MH370 puzzle seen leading to out-of-court settlements

KUALA LUMPUR—The lack of any evidence indicating what caused flight MH370′s disappearance raises a legal conundrum that is expected to force Malaysia Airlines into out-of-court settlements with angry next-of-kin, aviation law experts said.

More than two months since MH370 disappeared, no wreckage has been found to even confirm a crash, let alone apportion blame.

But relatives of the 239 people on board can still come after Malaysia Airlines because under international aviation law it is an airline’s responsibility to prove it was not to blame for an accident.

“On the surface, (Malaysia Airlines) is responsible,” said Jeremy Joseph, a Malaysian attorney specializing in transport law.

The “burden of proof” rests on the national carrier to clear its name, he added.

Under International Civil Aviation Organization rules, next-of-kin in an air crash are entitled to an automatic minimum of about $175,000 per passenger, regardless of fault, payable by an airline’s insurance company.

Vulnerable to civil suits

But Malaysia Airlines is also vulnerable to civil lawsuits for potentially greater damages by hundreds of relatives already infuriated over the lack of information on the case.

The Beijing-bound plane disappeared March 8 and is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean. Theories on what happened include a terror act, rogue pilot action, or mechanical problems.

No significant legal moves have yet been made as families closely monitor an immensely difficult search in vast ocean depths that has so far found nothing.

“When there is no cause identified, it is hard to see how the airline has or has not shown the absence of fault,” said Alan Tan, a professor of aviation law at the National University of Singapore.

The size of any damages would depend on where lawsuits are filed.

Next-of-kin can file in the country where an airline is based, where tickets were purchased, where the passengers were headed or where they lived.

Since most passengers were from China or Malaysia, most cases could be filed in the two countries, where courts are more conservative in awarding damages than in countries like the United States.

Damages are typically based on the lost lifetime earnings of a victim and thus could total in the hundreds of millions for all passengers combined.

“In the US, settlements usually are in the $1 million-$3 million range. For Malaysians or Chinese, salaries are lower, and hence, recoveries will be lower,” said Paul Stephen Dempsey, director of the Institute of Air and Space Law at Canada’s McGill University.

A US law firm is already planning a “multi-million-dollar” lawsuit against Malaysia Airlines and aircraft maker Boeing, on behalf of an Indonesian passenger’s family.

Few court cases expected

But legal experts said few cases will likely end up in court. They expect undisclosed out-of-court settlements between families and Malaysia Airlines and its lead insurer, German giant Allianz.

This would allow the loss-making carrier — which was struggling amid intense competition even before MH370 disappeared — to quietly lay the matter to rest and focus on rebuilding its image.

“Because of its unprecedented nature, the courts are going to look at (MH370) very carefully. That is something the airline will try to avoid unless settlement expectations from the victims’ families are perceived by Malaysia Airlines as unreasonable,” said Malaysian attorney Joseph.

Adds Tan: “This avoids court uncertainties and protracted litigation, and most claims will end up being negotiated and settled this way, particularly those outside the US.”

In the case of Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic with 228 people aboard in June 2009, the airline’s insurers made compensation payments to relatives.

Only a small number of lawsuits were filed, with a Brazilian court awarding one family an equivalent of more than half a million US dollars, before its flight data recorders were recovered in 2011.

A combination of mechanical failure and pilot error were eventually blamed.

Allianz would bear the brunt of any payouts for MH370, sparing the already financially struggling airline.

Malaysia Airlines told AFP its insurance coverage is adequate for all eventualities, declining to give details. But experts said the carrier will likely face higher future premiums.

Courts are considered unlikely to apportion any blame to Boeing, engine manufacturer Rolls Royce, or other parties without evidence implicating them.

Alleging incompetence and secrecy by Malaysia’s government and the airline, about 300 next-of-kin already have banded together to press for answers.

Malaysia Airlines has begun making some payouts to families under an “advance compensation process” but has declined to reveal details.

Lawsuits must be filed within two years of an accident. Families are holding off for now as they await news on the search, seeking confirmation of a crash, and emotional closure.

“If today someone cut off your limb, can you buy your limb back?” Yik-Kiong Hue, an MH370 next-of-kin, said in an email to Agence France-Presse.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Possible signals from lost jet’s black boxes heard

PERTH, Australia — Underwater sounds detected by a ship searching the southern Indian Ocean for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet are consistent with the pings from aircraft black boxes, an Australian official said Monday, dubbing it “a most promising lead” in the monthlong hunt for the vanished plane.

Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search, warned that it could take days to confirm whether the signals picked up by the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield are indeed from the black boxes that belonged to Flight 370, but called the discovery very encouraging.

“Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it’s probably the best information that we have had,” Houston said at a news conference. “We’ve got a visual indication on a screen and we’ve also got an audible signal — and the audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon.”

After a monthlong search for answers filled with dead ends, Monday’s news brought fresh hope given that the two black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings, are the key to unraveling exactly what happened to Flight 370 and why.

Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammudin Hussein told reporters that in light of the new information, “We are cautiously hopeful that there will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours.”

There was little time left to locate the devices, which have beacons that emit “pings” so they can be more easily found. The beacons’ batteries last only about a month — and Tuesday marks exactly one month since the plane disappeared during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The Australian navy’s Ocean Shield, which is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy, picked up two separate signals late Saturday night and early Sunday morning within a remote patch of the Indian Ocean far off the west Australian coast that search crews have been crisscrossing for weeks. The first signal lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost. The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again — this time recording two distinct “pinger returns” that lasted 13 minutes, Houston said.

“Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder,” Houston said.

Still, Houston cautioned that it was too early to say the transmissions were coming from the missing jet.

“I would want more confirmation before we say this is it,” he said. “Without wreckage, we can’t say it’s definitely here. We’ve got to go down and have a look.”

The airliner’s black boxes normally emit a frequency of 37.5 kilohertz, and the signals picked up by the Ocean Shield were both 33.3 kilohertz, said U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews. But officials contacted the device’s manufacturer and were told the frequency of black boxes can drift near the end of their shelf lives.

The Ocean Shield was slowly canvassing a small area trying to find the signal again, though that could take another day, Matthews said.

The ping locator is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometers (1.12 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the black boxes to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) deep.

“It’s like playing hot and cold when you’re searching for something and someone’s telling you you’re getting warmer and warmer and warmer,” he said. “When you’re right on top of it you get a good return.”

If they pick up the signal again, the crew will launch an underwater vehicle to investigate, Matthews said. The Bluefin-21 autonomous sub can create a sonar map of the area to chart where the debris may lie on the sea floor. If it maps out a debris field, the crew will replace the sonar system with a camera unit to photograph any wreckage.

But that may prove tricky, given that the sub can only dive to about 4,500 meters (14,800 feet) — the approximate depth of the water. That means the vehicle will be operating to the limits of its capability.

Given the difficulties involved, officials warned the mystery of Flight 370 would still take time to resolve.

“It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370,” Houston said. “In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast.”

Geoff Dell, discipline leader of accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia, said it would be “coincidental in the extreme” for the sounds to have come from anything other than an aircraft’s black box.

“If they have a got a legitimate signal, and it’s not from one of the other vessels or something, you would have to say they are within a bull’s roar,” he said. “There’s still a chance that it’s a spurious signal that’s coming from somewhere else and they are chasing a ghost, but it certainly is encouraging that they’ve found something to suggest they are in the right spot.”

Meanwhile, the British ship HMS Echo, was using sophisticated sound-locating equipment to try to determine whether two separate sounds heard by a Chinese ship about 555 kilometers (345 miles) away from the Ocean Shield were related to the plane. The patrol vessel Haixun 01 detected a brief “pulse signal” on Friday and a second signal on Saturday.

The crew of the Chinese ship reportedly picked up the signals using a sonar device called a hydrophone dangled over the side of a small boat — something experts said was technically possible but extremely unlikely. The equipment aboard the British and Australian ships is dragged slowly behind each vessel over long distances and is considered far more sophisticated.

The search effort was also continuing on the ocean surface Monday. Twelve planes and 14 ships were searching three designated zones, one of which overlaps with the Ocean Shield’s underwater search. All of the previous surface searches have found only fishing equipment or other sea trash floating in the water, but have found no debris related to the Malaysian plane.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Objects seen in jet search are fishing equipment

PERTH, Australia — A cluster of orange objects spotted by a search plane hunting for any trace of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet turned out to be nothing more than fishing equipment, Australian officials said Monday, the latest disappointing news in a weekslong hunt that Australia’s prime minister said will continue indefinitely.

