick Sawer, Malcolm Moore and Claire Duffin
7:24PM GMT 08 Mar 2014

It was roughly an hour after the arrivals board at Beijing Capital Airport had flashed up a 'Delayed’ notice for Flight MH370 that the terrible news began to emerge.

The Malaysian Airlines flight from Kuala Lumpur to the Chinese capital was missing and a search and rescue operation had begun.

In the arrivals hall pandemonium broke out as waiting relatives began to realise the dreadful fate that may have befallen their loved ones.

Frantic for news of the 153 Chinese on board they mobbed the travel information desk, but the two female attendants, dressed in bright red coats could only smile and shrug their shoulders.

Catherine and Robert Lawton of Springfield Lakes were on board the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

One woman in a white coat burst into tears in the middle of the concourse and was quickly surrounded by TV cameramen and photographers.

Police began ushering relatives into a staff area at the side of the hall, before moving them by minibus to the Lido Hotel in downtown Beijing, a half-hour drive from the airport.

There the long, agonising wait for news began.

“When we got here, some people who said they were from the airport helped us to fill in forms with our personal details and asked us to wait,” said one relative, who refused to give her name. “Then we just had to wait”.

Conflicting rumours began to circulate – one suggested the plane had made an emergency landing, another that passengers had been spotted in life vests floating in the sea.

A passenger manifest was leaked onto a Chinese website, with one name oddly blurred out.

At noon, the red line at the top of the arrivals board for the delayed MH370 blinked off. But the smiling staff behind the desk still had no information.

Back at the hotel, tempers began to fray. “Malaysia Airlines has not told us a single thing. No one from the company has even been in to see us,” stormed one relative. “They cannot keep hundreds of us here for hours without any information.”

First Officer, Fariq Ab Hamid

But as the light began to fade, the anger gave way to weariness. The hotel made up rooms for the group and said costs would be taken care of. Many vowed to wait until they had some resolution on the fate of their loved ones.

The air rescue crews returned to their bases, unable to keep searching in the dark. They would begin again at daybreak, they vowed.

Then, slowly, as the hours passed, details began to emerge of the passengers who were now being classed as missing feared lost. Those on board came from across the globe, with passengers from Malaysia, Australia, the United States, France and of course China.

Among the most poignant stories was that of two French teenagers, Hadrien Wattrelos, 17, and Zhao Yan, 18, who had enrolled together at the Lycee Francais International de Pekin, also known as the French School.

Hadrien Wattrelos (right) and Zhao Yan are listed among passengers missing aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370

The couple had posted a photograph of themselves on Wattrelo’s college page on July 29, 2013, accompanied by the words “Je t’aime” (“I love you”). “Haaaaaa mon amour, trooooop mignon,” (“Ha my love, too cute”) Zhao responded.

The pair, both French citizens, gave Paris as their home town.

Two other passengers on the flight, Laurence Wattrelos, 52, and Ambre Wattrelos, 14, were believed to be Hadrien’s mother and sister, respectively. Ambre is also a student at the French School and Laurence is listed as vice president of the Association des Parents D’Eleves du Lycee Francais International de Pekin, a French parent-teacher organisation, on that group’s website.

As names emerged so did more photographs of those feared dead. In Malaysia Hamid Ramlan was handing out photographs of his daughter Norliakmar Hamid, 34, and her husband Razahan Zamani who he said were both on board.

Norliakmar Hamid and her husband Razahan Zamani

Norliakmar’s brother Mohd Lokman Hamid, 31, said he learnt that the couple were on the flight from her Facebook status, which she posted late last night.

He told reporters: “I know they had been planning to go to Beijing for a holiday, especially after she suffered a miscarriage. I immediately called MAS to verify the story, but they said they will call me back for confirmation.

“I’m terribly worried as too many speculations have been made about the incident. Some even say that the aircraft has issues with its global positioning system (GPS). I just hope that my sister and brother-in-law, as well as other passengers on board the aircraft are safe.”

Chrisman Siregar showed a portrait of his son Firman, dressed in his graduation robes, as his family gathered in tearful silence to watch news of the search and rescue operation.

Also feared dead are Canadian husband and wife Muktesh Mukherjee and Bai Xiaomo, who were returning to their family home in Beijing – though fortunately their two small children did not appear to be travelling with them, according to the passenger manifest.

Xiaomo Bai and Muktesh Mukherjee

Photographs posted on their Facebook page showed a happy, smiling family. An airline spokesman said company officials had not been able to get in touch with their families but had contacted the Canadian embassy in Malaysia.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted his condolences and Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs recently released a statement stating “our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with those affected by the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines MH370. We are working with local authorities to gather more information on the situation.”

Mr Mukherjee is the vice president of China operations for Xcoal Energy & Resources.

The flight was carrying 227 passengers, including two children, and 12 crew members. They were made up of 153 Chinese nationals, 38 Malaysians, five Indians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, four French, three Americans, two from New Zealand, Ukraine and Canada and one Russian, one Italian, one Dutch and one Austrian.

The pilot was Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysia who joined the airline in 1981 and had 18,000 hours flying time under his belt. His co-pilot was 27-year-old First Officer Fariq Ab. Hamid, also from Malaysia, who joined the airline in 2007.

The three Americans were Philip Wood, 51, an IBM executive who worked in Kuala Lumpur and two children, Leo Meng, two, and Nicole Meng, four.

Philip Wood

More than 20 Chinese artists and their family members, who were in Kuala Lumpur for an art exchange program, were feared to have perished. aboard. The Sichuan provincial government said Zhang Jinquan, a well-known calligrapher, was on the flight.

A man at Beijing airport, who only gave his name as Mr Song, said: “My parents were on board. They were in Kuala Lumpur for an accountancy project for five days. I will wait here until I am told something. No one from Malaysia Airlines has told us anything all day.”

Two Australian couples Rodney and Mary Burrows and Catherine and Robert Lawton, from Brisbane, had been travelling on the flight together.

Mr Lawton’s brother Robert said: “Dad phoned this morning and said 'Bobby’s plane’s missing’. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. We just want to know where it is, where the plane’s come down, if there’s anything left.”

According to friends the Lawtons were kindly neighbours and doting grandparents who enjoyed travelling. Similar things were being said of the Burrows. Don Stokes said: “They are lovely people. They were excited about the trip.”

On Saturday night a US electronics firm confirmed that 20 of its employees were among the passengers. Freescale Semiconductor, based in Texas, said in a statement said 12 of the staff were from Malaysia and eight from China.

Another passenger, father-of-two Paul Weeks, had left his wife Danica and sons Lincoln, three, and Jack, 10 months, at home in Perth, Western Australia, to make his way Mongolia, where he was due to start a new posting as a mechanical engineer in the region’s mining industry.

Paul Weeks

It was meant to be the start of a dream job. Now his wife was left, like so many others, to try to come to terms with the tragic news.

