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The Advertiser (Australia)

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Advertiser Edition

VANISHED Six Australians among 239 feared dead as plane disappears

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They waited, they hoped, they prayed. But as hours ticked by, reality set in for family and friends of the 239 passengers, including six from Australia, who were on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

The Boeing 777 mysteriously vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early yesterday.Among the lost were Brisbane couple Catherine and Robert Lawton. Ships from four countries were last night scouring sea and coastline off Vietnam, looking for clues to one of the worst air disasters of recent times. Pages 4-6

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Agence France Presse — English

March 9, 2014 Sunday 11:45 AM GMT

Q&A: What happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370?

LENGTH: 701 words

DATELINE: KUALA LUMPUR, March 09 2014

The sudden disappearance Saturday of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 — with no distress call or other signs of trouble — has ignited intense speculation over what happened to the jet and its 239 passengers.

Following are some of the scenarios being mulled over by regional authorities, investigators and industry experts.

Q: Is mechanical or structural failure likely?

Sudden, accidental structural failures leading to explosions or a sudden loss of cabin pressure are considered extremely unlikely in today’s passenger aircraft.

This is especially so with the Boeing 777-200 model, which has one of the best safety records of any jet.

“From a crack, there can be a whole structure breakdown that allows for no response. But in the last two to three decades there have been next to nil such incidents,” said Ravi Madavaram, an aviation analyst with Frost & Sullivan.

Indonesia-based aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman said based on the MH370 plane’s maintenance records, “there is nothing that would jump straight out of the page”.

Q: How likely is human error in this case?

The MH370 case may draw comparisons with the crash in 2009 of an Air France into the Atlantic Ocean, which killed more than 200 people.

An investigation said speed sensors failed, causing the Airbus jet to stall and lose altitude. But it also said pilots failed to react correctly, losing control of the jet.

Soejatman said despite all the safety features on modern aircraft, well-trained pilots taking proper action in an emergency also is essential.

“If the crew is not on the ball, they quickly lose control of the situation,” he said.

Q: Was it an attempted hijacking or terror attack?

This spectre has loomed after authorities said at least two passengers had boarded with stolen passports. Malaysian officials also said Sunday radar data indicated the pilot may have inexplicably tried to turn back to Kuala Lumpur.

Analysts said the absence of any distress signal raises eyebrows, as it could indicate an event so sudden that the crew could not respond.

“There was not even time for the pilot or crew to raise an alarm. It could have happened due to a deliberate act — by a pilot or a terrorist — but this is all very speculative,” Ravi said.

The terror theory’s credibility is hurt by the fact that — so far — no claim of responsiblity has surfaced.

“What’s the motive? If they didn’t bring any weapons, it is extremely difficult to get into the cockpit,” said Shukor Yusof, aviation analyst with Standard & Poor’s.

He also noted that stolen passports do not necessarily equate to terrorism.

Large numbers of illegal workers, as well as criminal syndicates, are known to move between Malaysia and neighbouring countries such as Thailand. The two suspect passports were reportedly stolen in Thailand.

Q: Is lax security at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) to blame?

The modern facility does not have a history of known security breaches.

But Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the passport issue could indicate a “glaring flaw” in the airport’s immigration clearance.

He noted that Interpol maintains a database of stolen passports that should have raised red flags at the immigration counter.

“There are two categories of people who use these (stolen passports) — criminals and terrorists,” he said.

However, Shukor said the sheer volume of travellers moving through airports likely means not all forgeries can be caught.

“To blame Malaysian authorities for this is probably unfair — they have to get it right all the time and potential hijackers just have to get through once,” he said.

Q: Could violent turbulence or bad weather have brought down the plane?

This possibility is being widely discounted as all indications are that the weather was fine in the area where contact with MH370 was lost.

Q: Could it have run out of fuel?

Malaysia Airlines has said the plane was fuelled for at least eight hours of flight. The Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route lasts six hours.

Aircraft typically carry two hours’ worth of fuel on top of what is needed.

Adds Ravi: “If there was a fuel loss, the pilot would have enough time to call for distress signal, and to turn around and glide back to land.”