The crew of an Australian P-3 Orion search plane spotted at least four orange objects that were more than 2 meters (6 feet) in size on Sunday, and the pilot, Flight Lt. Russell Adams, dubbed the sighting their most promising lead in the search for Flight 370. But on Monday, Jesse Platts, a spokesman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, said the objects had been analyzed and officials had confirmed “they have nothing to do with the missing flight.”

It’s a frustrating pattern that has developed in the hunt for the Boeing 777, which vanished on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people aboard: Search crews have repeatedly spotted multiple objects floating in remote patches of the southern Indian Ocean, only for officials to later confirm they aren’t linked to the missing plane.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Monday acknowledged the search was incredibly complex, but said officials were “well, well short” of any point where they would scale the hunt back.

On Wednesday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak plans to travel to Perth to see the search operations firsthand.

The search for Flight 370 has evolved over the past three weeks as experts sifted through a limited set of radar and satellite data, moving gradually from the seas off Vietnam, to waters west of Malaysia and Indonesia, and then to several areas west of Australia.

“This is an extraordinarily difficult exercise …. we are searching a vast area of ocean and we are working on quite limited information,” Abbott said, adding that the best brains in the world and all the technological mastery is being applied to the task.

“If this mystery is solvable, we will solve it,” he said.

He said the search that has been going on for more than three weeks is operating on guestimates “until we locate some actual wreckage from the aircraft and then do the regression analysis that might tell us where the aircraft went into the ocean.”

Ten planes were either over the search zone or heading there by late Monday afternoon, and another 11 ships were scouring the area, about 1,850 kilometers (1,150 miles) west of Australia. More than 100 personnel in the air and 1,000 sailors at sea were involved in Monday’s hunt, with some sections of the 253,000 square kilometer (98,000 square mile) search zone expected to experience low clouds and rain. It takes planes about 2 1/2 hours to get to the area, allowing a five-hour search before they must return to Perth.

Former Australian defense chief Angus Houston on Monday began his job of heading the new Joint Agency Coordination Center, which will oversee communication with international agencies involved in the search. The Perth-based center will position Australia to shoulder more of Malaysia’s coordination responsibilities as the search drags on.

Houston will also play a prime coordination role when victims’ families travel to Australia in the weeks ahead.

Abbott said he was not putting a time limit on the search. “We owe it to everyone to do whatever we reasonably can and we can keep searching for quite some time to come … and, as I said, the intensity of our search and the magnitude of operations is increasing, not decreasing.”

The Ocean Shield, an Australian warship which is carrying a U.S. device that detects “pings” from the flight recorders, was expected to leave Perth on Monday evening for the search zone, a trip that will take three to four days. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is coordinating the search, said it would first conduct sea trials on Monday afternoon to test the search equipment on board.

The search area remains vast, so investigators are hoping to first find debris floating on the ocean surface that will help them calculate where the plane crashed into the water.

Meanwhile, several dozen Chinese relatives of Flight 370 passengers visited a Buddhist temple near Kuala Lumpur on Monday to pray for their loved ones. They offered incense, bowed their heads in a moment of silence, knelt several times during the prayers and lowered their heads in kowtows. Buddhist nuns handed out prayer beads to them. “You are not alone,” one nun said. “You have the whole world’s love, including Malaysia’s.”

Several of the relatives were overcome with emotion, tears streaming down their faces.

The family members later made a brief statement to journalists, expressing their appreciation to the Chinese government and the people of Malaysia and the volunteers who have been assisting them. They bowed as a show of gratitude, but also said they were still demanding answers.

“To those who are guilty of harming our loved ones, hiding the truth, and delaying the search and rescue, we will also definitely not forgive them,” said a family representative, Jiang Hui.

The relatives’ comments Monday were seen as a small conciliatory move after they staged an angry protest in front of reporters on Sunday at a hotel near Kuala Lumpur. At the time, they chanted slogans, raised banners and called on the Malaysian government to apologize for what they dubbed missteps in the handling of the disaster.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Canadian pilot believes missing Malaysian jet caught fire

KUALA LUMPUR — A veteran Canadian pilot with over two decades experience in the cockpit believes that a fire, not a hijacking, is the main reason behind the disappearance of MAS flight MH370.