Additional reporting by Claire Duffin and Adam Wu

 

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New possible sighting of debris at sea as China sends warships to join search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 11:45am
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 4:00pm

Wang Feng and agencies

Photos showing possible debris floating on the sea uploaded to Chinese social media by a user. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Photographs purporting to show debris in the sea in the area where the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 lost contact have been posted on Chinese social media.

The pictures, supposedly taken by a Chinese passenger on board another MA flight from Beijing which landed safely in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday morning, shows what appears to be fragmented debris floating on waters about 90 minutes out to sea from the Malaysian capital.

Screenshot of Weibo post with photos of suspected debris at sea in waters between Malaysia and Viet Nam. Photo: SCMP Pictures

The poster, whose profile information says he is a banker working for China Minsheng Bank in Beijing, wrote that he took the snaps from his window at a height of 11,000 metres, at about 6.45am on Sunday.

Photos showing possible debris floating on the sea uploaded to Chinese social media by a user. Photo: SCMP Pictures

While it is not immediately clear what the suspected debris consisted of, the area where the passenger said he spotted it appears to be roughly consistent with where the missing plane lost contact with aviation authorities and where ships from Malaysia and Vietnam were already searching since Saturday afternoon.

Li Jiaxiang, administrator of the Civil Aviation Administration of China, said at a press briefing on Sunday morning that some debris had been spotted, but it was unclear whether it came from the plane.

Vietnamese authorities said they had seen nothing close to two large oil slicks they saw Saturday and said might be from the missing plane.

None of the reported possible sightings so far have been confirmed to be from the Boeing 777-200 in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam where the plane vanished from screens early Saturday morning.

Malaysia’s civil aviation chief Azaharuddin Abdul Rahman said his country had expanded its area of operation to the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, on the other side of the country from where the plane disappeared. “This is standard procedure. If we can’t find it here, we go to other places,” he said.

Also on Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency said that two warships of the Chinese navy, "Jinggangshan" and "Mianyang", are on their way to sea area where missing Malaysia Airline flight MH 370 may have crashed.

The Chinese navy vessel "Jinggangshan", an 20,000-tonne amphibious warship loaded with life-saving equipments, underwater detection facilities and supplies of water and food, set out from Zhanjiang city of south China 's Guangdong Province at about 3:00 am on Sunday, Xinhua said. The ship was also carrying two helicopters, 30 medical personnel, ten divers and 52 marines, and expected to arrive in the search area in Tuesday morning.

Chinese Navy's amphibious warship Jinggangshan. Photo: SCMP Pictures

Another Chinese navy vessel, the missile frigate "Mianyang", left for the possible crash site on Saturday night, and was expected to arrive early Monday morning.

Reuters quoted Malaysia's Armed Forces chief as saying on Sunday afternoon that 40 ships and 22 aircraft were involved in the search for the missing plane.

The Philippines has deployed three air force planes and three navy patrol ships to the area, Singapore sent a C130 Hercules aircraft and Vietnam and Malaysia also dispatched aircraft and marine rescue vessels. The destroyer USS Pinckney was en route to southern Vietnam to help.

A handout picture provided by the US Navy shows the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Pinckney in the Pacific Ocean on 18 May 2011. Photo: EPAUS

7th Fleet officials have said that a guided-missile destroyer, the USS Pinckney, and a P-3C Orion aircraft were being sent to help in the search

State broadcaster CCTV said at noon on Sunday that the 4000-tonne China Coast Guard vessel, numbered 3411, was the first Chinese vessel to arrive on the search and rescue scene on Sunday, and was observing from a position of less than 40 nautical miles away from the core rescue area.

 

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Hongkonger confirmed as one of passengers on board missing Malaysia Airlines flight

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 4:00pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 4:01pm

Ernest Kao and agencies [email protected]

Malaysian Airlines planes are seen at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Photo: EPA

A Hongkonger has been confirmed as being among the 239 passengers on board a Malaysia Airlines flight which vanished over the South China Sea on Saturday.

The Immigration Department confirmed in a statement on Sunday that a Hong Kong resident had been on board flight MH370.

No request for assistance had been received, the department added.

The Boeing 777-200ER plane disappeared just off the coast of Vietnam two hours after it took off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

A member of a special assistance team of Malaysian Airlines speaks to the relatives of those on board the missing flight in Beijing. Photo: Xinhua

Malaysia on Sunday launched a terror probe into the disappearance of a passenger jet carrying 239 people, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports, as relatives begged for news of their loved ones.

The United States sent the FBI to investigate after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished from radar early on Saturday somewhere at sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, but stressed there was no evidence of terrorism yet.

Malaysian authorities also expanded their search for wreckage to the country’s west coast, and asked for help from Indonesia. Searches so far had concentrated on waters to the country’s east, in the South China Sea.

A total of 40 ships and 22 aircraft from an array of countries including China and the US are now involved in the hunt across the two areas, officials said.

According to the airline, 153 Chinese citizens were among the passengers on the flight, which was a codeshare with China Southern Airlines.

The Hong Kong government's Beijing Office said it would reach out to the Beijing-based family of the missing resident and provide assistance.

The department said it would continue to monitor the situation and work closely with the office of the Commissioner of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong, the Chinese embassy in Malaysia and the airline.

Agence France-Presse

 

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Malaysia : The search continues



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Terrorism possible in missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370; military radar indicates jet may have turned around

The plane — which had two passengers using stolen passports — vanished off the Vietnamese coast during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing while carrying 239 people, including three U.S. passport holders: Philip Wood, 51, Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2. Malaysia's air force chief said early Sunday that military radar indicated the missing jet may have turned back to Kuala Lumpur.

By Joseph Straw AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Saturday, March 8, 2014, 9:19 AM
Updated: Sunday, March 9, 2014, 3:06 AM

Distraught family members crowd Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia after jetliner with 239 people on board vanished from air traffic control screens over waters between Malaysia and Vietnam. Lai Seng Sin/AP

Authorities hunting a lost Malaysia Airlines jetliner refused to rule out terrorism Saturday in the flight’s sudden and stunning disappearance over Southeast Asia.

While a daylong search failed to locate missing Flight MH370 or the 239 passengers and crew members aboard, red flags were raised by word that two passengers on the doomed plane boarded with stolen passports.

The jet vanished during an otherwise routine flight without sending a distress signal, leading investigators to suspect a quick and catastrophic midair incident.

Philip Wood of Texas, one of three U.S. passport holders on missing flight MH370. LinkedIn

Early Sunday morning, Malaysia’s air force chief said that military radar indicated the missing Boeing 777 jet may have turned back to Kuala Lumpur, but declined to give further details on how far the plane may have veered off course. Rodzali Daud said “there is a possible indication that the aircraft made a turnback,” and that authorities were “trying to make sense of that.”

