Investigators from nine countries are struggling to solve the mystery of a missing Malaysian jet, as Vietnamese forces today failed to find the airplane debris they had spotted yesterday off the country’s southern coast.
A helicopter late yesterday spotted what officials suspected was a window or door fragment of a plane. Malaysia still had no information about the Boeing Co. (BA) 777-200, which was carrying 239 people, and reports that plane parts were spotted aren’t confirmed, said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of the Department of Civil Aviation.
China, Australia and the U.S. are among those helping in the search for the Malaysian Airline System Bhd. (MAS) plane that went missing from radar screens on a flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur March 8. The possibility that terrorism may have caused its disappearance arose after Austria and Italy said passports used by two male passengers were stolen from their citizens.
“We need hard evidence, we need concrete evidence -- we need parts of the aircraft for us to analyze,” Azharuddin said. “The honorable prime minister used the word ’perplexing.’ We are equally puzzled.”
He said 34 aircraft and 40 ships have been deployed in the search.
Yellow Object
A Vietnamese helicopter today spotted a yellow inflatable object floating in the sea 190 kilometers south-southwest of Tho Chu island at 10 a.m. local time, Lieutenant General Vo Van Tuan, deputy head of national committee for civil aviation safety, said by phone. Searchers were unable to locate the object again, Tuan said.
Vietnam, at the request of Malaysian authorities, is sending two ships to investigate what resembles a grey life raft 140 kilometers southwest of the island, according to the aviation search and rescue coordination center in Hanoi. One vessel is expected to reach the area where the object was spotted at about 4:30 p.m. local time. The object appears to be grey, with red and blue stripes.
“We are constantly urging and asking the Malaysian side to step up search and rescue,” Qin Gang, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said today. “Two days after the incident, we still hope the Malaysian side will fully understand the mood of the Chinese family members and they will try their best to speed up investigation.”
False Passports
The object spotted yesterday is suspected to be part of a plane’s emergency door or window, and rough seas and darkness prevented retrieval, Le Van Minh, a Vietnamese coast guard commander, said in an interview today. It was seen 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of Tho Chu Island.
Closed-circuit television footage exists of the two people who used the false passports, Azharuddin said yesterday. “We have the CCTV recordings of those passengers from check-in right through the departure point.”
The Royal Thai Police is probing the two passports that were reported stolen in Phuket in 2012 and last year, spokesman Piya Uthayo said in Bangkok today.
All the passengers on the flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur are being investigated, with a focus on four names, Malaysian Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said separately yesterday without elaborating.
Baggage Removed
“I’m in touch with the international intelligence agencies” concerning the passports, he said yesterday.
The aircraft, which disappeared without providing any distress signal, may have made an “air turn-back,” said Hishammuddin. That means the plane may have deviated from its planned route, said Malaysian Air Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.
Before Flight MH370 took off, the airline removed the baggage of five passengers who didn’t board after checking in, Azharuddin said today. “There are issues about the passengers that did not fly on the aircraft.”
Shares of Malaysian Air headed for their biggest decline in nine months in Kuala Lumpur trading.
An air search resumed yesterday after Vietnam’s military found two oil slicks as long as 15 kilometers off its south coast. Malaysian authorities are testing samples, Azharuddin said. The oil slicks were about 140 kilometers south of Tho Chu Island in a body of water known as the Gulf of Thailand, off the South China Sea.
Worst Feared
The carrier said yesterday that it feared the worst. The most recent crash of this magnitude was in Feb. 19, 2003, when an Iranian Revolutionary Guard plane crashed in the Indian Ocean, killing 275 people, according to the Aviation Safety Network.
Thailand said it sent a ship, a helicopter and a plane to search the Langkawi archipelago in the Andaman Sea, about 90 nautical miles from Phuket
Interpol said in a statement that at least two passports recorded in its database, one Austrian and one Italian, were used by passengers on the flight after being reported stolen in Thailand. Two people using Italian and Austrian passports on the flight, Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel, had consecutive ticket numbers, according to the Chinese e-ticket verification system Travelsky.
Both tickets were issued on March 6, according to the website of China Southern Airlines Co., which was a code-share on the flight.