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Agence France Presse — English

March 9, 2014 Sunday 3:59 AM GMT

Malaysia probing possible terror link in jet mystery: minister

LENGTH: 98 words

DATELINE: KUALA LUMPUR, March 09 2014

Malaysia is looking at a possible terror link in the disappearance of an airliner believed to have gone down in the sea with 239 people aboard, the country’s transport minister said Sunday.

Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysian security agencies were investigating after it was discovered that two passengers may have boarded missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 using stolen passports, raising fears of potential terrorism.

“At the same time our own intelligence have been activated, and of course, the counterterrorism units… from all the relevant countries have been informed.”

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BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific – Political

Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Malaysia Airlines says no terror angle behind loss of contact with missing plane

LENGTH: 339 words

Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

Beijing, 9 March: No information has been confirmed so far to suggest terrorism is behind the loss of contact with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, still not located as of Sunday [9 March] evening, said the carrier in Beijing.

Information currently available shows that the provided passenger list matches booking information for the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, said Ignatius Ong Ming Choy, representative of Malaysia Airlines, at a press conference.

As of 6 p.m. Sunday, the flight has been out of touch for over 38 hours, and search and rescue work for the missing jet is under way.

More than 100 relatives of the Chinese passengers on board have been anxiously waiting for information at a hotel that Malaysia Airlines has asked them to gather at in Beijing.

The company has informed the relatives that if they want to go to Malaysia, it will make efforts to assist them, said Ong.

He added that Malaysia Airlines has started to arrange for the first batch of relatives to set out for Malaysia.

The carrier has communicated with the Malaysian and Chinese government to assist the relatives to go to Malaysia. The departure time is expected to be Monday at the soonest if their passports and visas can be handled smoothly, Ong said.

For those already holding passports, the airline has negotiated with Malaysian authorities to accelerate the visa application procedures, he added.

Only two direct relatives of each passenger will be allowed on the first flight to Malaysia due to limited seat numbers.

A Boeing 777-200 aircraft operated by Malaysia Airlines left Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing at 12:41 a.m. Saturday.

Contact with the plane along with its radar signal was lost at 1:20 a.m. Saturday when it was flying over the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area in Vietnam.

The aircraft was carrying 12 Malaysian flight crew and 227 passengers including 154 Chinese.

Source: Xinhua news agency, Beijing, in English 1014gmt 09 Mar 14

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Canberra Times (Australia)

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Final Edition

Waiting for the lost of flight MH370

BYLINE: PHILIP WEN; in Beijing

SECTION: A; Pg. A006

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Waiting for the lost of flight MH370 By PHILIP WEN in Beijing A woman reacts to the disaster (above); the flight information board at Beijing (blow left); and Malaysian Airlines boss Ahmad Jauhari Yahya (below right). Photos: REUTERS, GETTY AS IT became apparent this was not a routine plane delay, heart- wrenching scenes unfolded in the arrivals hall at Beijing’s international airport terminal.

With the arrivals board still showing the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur as delayed on Saturday morning, distraught family members and friends broke down as news filtered through that the flight had, in fact, gone missing hours earlier.

“They keep saying there’s no information,” Zhai Le told Fairfax Media, explaining through tears that she had a friend on board the flight.

One woman was seen crouched down on the floor sobbing, before a male companion and police led her away. Another man appeared shell-shocked as he explained he had been waiting to pick up his boss, a French national, when he heard the news.

Chang Ken Fei, a Malaysian waiting at the airport for friends to arrive, said: “At first I thought the plane was just delayed as normal, so I came a bit later. I’ve just been waiting and waiting.”

Police and airport staff escorted relatives to the Beijing Lido Hotel to wait for news, even as flustered family members continued to arrive at the airport, desperate for information.

With 154 Chinese nationals on the flight, the news has received blanket coverage in China, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi cut short a scheduled press briefing at the National People’s Congress to attend to the disaster.

“We are extremely worried,” MrWang said. “We are doing all we can to get details. The news is very disturbing.”

The Xinhua news agency reported the plane was lost in airspace controlled by Vietnam, and did not make contact with Chinese air traffic controllers.

Chinese authorities dispatched two rescue boats to assist with the search and rescue operations and said there were no storms in the area of the South China Sea where the plane was flying.

At the Lido on Saturday afternoon, a steady stream of relatives ran a gauntlet of reporters before entering a room under police guard.