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the pilot is supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if he does return, but that officials had received no such distress call.

Three of the flight’s passengers carried U.S. travel documents — including two small children, a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old.

View of oil spills seen from a Vietnamese air force plane on Saturday in the search area for a missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members. REUTERS/Trung Hieu/Thanh Nien Newspaper

The Boeing 777 was about an hour into its flight early Saturday, traveling smoothly in clear weather at about 35,000 feet, when it vanished from radar screens. A desperate international search ensued, with any hope of good news disappearing almost as quickly as the 11-year-old plane.

The first hints of its likely fate were a pair of massive oil slicks spotted in the South China Sea. But Vietnamese ships and planes searching for the missing jet found no wreckage in the vicinity of the slicks, officials said Saturday night.

Some debris was spotted elsewhere, but it was unclear if it came from the plane. The search was expanded early Sunday to cover the west coast of Malaysia, officials said.

Planned route of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. New York Daily News

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, asked if terrorism was a possibility, said it was too early to say. “We are looking at all possibilities,” Razak said.

Confirmation that two travelers headed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing were identity thieves suggested something sinister — although U.S. officials echoed Razak’s caution until more details are known.

“This gets our antenna up, for sure,” said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. “Once you hear that — stolen passports, a plane disappearing from the radar — you have to go to the full-court press.”

A relative of Norliakmar Hamid and Razahan Zamani, passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, cries at their house in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday. MOHD RASFAN/AFP/Getty Images

A federal law enforcement source said the U.S. was “still monitoring the situation.”

King said intelligence agencies around the world would no doubt check for “communications among terrorists or any type of chatter” about the flight. But the congressional veteran, along with another federal source, repeated that the investigation was too fresh to reach any conclusions.

Recovery of the still-missing Boeing 777, long considered one of the safest aircraft in the world, is the first step in deciphering what went wrong near the start of the 2,300-mile trip. The first clues to its possible whereabouts were the two oil slicks spotted by Vietnamese jet pilots — a possible sign of leaking jet fuel.

Sarah Nor, 55, the mother of 34-year-old Norliakmar Hamid, a passenger on a missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, is seen here at her home in Kuala Lumpur Saturday. She has received no word on the fate of those onboard. MOHD RASFAN/AFP/Getty Images

The plane was inspected just 10 days ago and found “in proper condition,” said Ignatius Ong, CEO of Malaysia Airlines subsidiary Firefly.

A team from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was dispatched to Asia to aid in the investigation.

The three U.S. passport holders were identified in a manifest posted by Malaysia Airlines as Philip Wood, 51, and the two children, Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2.

Members of the Philippine Military Western Command map out search-and-rescue operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight. Several Asian countries scrambled air and water teams to comb the South China Sea off southern Vietnam on Saturday. AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPINE MILITARY WESTERN COMMAND

Wood, an IBM employee and father of two boys, was based in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. “We’re all sticking together,” his father, Aubrey Wood, told The New York Times. “What can you do? What can you say?”

Wood’s ex-wife, Elaine, originally from the Bronx, described him in a Facebook post as “a wonderful man.”

Twenty employees of an Austin, Tex.-based tech firm were also aboard the flight. Twelve of the Freescale Semiconductor employees are from Malaysia and eight from China, company officials said.

This 2011 photo shows the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that disappeared from air traffic control screens Saturday. The image was taken at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. Laurent Errera/AP

Officials in Italy and Austria confirmed Saturday that the names of two passengers on the flight manifest matched passports reported stolen in Thailand. The Italian passport was swiped 18 months ago, while the Austrian travel document disappeared two years ago, officials said.

Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, is now living in Thailand, while the Austrian was located in his homeland. Maraldi called his parents in Italy to reassure them of his safety after his name appeared on the flight manifest.

The U.S. Navy dispatched a warship and a surveillance plane to join the multinational search team that failed to turn up any wreckage across 17 fruitless hours before nightfall in Southeast Asia.

Malaysia sent 15 planes and nine ships, while Vietnam sent two navy boats, two jets and a helicopter.

A woman, whose husband was a passenger of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, attempts to leave a Beijing hotel after complaining that the airline was withholding information. JASON LEE/Reuters

The twin jets spotted the slicks in the South China Sea; one was about 9 miles long, and the other about 6 miles long, officials said. Each was consistent with the residue of a crash by a jetliner with two fuel tanks, authorities confirmed.

“We are doing everything in our power to locate the plane,” said Malaysia Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

About two-thirds of the likely crash victims were from Taiwan and China, with distraught family members at the Beijing airport steered to a nearby hotel to await the expected delivery of grim news. One woman, boarding a shuttle bus, wept as she spoke on a cell phone. “They want us to go to the hotel. It cannot be good,” she said.

With News Wire Services

 

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WATCH: (Mar. 8, 2014) The flight was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when communication was lost about 250 kilometres off a tiny Vietnamese island.
There was no distress call, the plane just disappeared. Mike Drolet reports.


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Malaysia’s PM says airport security to be reviewed after missing plane: reports

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 7:07pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 7:07pm

Agence France-Presse in Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak arrives to meet family members of missing passengers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Photo: AFP

Malaysia’s leader said on Sunday airport security screening in the country would be reviewed, according to a report, after it emerged that two passengers who boarded a missing airliner had stolen passports.

Malaysia Airlines flight 370 vanished over waters somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam early on Saturday shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and was feared lost with 239 passengers and crew.

“We will review all security protocols and, if needed, we will enhance them,” Prime Minister Najib Razak was quoted saying in The Star newspaper.

He stressed: “If necessary, because we still do not know the cause of the incident.”

A patrol vessel of Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency searches for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. Photo: AP

The plane went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Several Southeast Asian nations have launched searches for wreckage but nothing firm has yet been reported.

A Malaysian civil aviation official said authorities believe two passengers had used stolen passports and were examining CCTV footage of them.

Malaysia’s transport minister said earlier Sunday the government was looking into the possibility of a terror incident and was liaising with the intelligence agencies over the countries, including US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Chinese radar expert has doubts that Malaysian airliner simply 'vanished'

Radar technology is advanced enough to track an aircraft 'even after an explosion'

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 6:02am
UPDATED : Sunday, 09 March, 2014, 12:53pm

Stephen Chen [email protected]

The vanished Boeing 777 takes off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport in 2011. Photo: AP

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 could not just "disappear", a Chinese military radar expert said yesterday, and asked whether Vietnamese authorities were withholding crucial information or if staff had "neglected their duty".

The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, had reached cruising altitude of more than 10,000 metres when it vanished over the sea between Vietnam and Malaysia, Vietnamese air traffic controllers said.

"This is very strange," the expert said. "Radar technology today is so advanced, even a piece of debris just a metre or two long can be detected easily."