In a Google+ post, pilot Chris Goodfellow argues that the missing MH370 probably fell victim to a fire.

According to Goodfellow, the sharp turn executed by the plane points to a problem on the plane.

He wrote, “The left turn is the key here. (Capt) Zaharie Ahmad Shah was a very experienced senior captain with 18,000 hours of flight time. We old pilots were drilled to know what is the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise. Airports behind us, airports abeam us, and airports ahead of us. They’re always in our head. Always.

“If something happens, you don’t want to be thinking about what are you going to do – you already know what you are going to do.

“When I saw that left turn with a direct heading, I instinctively knew he was heading for an airport. He was taking a direct route to Palau Langkawi, a 13,000-foot airstrip with an approach over water and no obstacles.

The captain did not turn back to Kuala Lampur because he knew he had 8,000-foot ridges to cross. He knew the terrain was friendlier toward Langkawi, which also was closer.”

Goodfellow also believes that an electrical fire could explain MH370’s failure to communicate.

“For me, the loss of transponders and communications makes perfect sense in a fire. And there most likely was an electrical fire.

“In the case of a fire, the first response is to pull the main busses and restore circuits one by one until you have isolated the bad one. If they pulled the busses, the plane would go silent. It probably was a serious event and the flight crew was occupied with controlling the plane and trying to fight the fire.

“Aviate, navigate, and lastly, communicate is the mantra in such situations,” Goodfellow wrote.

The veteran pilot also suggests that an electrical fire could have been caused by an overheat during takeoff.

He wrote, “Given the timeline, that there was an overheat on one of the front landing gear tyres, it blew on takeoff and started slowly burning. Yes, this happens with underinflated tyres.

“Once going, a tyre fire would produce horrific, incapacitating smoke. Yes, pilots have access to oxygen masks, but this is a no-no with fire. Most have access to a smoke hood with a filter, but this will last only a few minutes depending on the smoke level.”

He continues, “What I think happened is the flight crew was overcome by smoke and the plane continued on the heading, probably on George (autopilot), until it ran out of fuel or the fire destroyed the control surfaces and it crashed. You will find it along that route – looking elsewhere is pointless.”

Goodfellow thinks that the final “all right, good night” communication is indicative that everything was fine on the flight deck up to that point.

“There are many ways a pilot can communicate distress. A hijack code or even transponder code off by one digit would alert ATC that something was wrong,” Goodfellow wrote.

“Every good pilot knows keying an SOS over the mike always is an option. Even three short clicks would raise an alert. So I conclude that at the point of voice transmission all was perceived as well on the flight deck by the pilots.

“But things could have been in the process of going wrong, unknown to the pilots.”

Goodfellow is also of the opinion that the pilots were unaware that the ACARS system was not transmitting.

With regard the ascent to 45,000 feet, the pilot believes that there may have been a very good reason.

He says, “Let’s accept for a minute that the pilot may have ascended to 45,000 feet in a last-ditch effort to quell a fire by seeking the lowest level of oxygen. That is an acceptable scenario.

“At 45,000 feet, it would be tough to keep this aircraft stable, as the flight envelope is very narrow and loss of control in a stall is entirely possible.

“The aircraft is at the top of its operational ceiling. The reported rapid rates of descent could have been generated by a stall, followed by a recovery at 25,000 feet. The pilot may even have been diving to extinguish flames. But going to 45,000 feet in a hijack scenario doesn’t make any good sense to me.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Families face worst nightmare of mid-air ordeal on MH370

KUALA LUMPUR — New revelations about a missing Malaysia Airlines plane have left anguished relatives contemplating the prospect that those on board endured a terrifying high-altitude hijack ordeal that may have lasted nearly eight hours.

But while the disclosures led to increased speculation of a terror plot or pilot suicide, for some they offered a glimmer of hope — that flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers and crew, may somehow have landed safely and that their loved ones may still be alive.

For relatives of Bob and Cathy Lawton, a missing Australian couple, the possibility of a terrifying drawn-out fate at thousands of feet reflected their deepest fears.

“That’s one of the worst things I could have hoped for,” Bob’s brother David Lawton told News Limited newspapers.

“Even if they are alive, what did they have to put up with?”