“I know nothing; I really don’t have anything to say,” one man whispered to a crush of reporters, squeezing the hand of an elderly man trailing behind him.

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China Daily

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Malaysian airlines promises to provide families with timely help

LENGTH: 280 words

Malaysian Airlines on Sunday promised to provide families of the passengers onboard the missing flight MH370 with timely information, travel facilities, accommodation and emotional support and asked for their patience and support.

KUALA LUMPUR – Malaysian Airlines on Sunday promised to provide families of the passengers onboard the missing flight MH370 with timely information, travel facilities, accommodation and emotional support and asked for their patience and support.

Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, CEO of the airlines, said in the latest press conference Sunday afternoon that the company understands the need to provide regular updates on the progress of the search and rescue operations.

“As the hours turn into days, we at Malaysia Airlines are similarly anxious and we appreciate the patience, support and prayers from everyone.”

As the families of those onboard the ill-fated flight are the most affected group in the incident, he said the company regards taking care of them as its primary focus at present, with initial financial assistance given out to all families and care givers assigned to each family.

The airlines offered free flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur to family members of the MH370 passengers in Beijing who wish to make the trip. It is also communicating with families from other nations for similar travel arrangement to Kuala Lumpur, he said.

When flight MH370 is located, a Response Control Center in the area will be activated to support the needs of families, the airlines chief added.

A Malaysia Airlines flight carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew went missing in area near the South China Sea on Saturday as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Live report

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Daily News (New York)

March 9, 2014 Sunday

SPORTS EXTRA EDITION

JET HORROR RED ‘FLAGS’ Two on Malaysian plane had stolen identity papers Pair of massive oil slicks found in South China Sea

BYLINE: BY JOSEPH STRAW in Washington and LARRY McSHANE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS With News Wire Services

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 872 words

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.

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

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.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, asked if terrorism was a possible cause, 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 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.

“We may find out in a few hours why it went down,” King said Saturday.

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.

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

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.

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. Eight hail from China, company officials said.Officials in Italy and Austria confirmed Saturday that the names of two passengers on the fight 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 to the area, while Vietnam sent two navy boats, two jets and a helicopter to comb the region.

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 said Malaysia Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

“We are doing everything we can to ensure every possible angle has been addressed.”

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.

If the flight did crash, it would make the second fatal wreck of a Boeing 777 in less in nine months. Three people died and more than 100 were injured when an Asiana Airlines jet crash-landed in San Francisco last July.

lmcshane@nydailynews.com

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The Daily Telegraph (Australia)

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Telegraph Edition

MYSTERY OF FLIGHT MH370 3 AUSSIE COUPLES DIE IN CRASH

BYLINE: LINDA SILMALIS BRENDEN HILLS

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4

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THREE Australian couples are among the 239 passengers and crew feared dead after their Malaysia Airlines plane crashed into the ocean near Vietnam yesterday.

An official passenger list released by the airline named six Australians as being on board – Queensland couples and friends – Robert and Catherine Lawton and Mary and Rodney Burrows. The other two were Sydney-based Li Yuan and Gu Naijun.

Neighbours said the Lawtons were an easygoing couple who travelled frequently and were devoted to their three daughters and grandchildren.

A sign on the Lawtons house at Spring Lakes in Brisbane’s southwest read: “Nanny and Poppy’s, Grandchildren welcome any time”.

A major search and rescue operation was under way last night after air traffic controllers lost contact with flight MH370 two hours after it departed Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

The plane, a Boeing 777-200, left Kuala Lumpur at 12:41am yesterday, and had been due to arrive in Beijing at 6:30am. Contact with the aircraft was lost while it was flying over Vietnam aerospace.

The Vietnamese Navy last night claimed its military radar had recorded the plane crashing into the sea around 153 miles south of Phu Quoc Island, a popular Vietnamese tourist resort near Cambodia.

The crash represents one of the worst air disasters in recent history, and the second involving the Boeing 777 in less than a year. An unconfirmed report on a tracking site said the plane had suddenly plunged 200m and changed course shortly before all contact was lost. Aviation experts say this could have been due to a catastrophic engine failure, the pilots taking evasive action to avoid another aircraft, or an explosion.