Vietnamese air traffic controllers should have been able to track precisely the whereabouts of the aircraft and reproduce its flight route, said the source, who declined to be named.

Even if the aircraft broke apart in an explosion, the cloud and trajectory of its debris would still leave a trace on a radar screen.

"The plane was flying at a very high altitude. The crew had lots of time to use the emergency radio frequency for help. I find it difficult to believe that the Vietnamese did not detect anything, although some staff might have neglected their duty or were not doing their job properly," he said.

The expert added that the area where the plane went missing was very busy and closely monitored by ground radar networks.

Some passengers might have survived a crash at sea, waiting for rescuers to arrive, the source said. "The rescue efforts have been unreasonably slow," he said. "If there were survivors, whether or not they lived was determined by the speed of the search and rescue operation."

In a meeting with the Malaysian chargé d'affaires to China, Bala Chandran Tharman, and Vietnamese ambassador to China Nguyen Van Tho, Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng called on both countries to try their best with rescue work, and to inform the Chinese passengers' relatives about the latest developments.

Xinhua reported that both envoys said they planned to work closely with China and do their best to help facilitate a rescue.

If the plane's black box can be found, investigators should examine whether there was any delay in the rescue operations, according to the radar expert.

"Radars have no blind spot on the ocean. After an accident, radar data should provide a fairly accurate estimate on the plane's final location," he said.

"There has been very little transparency with the information. This is murder to survivors," he added.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

4 suspect identities aboard missing MH370 flight: authorities

Staff Reporter
2014-03-09

Distraught family members await news on flight MH370 at Beijing Capital International Airport, March 8. (Photo/CNS)

Malaysia's department of civil aviation has confirmed that two passengers with false passports holding tickets booked from China Southern Airlines boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and that authorities are now looking at four possible cases of suspected identities.

The Boeing 777 plane traveling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, carrying 239 people including 153 Chinese citizens and a Taiwanese national, lost contact with air traffic control at 1:20am on Saturday, 40 minutes after takeoff. A frantic search across the South China Sea has so far provided no answers, with the airline admitting it is now "fearing the worst."

Investigators are currently examining the entire passenger manifest after it was discovered that two of the 227 passengers may have been traveling on stolen passports. The allegation was confirmed by Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation director-general Azharuddin Abdul Rahman at a press conference on Sunday after reviews of closed-circuit television records. The two passport owners, Italian Luigi Maraldi and Austrian Christian Kozel, were not on the flight and are reportedly safe and well. Maraldi had his passport stolen in Thailand last year and Kozel's was stolen in the region two years ago.

Two people named as Maraldi and Kozel had booked their flights together with China Southern, which was codesharing MH370 with Malyasia Airlines, according to Chinese media reports.

Malaysian defense minister Hishamuddin Hussein added that two more names are being checked and that he will be working with the FBI and other international agencies to investigate the matter.

"All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies," Hishammuddin said. "We do not want to target only the four; we are investigating the whole passenger manifest. We are looking at all possibilities."

Malaysian authorities said the search has been expanded to its western coast, the opposite side of the peninsula where the plane was last sighted after radar recordings suggested that the plane could have turned back towards Kuala Lumpur before it disappeared.

Vietnam also said in a statement that its air force planes spotted two large oil slicks between six and nine miles off the southern tip of Vietnam, which are believed to be consistent with what would be left by fuel from a crashed jet.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has ordered "all-out efforts" on a rescue operation and urged officials to strength contacts with counterparts in Malaysia and other countries to take all measures necessary, reports China's official Xinhua news agency.

Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi also told reporters in Beijing: "We are extremely worried. The news is very disturbing."

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Missing MH370 likely to have disintegrated mid-flight: experts

Staff Reporter
2014-03-09

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 commercial jet. (Photo/Xinhua)

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which lost contact with aviation authorities en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur at 1:20am on Saturday morning, is most likely due to a sudden breakup of the plane mid-flight, according to Chinese experts.

An air search and rescue mission continues in the South China Sea where the Boeing 777 — carrying 239 passengers, including 154 Chinese nationals and one Taiwanese national — is likely to have crashed. The team is on a race against time to search for the plane's black box, which records flight data and cockpit voice transmissions, though at the time of writing the box's signals have yet to be detected.

On Sunday morning, Hugh Dunleavy, commercial director at Malaysia Airlines, suggested the reason why the black box — which can ordinarily radiate signals for 200km-300km — has not yet been found may be due to the seriousness of the plane's disintegration.

Song Wenbin, an aviation expert at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told Chinese-language Beijing Times that it is unlikely that the disappearance of flight MH370 was caused by weather. The plane lost contact around 40 minutes after departure, which means it would have likely exceeded an altitude of 10,000 meters, where influences of the weather become minimal, Song said.

Ma Wei, a lecturer at the same university, said it is unusual for a plane's signal to be completely severed. Even if flight MH370 experienced an engine problem that affected its communication system, there are sufficient backups in place to keep the system up and running, Wei said. It is also improbable that the communication system was shut down manually as a plane has more than a single communication system and has other ways of notifying air traffic control, he added.

A hijacking has been considered another possibility, though Chinese air force test pilot Xu Yongling said it is unlikely for this to have occurred without anyone on board making contact with the land before the plane crashed. Cockpits of modern commercial flights have excellent safety features, Xu said, adding that pilots can activate the SOS system without leaving their seats.

Zhou Jisheng, an aircraft designer at Guangdong Changsheng Aircraft Design Co, told the Beijing Times that the most likely possiblity is that the plane experienced a sudden breakup which did not allow the plane's crew sufficient time to notify aviation authorities.

Song concurs with Zhou's assessment but said that if this were the case, the debris would be scattered across a large area and should have been easily spotted by rescue teams. Given that the plane has not yet been spotted, it is also possible that the entire plane, or at least most of it, crashed into the sea at the same time, he said.

Zhou said there are two possibilities if the plane did disintegrate mid-air. The first is some kind of catastrophic structural failure stemming from corrosion and wear and tear over time or the plane's pressurization and depressurization system. The other is an explosion caused by a bomb or similar device.

The Beijing-based Economic Observer reported, citing aviation experts, that the probability that flight MH370 was brought down by a terrorist attack or bomb is higher than that of mechanical failure. If there was some kind of mechanical failure which caused the plane to drop from the sky, it would still take at least six to seven minutes, providing crew plenty of time to make contact with ground control, the paper said.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight may have turned around before it vanished

Airline warns families of 239 people on board to expect the worst as search for flight MH370 widens in waters near Vietnam

Tania Branigan in Beijing and Kate Hodal in Songkhla, Thailand
The Guardian, Sunday 9 March 2014 14.30 GMT

Relatives of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 arrive for a meeting with airline officials in Beijing. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The Malaysia Airlines flight missing with 239 on board may have turned around just before it vanished from radar screens, the country's air force chief said on Sunday as the government said it had contacted counter-terrorism agencies around the world.