Prime Minister Najib Razak declined to use the word hijack when he briefed the press Saturday, but said new data suggested a “deliberate action” to divert the plane.

The Boeing 777′s communications appear to have been switched off manually before the jet veered westward and flew for hours.

What happened during that time remains a mystery. But one report of the plane fluctuating from low to high altitude fuelled fears the passengers may have been well aware they were in terrible danger.

The New York Times said the jet had reached 45,000 feet — above its approved altitude limit — before it “descended unevenly to 23,000 feet”.

It cited Malaysian military radar signals, but the data has not been confirmed by the authorities.

“At 45,000 feet, it may result in pressurisation problems,” said Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based independent aviation analyst.

“But we don’t know how the fluctuation went, whether it was gentle or violent and sharp. If it was gentle, only a few sensitive passengers would notice.”

China’s fury

For relatives in China, which had 153 citizens on the flight, the investigators’ breakthrough just brought more distress and frustration.

“We are experiencing an ordeal. We are still waiting for (more information),” said one tearful man emerging from a meeting between Malaysia Airlines and relatives in Beijing on Sunday morning.

“We are extremely anxious. A long time has passed and they don’t disclose (more) information,” he said.

Another branded the meeting “a joke”.

“Until they say what really and truly happened, what good is it?” he said.

Malaysian authorities have been severely criticized for failing to share information or for issuing contradictory statements.

China’s media made fresh criticism Sunday, saying Malaysia had “squandered” precious time and resources by releasing the dramatic information on the plane’s fate a full week after it vanished.

“It is undeniable that the disclosure of such vital information is painfully belated,” a scathing editorial by the state-run Xinhua news agency said, noting the “excruciating” seven days it entailed for relatives of the missing.

Clinging to hope

Yet for some the new evidence brought relief — and a reason for hope.

“Our family is relieved that there’s an official statement from the Malaysian government, delivered by the Malaysian prime minister, that there’s a possibility that the aircraft might have been hijacked,” said Indonesian Santi, 42, who goes by one name.

Her brother Sugianto Lo was on the flight with his wife Vinny Chynthya.

“There have been too many speculations about the missing plane so this official statement has helped to quash some of them.

“At least it gives us hope that our loved ones are still safe. We really hope that the various governments will help to look for the plane,” she said.

While the theory that the plane landed somewhere and has remained hidden is seen as highly improbable by experts, most do not discount it as impossible.

The multi-nation hunt is now focused on two vast areas, stretching from Kazakhstan to the southern Indian Ocean, with 25 countries searching for the plane.

Malaysian Subramaniam Gurusamy, 60, whose 34-year-old son Puspanathan Gurusamy was on board, refused to believe the worst.

“I am praying every day for divine help. I will not lose hope. I want to hear my son cry out ‘Father!” he said.

Selamat Umar, 60, also from Malaysia, placed his faith in his 29-year-old son Khairul Amrison’s ability to survive whatever he confronted.

He said the new evidence was “a good sign which shows the plane can be detected and the passengers are safe — if not all, then some”.

“It may be a hijack, but why have there been no demands?” he said.

Although so many questions remain, he is clinging to the belief that his son may one day come home.

“We are definitely worried about his safety but confident that those on the plane will do what they can to survive,” said Selamat.

“My son is a Muslim who fasts every Ramadan, so I am sure he has strength.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Malaysia dismisses allegations that search efforts mired in confusion

KUALA LUMPUR — Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein has denied allegations that the hunt for a missing jet was in disarray, after the search veered far from its planned route and several countries were reported to be angry over the “mishandling” of the operation.

Vietnam, whose southern coast had been the focus of the recovery effort, initially suspended its air and sea search as it waited for Malaysia to clarify the new direction of the hunt.

“We’ve decided to temporarily suspend some search and rescue activities pending information from Malaysia,” deputy minister of transport Pham Quy Tieu said, adding that boats were still searching the area, but on a smaller scale.

Army deputy chief of staff Vo Van Tuan said later that “we decided to send two aircraft and nine boats to search.”

China said conflicting information about its course was “pretty chaotic.”

Asked about reports that flight MH370 could have veered well off course, as far as the Malacca Strait, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters: “We noticed that the Malaysian side later denied this piece of information.

“So right now, there is a lot of information, and it’s pretty chaotic, so up to this point we too have had difficulty confirming whether it is accurate or not.”