No Indication
A team from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was heading to Malaysia to be in place once the wreckage of the plane is located. The team was being joined by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing, Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
A wing on the plane was damaged after a minor collision with another aircraft previously, and was fully repaired, Ahmad Jauhari said yesterday without specifying when it happened. The plane was repaired by Boeing, cleared by the manufacturer and was safe to fly, he said.
There is no indication of terrorism at this point, said a U.S. official following the case, asking not to be identified because the investigation is still in its early stages. The U.S. is working with authorities in the region to explore all possible causes, the official said.
The Austrian passport used to board the flight belonged to a 30-year-old who reported the theft in 2012 in Thailand, while the Italian was Luigi Maraldi, who disclosed the theft of his documents in August, according to the countries’ foreign ministries. Neither man was on the Malaysian aircraft, their governments said.
Seventh Fleet
Flight 370 departed the Malaysian capital at about 12:41 a.m. local time March 8 and was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Security screening was performed as usual at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd. (MAHB) said.
The twin-engine, wide-body plane carried 227 passengers and 12 crew members, with Chinese travelers accounting for the largest group by nationality at 153, including an infant, the airline said. Also aboard were three U.S. citizens, according to the U.S. State Department.
In the case of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared en route to Paris from Rio de Janeiro on June 1, 2009, Brazilian search teams began finding pieces within a day. The wreckage was discovered 3,900 meters (12,800 feet) deep in the Atlantic Ocean.
President Obama
The destroyer USS Pinckney from the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet is among vessels in the search. President Barack Obama was briefed while on a weekend family vacation in Key Largo, Florida, said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke to Obama by phone today about the missing plane, China state broadcaster CCTV reported.
While Muslim-majority Malaysia hasn’t seen any recent major terrorist attacks on home soil, it has been used as a transit and planning hub, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. State Department. China has occasionally suffered what it calls terrorist attacks by Uighurs, a mainly Muslim ethnic group from the nation’s northwest Xinjiang region.
If terrorism was involved, the flight’s disappearance over water may not be a coincidence as that helps obscure evidence, said John Magaw, a consultant who formerly was director of the U.S. Secret Service and led the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as well as the .
U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said he’s seen no indication the U.S. had picked up evidence of a mid-air explosion of the plane. The lack of such evidence “is certainly adding to the mystery,” Rogers said yesterday on ABC’s “This Week” program.
The presence of two passengers with stolen passports signals possible terrorism, said Magaw, citing intelligence warnings that multiple attackers might seek to elude detection by smuggling different parts of bombs onto planes and then assembling the pieces in restrooms.
Immigration Investigation
Malaysia began an internal investigation of its Immigration Department, the Malaysian National News Agency reported.
Malaysia’s last communication with the plane, just before a handoff to Vietnamese authorities, was “normal,” according to Azharuddin. Contact was lost a minute before the aircraft entered Vietnam’s airspace, its government said on its website.
The plane disappeared from Malaysian radar at 1:30 a.m. on March 8. The carrier said the last radar contact with the plane was about 120 nautical miles east of Kota Bahru, near the South China Sea.FlightAware, a Houston-based compiler of global air-traffic information, gave the jet’s last known altitude as 35,000 feet as it flew a northeasterly course at 539 mph.
The 777 has been involved in only three accidents serious enough to destroy a plane. The only fatalities occurred in last year’s Asiana Airlines Inc. crash in San Francisco, where investigators have focused on pilot error.
U.S. Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York who is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, said yesterday that so far no terror link has been found.
Still, “the two stolen passports have them concerned,” King said in an interview. “It happened in Malaysia, where there has been al-Qaeda activity over the years. And the plane just disappeared without a mayday or distress call.”
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: {K. Oanh Ha} in Hanoi at +84-4-3938-8940 oroha3@bloomberg.net; {Chong Pooi Koon} in Kuala Lumpur at +60-3-2302-7854 orpchong17@bloomberg.net; {Ranjeetha Pakiam} in Kuala Lumpur at +60-3-2302-7856 orrpakiam@bloomberg.net
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: K. Oanh Ha in Hanoi at oha3@bloomberg.net; Chong Pooi Koon in Kuala Lumpur at pchong17@bloomberg.net; Ranjeetha Pakiam in Kuala Lumpur at rpakiam@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy atanandk@bloomberg.net; Steven Komarow at skomarow1@bloomberg.net Frank Lon.
Source : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-10/plane-debris-hunters-seek-suspected-aircraft-window-part.html
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