The airline warned families to prepare for the worst as they endured a second day without news. The search of waters between Malaysia and Vietnam for any trace of flight MH370 has widened.

At least two people on the plane were travelling together on stolen passports, fuelling concerns about the Boeing-777's abrupt disappearance in the early hours of Saturday. However, experts said there were many possible reasons for why it vanished and for people to travel on false documents.

Malaysian officials said they were looking at four suspect identities and were examining the entire passenger manifest. Interpol confirmed that at least two passports were listed in its database as stolen and that it was examining other documents.

The international police agency's secretary general, Ronald Noble, said it had spent years urging countries to screen all passports systematically. "Now, we have a real case where the world is speculating whether the stolen passport holders were terrorists, while Interpol is asking why only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights," he said.

Two-thirds of the travellers were Chinese, while the rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

The vast search area in the seas between Malaysia and Vietnam expanded further on Sunday because of the plane's apparent turn off course. At least 40 ships and 22 aircraft from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States are participating in the hunt.

The director general of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) said it had sent a patrol ship to gather samples from an oil slick to determine whether the oil came from the flight or a passing ship, the government-backed Bernama website reported. No debris was found nearby.

The head of the MMEA, Mohd Amdan Kurish, left, checks a radar during the search for the missing plane. Photograph: AP

The Beijing-bound Boeing-777 had reached cruising altitude when it disappeared from radar screens around 40 minutes after taking off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.40am on Saturday. Both the airline and the aircraft model have strong safety records. The weather was generally good and the plane did not issue a distress signal.

The air force chief Rodzali Daud told a press conference that it appeared to have gone off-route. "We are trying to make sense of this … The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar," he said.

The chief executive of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said the plane had not informed the airline and air traffic control authorities of its change of course, as it was supposed to do in such circumstances.

The pilot of another flight told a Malaysian newspaper he had made brief contact with the plane via his emergency frequency at the request of Vietnamese aviation authorities who were expecting it to enter their airspace but had been unable to reach it.

The unnamed man said he was deep into Vietnamese airspace when officials asked him to relay to MH370 to establish its position, and that he succeeded at around 1.30am – around 10 minutes after the last recorded flight data.

"There [was] a lot of interference … static … but I heard mumbling from the other end," he said, adding that he believed the voice belonged to the co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid. He then lost the connection, he told the New Straits Times.

An airline pilot who flew within 100 nautical miles of the route 12 hours before the Malaysia Airline flight disappeared said there were large thunderstorms in the area, with some turbulence, but the weather did not appear to pose serious problems for commercial flights.

While the circumstances of the plane's disappearance are extremely unusual, an Air France flight vanished without warning over the South Atlantic in 2009; investigators blamed that crash on a combination of technical problems and pilot error.

Experts also cautioned that there were various reasons why people could be on board with invalid documents.

In 2010, when an Air India Express flight overshot the runway at Mangalore, killing 160, it emerged that 10 of those on board had fraudulent passports.

One US Department of Homeland Security official told the Los Angeles Times: "Just because they were stolen doesn't mean the travellers were terrorists."

The passengers, using the names Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel, bought consecutive tickets on 6 March from China Southern, which had a codeshare agreement for the flight, paying in Thai baht. They were booked together to Beijing, where they would have had a stopover of just over 10 hours before travelling onwards to Amsterdam. "Maraldi" was then booked to fly to Copenhagen while "Kozel" was booked on a flight to Frankfurt.

Vietnamese air force crew stand in front of a plane Vietnamese air force crew prepare to head out from Tan Son Nhat airport to search for the Malaysian airliner. Photograph: AP

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's civil aviation chief, told a press conference investigators were looking at CCTV footage of the individuals on those passports "from check-in to departure".

The real Maraldi and Kozel – Italian and Austrian nationals respectively – had previously reported their passports stolen in the region. Maraldi told a Thai website he lost his in a deal that went wrong at a motorcycle rental shop in Phuket.

The Malaysian transport and defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities were looking at two more possible cases of suspicious identities. "All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies," he said. "We are looking at all possibilities."

No information has been issued on the other cases under review. Chinese state media reported that one of the passport numbers reported on the manifest belonged to a man from Fujian, eastern China, who was safe and well. But his name was not that listed alongside the number, which according to the manifest belonged to another Chinese man. The man told police his passport had not been lost or stolen.

An FBI team is on its way to assist the investigation because three Americans were on board. Experts from the National Transportation Safety Board – which investigates all US domestic civil aviation crashes – the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing are also flying to the region, the NTSB said in a statement.

The CEO of a Malaysia Airlines subsidiary told reporters the plane was last inspected 10 days ago and found to be "in proper condition".

Additional research by Cecily Huang

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Vietnam says it may have found missing jet's door

By EILEEN NG and CHRIS BRUMMITT, Associated Press

Updated 12:27 pm, Sunday, March 9, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Vietnamese authorities searching waters for the missing Boeing 777 jetliner spotted an object Sunday that they suspected was one of the plane's doors, as international intelligence agencies joined the investigation into two passengers who boarded the aircraft with stolen passports.

More than a day and half after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 people on board, no confirmed debris from the plane had been found, and the final minutes before it went missing remained a mystery. The plane lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala Lumpur early Saturday morning en route to Beijing.

Searchers in a low-flying plane spotted what appeared to be a door from the missing jet, the deputy chief of staff of Vietnam's army, Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, was quoted as saying by the state-run Thanh Nien newspaper. It was found in waters about 60 miles (90 kilometers) south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday.

"From this object, hopefully (we) will find the missing plane," Tuan said. Two ships from the maritime police were heading to the site.

The missing plane apparently fell from the sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either unable or had no time to send a distress signal — unusual circumstances under which a modern jetliner operated by a professional airline would crash.

Authorities were checking on the identities of two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports. On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

"I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board."

"Our focus now is to find the aircraft," he said, adding that finding the plane would make it easier for authorities to investigate any possible foul play.

Interpol confirmed that it knew about the two stolen passports used to board the ill-fated plane, but said no one checked its vast databases on stolen documents.

In a forceful statement, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble chided authorities for "waiting for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates."

"Now, we have a real case where the world is speculating whether the stolen passport holders were terrorists," Noble said. "Interpol is asking why only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights."

The thefts of the two passports — one belonging to Austrian Christian Kozel and the other to Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were entered into Interpol's database after they were stolen in Thailand, the police body said. Kozel's passport was stolen in 2012 and Maraldi's last July.

A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had been booked to leave Beijing on a KLM flight to Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany.

She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, but she had no information on where they bought them.

Having onward reservations to Europe from Beijing would have meant the men, as holders of EU passports, would not have needed visas for China.