Hishammuddin, however, dismissed allegations that search efforts were mired in confusion after a series of false alarms, rumors and contradictory statements.

He said Malaysia would “never give up hope” of finding the plane’s 239 passengers and crew.

“It’s far from it. It’s only confusion if you want it to be seen as confusion,” he told a press conference Wedneday. “I think it’s not a matter of chaos. There is a lot of speculation that we have answered in the last few days.”

Malaysian air force chief General Rodzali Daud attempted to explain why the search zone had been expanded, saying that military radar had detected an unidentified plane early on Saturday north of the straits of Malacca.

He said they had “plotted” the plane but were not able to confirm it was MH370.

The confusion has fuelled perception that Malaysian authorities are unable to handle a crisis on this scale.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Blame game erupts as China criticizes Malaysia over MH370

BEIJING – Beijing on Monday blamed Kuala Lumpur for a lack of information about a vanished Malaysia Airlines flight, as tearful relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers aboard voiced frustration with all sides of the response effort.

Nearly two-thirds of the 239 people aboard Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 were from China, and if the loss of the aircraft is confirmed, it would be China’s second-worst air disaster in history.

“The Malaysian side attaches importance to the incident with a sincere attitude, but in light of the situation, the Malaysian side needs to step up their efforts,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters at a regular briefing.

Qin declined to pinpoint any specific areas of the Malaysian response with which Chinese authorities were dissatisfied, noting that “the incident is still under investigation”.

But China’s state-run media minced no words on Monday, lashing out at Malaysia and its national carrier over their handling of the missing jet, demanding answers despite the early stage of the investigation and calling for a swifter effort.

Officials said two Europeans whose names were on the passenger manifest — who both had their passports stolen in Thailand — were not on board.

“The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities,” the Global Times newspaper, which is close to China’s ruling Communist Party, wrote in a scathing editorial. “The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough.

“There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities,” it said.

“If it is due to a deadly mechanical breakdown or pilot error, then Malaysia Airlines should take the blame. If this is a terrorist attack, then the security check at the Kuala Lumpur airport and on the flight is questionable.”

China itself regularly enforces heavyweight security, while authorities are often secretive about real or alleged incidents.

 Terrorism fears

The China Daily newspaper wrote in an editorial that “terrorism cannot be ruled out”, with Malaysian and international authorities still at a loss to explain how at least two passengers were able to board with stolen Italian and Austrian passports.

“Who were they and why were they using false passports?” the paper asked.

“The fact that some of the passengers on board were travelling with false passports should serve as a reminder to the whole world that security can never be too tight, at airports in particular, since terrorism, the evil of the world, is still trying to stain human civilization with the blood of innocent lives,” it added.

Malaysia’s police chief said Monday that one of the men who used the passports had been identified, after ministers reportedly said they had Asian facial features.

At a Beijing hotel, Malaysian embassy officials were processing visa applications for families wanting to take up an airline’s offer to travel to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the rescue operations.

Scores of relatives made their way into the room, some in groups of five or six, clutching handkerchiefs and wiping away tears from their faces.

Some family members are expected to travel from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur on a 1:30 a.m. flight Tuesday, but many said they would not go.

“There is more we can do here in China,” one woman told AFP. “They haven’t even found the plane yet.”

Calls for action

Some have criticized Malaysia Airlines’ response and information disclosure, asking the Chinese government to devote “strong attention” to the incident.

“There is very little information coming from the airline,” lamented one 40-year-old Chinese man, who said his best friend was on the plane. “They are very slow. We have to rely on the media.”

Others have called for top Chinese officials to help the family members deal with the airline, drawing a contrast with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has reportedly visited families in Kuala Lumpur along with his wife.

Beijing sent a working group to Malaysia Monday, the state-run Xinhua news agency said, including officials from the foreign, public security and transport ministries.

The aircraft’s disappearance came one week after a deadly attack at a train station in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, in which a group of knife-wielding assailants killed 29 people and wounded 143.

Both Beijing and Washington have condemned the mass stabbing as an act of terror, with Chinese authorities blaming it on separatists from the restive far western region of Xinjiang.

Even as information remains sparse and the hours tick by, many relatives in Beijing continue to believe that the passengers may yet be found, according to one US-trained psychologist who counselled about 20 families awaiting news at the hotel.