Interpol said it and national investigators were examining other suspect passports and working to determine the true identities of those who used the stolen passports to board the Malaysia Airlines flight.

White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.

In addition to the plane's sudden disappearance, which experts say is consistent with a possible onboard explosion, the stolen passports have strengthened concerns about terrorism as a possible cause. Al-Qaida militants have used similar tactics to try to disguise their identities.

Other possible causes included a catastrophic failure of the plane's engines, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.

Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that before it disappeared, the plane may have turned back, but there were no further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.

"We are trying to make sense of this," Daud said at a news conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar."

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. "From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled," he said.

A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships were deployed to the area by Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States, in addition to Vietnam's fleet.

Of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board, two-thirds were Chinese, while the rest were from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America, including three Americans.

Family members of Philip Wood, an IBM executive who was on board the plane, said they saw him a week ago when he visited them in Texas after relocating to Kuala Lumpur from Beijing, where he had worked for two years.

"There is a shock, a very surreal moment in your life," said Wood's brother, James Wood.

The other two Americans were identified on the passenger manifest as 4-year-old Nicole Meng and 2-year-old Yan Zhang.

After more than 30 hours without contact with the aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should "prepare themselves for the worst," Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for the airline, told reporters.

Finding traces of an aircraft that disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can be scattered over many square kilometers (miles). If the plane enters the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.

A team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in the investigation into the crash. The team includes accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, the safety board said in a statement.

Malaysia Airlines has a good safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its 19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.

___

Brummitt reported from Hanoi, Vietnam. Associated Press writers Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia; Didi Tang, Gillian Wong and Louise Watt in Beijing; Joan Lowy in Washington; and Scott Mayerowitz in New York contributed this report.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Pilot claims he made contact with missing plane

AFP
March 9, 2014, 4:01 pm

A woman, believed to be the relative of a passenger aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, cries at the Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing. Picture: Reuters

A pilot who was flying near the missing Malaysia Airlines flight has come forward, saying he made radio contact with the missing jet moments after it dropped off the radar.

The unnamed pilot told the New Straits Times that a Vietnamese control tower had asked him to contact the plane.

Using his plane's emergency frequency, he tried to get in contact with the plane after authorities were unable to get in touch.

“We managed to establish contact with MH370 just after 1.30am and asked them if they have transferred into Vietnamese airspace,” he said.

“The voice on the other side could have been either Captain Zaharie or Fariq, but I was sure it was the co-pilot.

“There were a lot of interference... static... but I heard mumbling from the other end.

“That was the last time we heard from them, as we lost the connection.”

Despite losing contact, which often happens on the emergency frequency, the pilot didn't suspect anything was wrong until the plane failed to arrive in Beijing.

“If the plane was in trouble, we would have heard the pilot making the Mayday distress call. But I am sure that, like me, no one else up there heard it," he said.

“Following the silence, a repeat request was made by the Vietnamese authorities to try establishing contact with them.”

It comes as concerns grow over a possible security breach.

At least two passengers boarded using stolen European passports, officials and reports have said.

"At the same time our own intelligence have been activated, and of course, the counter-terrorism units ... from all the relevant countries have been informed," Malaysia's acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters.

Rescuers are still hunting for the whereabouts of the twin-engine plane going from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing more than 24 hours after it slipped off radar screens somewhere between Malaysia's east coast and southern Vietnam, triggering an international search effort.

In a sign of the growing gloom over the fate of the aircraft, the airline early Sunday urged "all Malaysians and people around the world to pray for flight MH370".

Air search operations were halted at nightfall, though ships continued searching, Malaysia Airlines said.

The airline admitted: "It has been more than 24 hours since we last heard from MH370 at 1:30 am. The search and rescue team is yet to determine the whereabouts of the Boeing 777-200 aircraft."

Adding to the mystery over the sudden loss of communication with the aircraft, it emerged that two people on the flight appeared to have been travelling on stolen EU passports.

An Austrian, named in reports as Christian Kozel, had his passport pinched in Thailand in 2012, while Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, had his stolen last year, also in Thailand, officials and sources said.

Despite their names being on the passenger manifest, neither man was on the flight to Beijing.

Martin Weiss, a spokesman for the Austrian foreign ministry, told AFP Kozel was "safe and sound" in Austria, but declined to comment on whether Vienna had been contacted by intelligence services for more information.

Speaking to reporters in Malaysia, Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Aziz Kaprawi said authorities were probing the matter for possible foul play. "The information is still under review," he was quoted as saying by the Malay Mail Online.

'All possibilities' being studied

In Washington, a US administration official said authorities were aware of the reporting of the two stolen passports.

"We have not determined a nexus to terrorism yet, although it's still very early and that's by no means definitive. We're still tracking the situation," the official said.

Earlier, when asked whether terrorism could have been a factor, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said: "We are looking at all possibilities but it is too soon to speculate."

The plane was carrying 227 passengers -- including 153 Chinese nationals -- and 12 crew.

Vietnam's military said two oil slicks had been spotted, but no debris.

"Two of our aircraft sighted two oil slicks around 15 to 20 kilometres (10-12 miles) long, running parallel, around 500 metres apart from each other," the Vietnam army's deputy chief-of-staff, Vo Van Tuan, told state-run VTV.

"We are not certain where these two oil slicks may have come from so we have sent Vietnamese ships to the area."

"I think the two oil slicks are very likely linked to the missing plane," Vice-Admiral Ngo Van Phat, who is helping to direct the search mission, told AFP.

No distress signal

Flight MH370 had relayed no distress signal, indications of rough weather, or other signs of trouble, and both Malaysia's national carrier and the Boeing 777-200 model used on the route are known for their solid safety records.

The plane's disappearance triggered a search effort involving vessels from several nations with rival maritime claims in the tense South China Sea.

China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore threw vessels and aircraft into the effort.

Two Chinese warships were on their way to the possible crash zone, the Xinhua news agency said, quoting Chinese navy sources.

The United States also dispatched a naval destroyer, with two helicopters aboard, and a surveillance plane.

The South China Sea -- a vital shipping lane and a resource-rich area -- is the subject of overlapping claims and a growing source of friction between China and its neighbours.

Contact with the aircraft was lost at around 1:30am Malaysian time (1730 GMT Friday), Malaysian authorities said, about an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Initially, authorities had put the last contact time at 2:40 am. The new time suggests the jet disappeared closer to Malaysia than first thought.

If the worst is confirmed, it would be the second fatal crash ever for the widely used Boeing 777. A 777-200 operated by South Korea's Asiana Airlines skidded off the runway in San Francisco last year, killing three people.

Malaysia Airlines has suffered few safety incidents in the past. Its worst occurred in 1977, when 100 people perished in a hijacking and subsequent crash in southern Malaysia.

The 153 Chinese passengers aboard the plane included an infant, while 38 Malaysians and seven Indonesians were aboard.

Six Australians, five Indians, four French nationals, and three Americans including an infant, were also among those listed and the Dutch Foreign Ministry said it believed one Dutch passenger was on the plane.

The pilot had flown for the carrier since 1981, Malaysia Airlines said. The plane was more than 11 years old.

The lack of information sparked fury among pained relatives in Beijing.

"They should have told us something before now," a visibly distressed man in his 30s said at a hotel where passengers' families were asked to gather.

Malaysia Airlines has sent a team of 93 people to China, whose tasks include helping distraught relatives.

A deadly accident would be a huge blow for Malaysia Airlines, which has bled money for years as its struggles to fend off competition from rivals such as fast-growing Malaysia-based AirAsia.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Fears for Chinese missing aboard Malaysia Airlines flight

AFP
March 10, 2014, 5:45 am

Beijing (AFP) - Messages of sympathy for missing passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, almost two-thirds of them from China, filled the country's social media on Sunday, as distraught family members prepared to fly to Malaysia.

A Malaysia Airlines official defended the company against criticism that its response had been sluggish and opaque, saying it had brought in a team of nearly 100 people and that relatives would be flown to Malaysia if they wanted to be closer to the search-and-rescue operation.

The first family members are expected to leave Beijing Monday for Kuala Lumpur, as fears intensified over the fate of those missing, in what would be China's second-worst air disaster.

More than 24 hours after the airplane vanished from radar screens, it was the top topic on Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

According to the airline, 153 Chinese citizens were among the passengers on the flight, which was a codeshare with China Southern Airlines.

If the loss of the aircraft is confirmed it would be the worst global air disaster since 2001.

A widely circulated post on China's hugely popular messaging app WeChat read: "MH370, we hope the radar can see you. If you copy, keep flying at your current height until you reach your destination.

"We'll clear the way for you. Everybody is more than happy to let you be the first to land.

"The sky is clear, with temperature in Beijing at five degrees Celsius, a little bit cold. Please wear your coats to keep warm.

"Remember to hug your family and friends after you disembark. They love you, they really do."

- Netizens fear terrorism -

Some Chinese social media users speculated that the plane could have been hijacked, noting that the incident came a week after a brutal knife attack in the southwest city of Kunming that both Beijing and Washington have described as an act of terror.

"What on earth is happening to China in 2014?" wrote one Sina Weibo user. "First there's the Kunming incident, then a disappearing aircraft. Was it directed at Chinese people? I'm beginning to think more and more that this is terrorism."

The Chinese passengers included a group of artists who had taken part in a painting and calligraphy exhibition in Kuala Lumpur, reports say.

Ignatius Ong, a Malaysia Airlines spokesman, said in Beijing that the search was continuing but that the airline had "informed family members to expect the worst, since so far during search-and-rescue we did not find anything".

At a hotel in Beijing friends and relatives of those on board waited for news, many of them looking tired and worried.

The airline's commercial director Hugh Dunleavy confirmed it was offering to take relatives to Malaysia if they wanted to be closer to the search and rescue effort.

But he later told reporters that family members were not likely to leave Beijing before Monday, because of the time needed to process their passports and visas.

Several family members criticised the airline's handling of the disappearance and a lack of information.

A middle-aged woman who gave her surname as Nan held back tears as a pack of reporters surrounded her.

Her husband's brother was on the flight, returning from a business trip, and she took a train to Beijing from Shanghai after she found out on Saturday afternoon.

"The airline company didn't contact me, it was a friend," she said. "I can't understand the airline company. They should have contacted the families first thing.

"I don't have any news. I'm very worried, my family member was there."

Another middle-aged woman, Peng Keqing, told reporters that her husband's sister, who had been working in Singapore, was on board.

"We've just been waiting," she said. "We arrived last night. We didn't get any direct notice, I checked the information online. We need Malaysia Airlines to release exact news."

One middle aged man appeared brandishing a statement signed by dozens of relatives calling for China's foreign ministry to pressure the airline into providing "the facts of the incident."

Dunleavy defended the Malaysia Airlines' response, noting that the company had dispatched a team of 92 counsellors and staff to help and that "we came here as soon as we could".

"Even as we speak now we have not been able to locate the aircraft, so you can imagine four or five hours into the event you are much less certain of the information," he said.

Some with family members on board the flight posed for passport photographs and filled out forms to apply for a visa to visit Malaysia, where the airline said it had set up a search and rescue center.

A group was bussed to an office in Beijing where they could apply for documentation, and appeared weary as police ushered them into the building.

More than 36 hours after the flight vanished, others said the situation was too uncertain for them to decide whether to travel.

"How can I decide whether or not to go to Malaysia?" said one middle-aged man, between anxious puffs on a cigarette. "The plane isn't even found yet."

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Missing Malaysian jet may have disintegrated in mid-air : source

By Siva Govindasamy and Nguyen Phuong Linh
KUALA LUMPUR/PHU QUOC ISLAND, Vietnam Sun Mar 9, 2014 2:54pm EDT

Rosmah Mansor (L), wife of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, cries with family members of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, at a hotel in Putrajaya March 9, 2014. REUTERS-Zulfadli Zaki

(Reuters) - Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner with 239 people on board suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight, a senior source said on Sunday, as Vietnam reported a possible sighting of wreckage from the plane.

International police agency Interpol confirmed that at least two passports recorded in its database as lost or stolen were used by passengers on the flight, raising suspicions of foul play.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more "suspect passports" that were being further investigated. She was unable to say how many, or from which country or countries.

Nearly 48 hours after the last contact with Flight MH370, mystery still surrounded its fate. Malaysia's air force chief said the Beijing-bound airliner may have turned back from its scheduled route before it vanished from radar screens.

"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," a source involved in the investigations in Malaysia told Reuters.

If the plane had plunged intact from close to its cruising altitude, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical causes.

Dozens of military and civilian vessels have been criss-crossing waters beneath the aircraft's flight path, but have found no confirmed trace of the lost plane, although oil slicks have been reported in the sea south of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.

Late on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said on its website that a Vietnamese navy plane had spotted an object in the sea suspected of being part of the plane, but that it was too dark to be certain. Search planes were set to return to investigate the suspected debris at daybreak.

WIDENING SEARCH

"The outcome so far is there is no sign of the aircraft," Malaysian civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said.

"On the possibility of hijack, we are not ruling out any possibility," he told reporters.

The Malaysian authorities said they were widening the search to cover vast swathes of sea around Malaysia and off Vietnam, and were investigating at least two passengers who were using false identity documents.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans - Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi - who, according to their foreign ministries, were not on the plane. Both had apparently had their passports stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

The BBC reported that the men falsely using their passports had purchased tickets together and were due to fly on to Europe from Beijing, meaning they did not have to apply for a Chinese visa and undergo further checks.