“I think most of them are holding onto that thin ray of hope,” he said. “Whether they believe it to be realistic or not, most of them are not letting it go.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Malaysia says ‘mystified’ as no jet debris found

KUALA LUMPUR — Malaysia said Monday there is still no trace of wreckage from a jet that vanished with 239 people on board, deepening the anguish of relatives two days after the “mystifying” disappearance.

A potential breakthrough emerged Sunday when an aircraft scouring waters off southern Vietnam — part of an international search and rescue effort — spotted two objects authorities said could be debris from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

But Malaysian authorities said there was no confirmation they came from the Boeing 777 which slipped off radar screens early on Saturday, an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

“Unfortunately ladies and gentleman, we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft itself,” said Malaysia’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

“This unprecedented missing aircraft mystery — it is mystifying and we are increasing our efforts to do what we have to do,” he told a press conference.

Malaysia has launched a terror probe after at least two of the passengers on board were found to have travelled on stolen passports.

But Azharuddin had few answers to the burning questions surrounding the plane’s fate. Asked whether it was possible the plane had been hijacked or disintegrated mid-air, he said nothing could be ruled out.

“We are looking at every angle. We are looking at every aspect of what could have happened,” he said. “Again, we have to get concrete evidence… we have to find the aircraft.”

More than 150 Chinese are among the missing passengers and Beijing’s state media on Monday lashed out at Malaysia and its national carrier over their handling of the crisis.

“The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities,” the Global Times newspaper, which is close to the ruling Communist Party, wrote in a scathing editorial. “The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough.”

China grief

At a Beijing hotel, Malaysian embassy officials were processing visa applications for families wanting to take up an airline offer to travel to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the rescue operations.

Scores of relatives made their way into the room, some in groups of five or six, clutching handkerchiefs and wiping away tears from their faces.





Others said they would not go. “There is more we can do here in China,” one woman told AFP. “They haven’t even found the plane yet.”

A team of Chinese officials from government ministries headed for Malaysia on Monday, tasked with investigating the incident and helping family members already there.

As the search entered a third full day, other families of missing passengers gathered at a hotel in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, sharing breakfast as they stared intently at television news bulletins.

The search effort has zeroed in on waters off the remote Vietnamese island of Tho Chu, near where two large oil slicks — suspected to be caused by aircraft fuel — as well as the suspected debris were spotted on the weekend.

“All night we mobilized our most modern equipment for the search… but we found no sign of the objects,” Vice Admiral Ngo Van Phat told AFP of the hunt centred on Vietnam’s southwestern tip.

Tests on the oil slick that could indicate whether it came from the missing plane could be completed by later Monday, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency director general Amdan Kurish told AFP.

Malaysian authorities said they were also combing waters closer to their shores, further south of Tho Chu.

A total of 40 ships and 34 aircraft from an array of Southeast Asian countries, China and the United States have been involved in the search, with two Australian surveillance aircraft joining.

‘Asian features’
As they scramble to discover what happened, Malaysian officials have said there was a possibility that MH370 may have inexplicably turned back towards Kuala Lumpur.

The plane, captained by a veteran MAS pilot, had relayed no indications of distress, and weather at the time was said to be good.

Questions have also swirled over how at least two passengers boarded the jet on stolen passports, sparking an investigation into possible links with terrorism and a probe into the sale of passports in Thailand — where the documents were stolen over the past two years.

Two European names — Christian Kozel, an Austrian, and Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were listed on the passenger list, but neither man boarded the plane.

Malaysia’s Home Minister Zahid Hamidi reportedly said Sunday that the two passengers who did board using those passports looked Asian in appearance.

“I am still puzzled how come (immigration officers) cannot think: an Italian and Austrian but with Asian facial features,” Zahid was quoted as saying by Malaysia’s national news agency Bernama.

Interpol confirmed that “at least two passports” recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database were used by passengers on the Malaysian flight.

The United States has sent an FBI team to help investigate the passengers, but US officials stressed there was as yet no evidence of terrorism.

Malaysia Airlines shares lost 10 percent in early trading Monday as the market reacted to the jet’s disappearance.

The incident is a massive blow for the carrier which has haemorrhaged cash for several years amid mounting competition from low-cost rivals such as AirAsia.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net