An employee at a travel agency in Pattaya, in Thailand, told Reuters the two had purchased the tickets there.

Interpol maintains a vast database of more than 40 million lost and stolen travel documents, and has long urged member countries to make greater use of it to stop people crossing borders on false papers.

The global police organization confirmed that Kozel's and Maraldi's passports had both been added to the database after their theft in 2012 and 2013 respectively. But it said no country had consulted the database to check either of them since the time they were stolen.

"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol's databases," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said in a statement.

In a sign that Malaysia's airport controls may have been breached, Prime Minister Najib Razak said security procedures were being reviewed.

FOUR SUSPECTS

Malaysian Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said authorities were also checking the identities of two other passengers. He said help was also being sought from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). However, an attack was only one of the possibilities being investigated.

"We are looking at all possibilities," he said. "We cannot jump the gun. Our focus now is to find the plane."

The 11-year-old Boeing 777-200ER, powered by Rolls-Royce Trent engines, took off at 12:40 a.m. on Saturday(1640 GMT Friday) from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board.

It last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu. Flight tracking website flightaware.com showed it flew northeast after takeoff, climbed to 35,000 ft and was still climbing when it vanished from tracking records.

There were no reports of bad weather.

"What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realized there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback," Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference.

The search was being extended to the west coast of the Malay peninsula, in addition to a broad expanse of the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam, he said.

Vietnamese naval boats sent from the holiday island of Phu Quoc patrolled stretches of the Gulf of Thailand, scouring the area where an oil slick was spotted by patrol jets just before nightfall on Saturday.

Besides the Vietnamese vessels, Malaysia and neighboring countries have deployed 34 aircraft and 40 ships in the search. China and the United States have sent ships to help, and Washington has also deployed a maritime surveillance plane.

U.S. officials from Boeing, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to Asia to help in investigations, NTSB said in a statement. Boeing said it was monitoring the situation but had no further comment.

The airline has said 14 nationalities were among the passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

(Additional reporting by Eveline Danubrata, Stuart Grudgings, Yantoultra Ngui and Niki Koswanage in KUALA LUMPUR, Ben Blanchard, Megha Rajagopalan and Adam Rose in BEIJING, Martin Petty in HANOI, Alwyn Scott in NEW YORK, Naomi O'Leary in ROME, Tim Hepher in PARIS and Mark Hosenball and Ian Simpson in WASHINGTON; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; and Alex Richardson; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight: Timeline of events so far as whereabouts of Flight 370 remains unknown

Mar 10, 2014 02:15
By Chris Richards

Recap on all the developments since Beijing-bound Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur on Friday

Mystery: The fate of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 remains unknown

Saturday, March 8

- Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12:21 am (14:21 GMT Friday) and is due to land in Beijing at 6:30am (2230 GMT Friday) the same day.

- On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew.

- Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff

- No distress signal is given, and weather is clear at the time.

- Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

- Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

- Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website’s tracking records a minute later while still climbing.

- Malaysia and Vietnam conduct joint search and rescue operation. China says dispatches two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help in search and rescue. US also sends ships and plane to help.

- Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact.

- Airline says flight was carrying 154 people from China and Taiwan, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians and six Australians. Manifest shows other nationalities as being from: India, France, United States, New Zealand, Ukraine, Canada, Russia, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria.

- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang calls Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, urges Malaysia quickly and vigorously push search and rescue work.

- Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters.

- Two men from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen.

Sunday, March 9

- Malaysia Airlines says fears worst and is working with a US company that specialises in disaster recovery.

- The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board dispatches team to Asia to help investigate incident. Technical advisers from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing also fly to Asia.

- Malaysian authorities investigate identities of at least two other passengers in addition to two who were found to be using stolen passports.

- Malaysian Transport and Defence Minister says Malaysian investigators meet counterparts from the US FBI.

- Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.

- Malaysian rescue teams expand their search to the country's western coast.

- Malaysian authorities pore over CCTV footage and question immigration officers and guards at Kuala Lumpur's international airport, concerned that a security breach may be connected to incident.

- Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is "examining additional suspect passports".

- Malaysia’s state news agency quotes Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance.

- Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, according to a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia.

- Vietnamese navy plane spots an object suspected of belonging to the airliners. Too dark to be certain the object is part of plane. More aircraft to be dispatched to investigate the site, in waters off southern Vietnam, in the morning.

 

[YouMakeMyDreams]

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight ‘likely to have disintegrated at 35,000 feet’: search official

Search for flight MH370 continues after it vanished from radar on Saturday morning

PUBLISHED : Monday, 10 March, 2014, 9:26am
UPDATED : Monday, 10 March, 2014, 12:48pm

Reuters in Kuala Lumpur

Officials investigating the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner with 239 people on board are narrowing the focus of their inquiries on the possibility that it disintegrated mid-flight, a senior source has said.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that disappeared from air traffic control screens Saturday, taking off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. Photo: APMalaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet (10,668 metres) between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in the early hours of Saturday.

Search teams have not been able to make any confirmed discovery of wreckage in seas beneath the plane’s flight path almost 48 hours after it took off.
The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet

"The fact that we are unable to find any debris so far appears to indicate that the aircraft is likely to have disintegrated at around 35,000 feet," said the source, who is involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia.

If the plane had plunged intact from such a height, breaking up only on impact with the water, search teams would have expected to find a fairly concentrated pattern of debris, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the investigation.

The source spoke shortly before Vietnamese authorities said a military plane had spotted an object at sea suspected to be part of the missing airliner.

A handout picture shows what is believed to be an oil slick stretching a length of about 15-20 km in the sea off the Vietnamese coast. Photo: EPA

Asked about the possibility of an explosion, such as a bomb, the source said there was no evidence yet of foul play and that the aircraft could have broken up due to mechanical issues.

Boeing, the maker of the 777-200ER, declined to comment and referred to its earlier statement, which said it was monitoring the situation.

Malaysian authorities have said they are focused on finding the plane and declined to comment when asked about the investigations.

However, the source said the closest parallels were the explosion on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and the Lockerbie air disaster in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet when bombs exploded on board.

Canadian and Indian police have long alleged the Air India bombing was conducted by Sikh extremists living in western Canada as revenge on India for the deadly 1984 assault on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Sikhism’s holiest shrine.

A photo released by the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam shows an object floating in the sea. Photo: Reuters

Indian sand artist Patnaik applies final touches to a sand art sculpture he created wishing for the well being of the passengers of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, on beach in Puri, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. Photo: Reuters

The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie killed 259 passengers and crew and another 11 people on the ground. A Libyan intelligence officer was convicted for the attack.

International police agency Interpol has said at least two of the passengers on board the Malaysian plane, and possibly more, used passports listed as missing or stolen on its database.

"Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said in a statement.

US and European security officials have however maintained there is no proof yet of foul play and there could be other explanations for the use of stolen passports.