Screens at Beijing airport indicated in red the flight status as “delayed” as distraught friends and families of the passengers arrived in the hope of hearing good news.

Malaysia Airlines group chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya yesterday expressed his “deep regret” about the incident.

“Our focus now is to work with the emergency responders and authorities and mobilise its full support,” Mr Yahya said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members.” The plane had been captained by an experienced Malaysian pilot, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who had accumulated 18,365 flying hours since joining the airline in 1981. He was accompanied by 27-year-old Malaysian first office, Fariq Ab. Hamid, who joined the airline in 2007 and had flown 2,763 hours.

While the official passenger list names six Australians as being on the flight, Malaysia Airlines said they believe there were seven Australians on board. The majority of passengers were Chinese nationals with an infant among 153 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, 12 Indonesians, three French nationals and four American citizens including a baby.

Two New Zealanders also died, as well as two from the Ukraine and Canada, one from Russia, Italy, Taiwan, Netherlands and Austria.

Also on board were two infants, one from China and another from the United States, and 12 crew. Several famous Chinese calligraphers and painters had been on the flight after an exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, meanwhile, urged concerned families to call its 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre for information.

“Malaysia Airlines has advised that seven Australians were on board the missing flight MH370,” a spokesman said. “Australian consular officials are in urgent and ongoing contact with Malaysia Airlines. Malaysia Airlines has advised it is contacting relatives of the passengers.” The Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route passes over the Indochinese peninsula. Chinese aviation officials claimed the plane it did not enter China’s air traffic control sphere.

The last comparable airline crash was in June 2009 when Air France flight 447, flying from Brazil to France, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 occupants.

The crash represents one of the biggest passenger losses in recent time and the second fatal accident involving a Boeing 777 in less than a year after an almost spotless record.

Last year, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash landed in San Francisco, killing three passengers with 200 people taken to hospital. In 2005, during a flight from Perth to Kuala Lumpur the crew received a “stall warning” forcing the pilot to turn back.

Boeing said it was “monitoring” the situation.

Other accidents involving Malaysia Airlines planes include a fatal crash last October in Borneo island, which claimed the lives of a copilot and passenger. In 1977, a jet crashed in southern Malaysia, killing all 93 passengers and seven crew.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s 24 hour Consular Emergency Centre is contactable on 1 300 555 135, or +61 2 6261 3305 (if calling from overseas).

TIMELINE TO TRAGEDY Flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew aboard departs Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time, bound for Beijing The joint Malaysia Airlines-China Southern Airlines flight is due to arrive in Beijing 6.30am local time Subang air traffic control reports losing contact with the Boeing 777-200 at 2.40am Authorities scramble an air-sea rescue operation

BREAKDOWN OF NATIONALS ON BOARD China – 153 Malaysia – 38 Indonesia – 12 Australia – 6 France – 3 America – 4 New Zealand – 2 Ukraine – 2 Canada – 2 Russia – 1 Italy – 1 Taiwan – 1 Netherlands – 1 Austria- 1 (Crew – 12)DATA: FLIGHTRADAR24.COM

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Daily Tribune

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Search on for missing aircraft

LENGTH: 447 words

Several nations searched waters off Southeast Asia yesterday after a Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 239 passengers disappeared and was presumed crashed, leaving stunned relatives demanding answers. Contact with Flight MH370 was lost somewhere between Malaysia’s east coast and southern Vietnam, but its fate remained a mystery more than 16 hours after it slipped off radar screens. Air search operations were halted at nightfall, though ships continued searching, the airline said, adding that no trace of the passenger plane had been found as of late yesterday. The flight was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, with 227 passengers and 12 crew members from 14 nations, the airline said. Frustrated officials and passengers’ families struggled to make sense of the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200 which – like the Malaysian national carrier – has a solid safety record.

The airline said the plane, on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, relayed no distress signal, indications of rough weather, or other signs of trouble. “We are looking at all possibilities but it is too soon to speculate,” Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said, when asked whether terrorism could have been a factor. The plane’s disappearance triggered a search effort involving vessels from several nations with rival maritime claims in the tense South China Sea. China, which had 153 of its nationals on the plane, said it ordered maritime patrol vessels to begin scouring the area.

Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines said they threw aircraft and vessels into the effort, and Singapore dispatched an air force C130 transport plane to the region. Najib said the US navy also had agreed to send planes to help. Contact with the aircraft was lost at 2:40 am Malaysian time (1840 GMT Friday), about two hours after take-off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the airlines’s CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said. “Our focus now is to work with emergency responders and authorities, and mobilise full support,” he told a press conference, adding the airline’s “thoughts and prayers” were with those affected. If a crash is confirmed, it would be only 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 in 2013, killing three.

Malaysia Airlines also has an admirable safety record. Its worst-ever crash occurred in 1977, when 93 passengers and seven crew perished in a hijacking and subsequent crash in southern Malaysia.caption… A woman talks on the phone while leaving the reception centre for families and friends after an airliner went missing at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

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Flight Daily & Evening News

March 9, 2014

Interpol confirms stolen passports used on MH370 flight

SECTION: FLIGHTGLOBAL.COM

LENGTH: 269 words

HIGHLIGHT: â International crime investigation body Interpol has confirmed that one Austrian and one Italian passport used by passengers boarding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were on its record of stolen travel documents.

International crime investigation body Interpol has confirmed that one Austrian and one Italian passport used by passengers boarding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 were on its record of stolen travel documents.

“The Austrian and Italian passports were added to Interpol’s stolen and lost documentation database after their theft in Thailand in 2012 and 2013 respectively,” the organisation says, adding that it is conducting checks on all other passports used to board flight MH370 which may have been reported stolen.

It notes that no checks of the stolen Austrian and Italian passports were made by any country between the time they were entered into the database and the departure of flight MH370. “At this time, Interpol is therefore unable to determine on how many other occasions these passports were used to board flights or cross borders,” it adds.

â 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,â says its secretary general Ronald Noble.

Interpol says it is in contact with its National Central Bureaus in the involved countries to determine the true identities of the passengers who used these stolen passports to board the missing Malaysia Airways flight.

The search continues to find flight MH370 which Malaysian air traffic controllers lost contact with at 01:30 on the morning of Saturday 8 March. The Boeing 777-200 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew.

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Gannett News Service

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Stolen passports used on Malaysia flight are common

BYLINE: Wendy Koch and Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

SECTION: Pg. ARC

LENGTH: 737 words

Wendy Koch and Rick Hampson, USA TODAY

The world is awash in stolen passports such as those that two passengers used to board the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared Saturday, but only a few countries closely monitor their use.

More than 40 million travel documents, mostly passports, have been reported stolen, according to a database begun in 2002 — following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States — by the France-based international law enforcement organization Interpol.

“Only a handful of countries worldwide are taking care to make sure that persons possessing stolen passports are not boarding international flights,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said Sunday. His organization confirmed that at least two stolen passports were used to board missing flight MH370, which lost contact with air traffic control shortly after leaving Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur.

Interpol said no country has made any checks on those passports since they were reported stolen in Thailand — an Austrian one in 2012 and an Italian one in 2013 — adding it’s unable to say how many other times they might have been used.

“It is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plan,” Noble said. Yet he said their use is a “great concern” and should prompt countries and airlines to check Interpol’s data before allowing passengers to board.

The United States uses Interpol’s database, which started with a few thousand records, more than any other nation to screen the background of people entering the country. It does more than 250 million checks a year, followed by the United Kingdom with at least 120 million checks and the United Arab Emirates with at least 50 million.

Interpol makes its database available to all 190 member countries but cannot force them to integrate it into their own systems, according to Interpol’s press office, which declined to name which countries — other than the U.S., the U.K. and the UAE — have done so.

Last year, Interpol reports, passengers boarded planes more than a billion times without having their passports screened against its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database.

The data are currently accessible only to law enforcement, but Interpol is looking at an “I-checkit” pilot project that would extend availability to the travel, hotel and banking industries.

Fake passports, often obtained on the black market, have been used before by terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef, convicted of carrying out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York.

The 9/11 Commission report, issued in 2004, detailed how the 9/11 hijackers obtained and modified the passports that got them into the United States. It lists five ways terrorists can use passports, including changing stolen ones with new photos or doctoring them to create a fake travel history by adding or removing visa entry stamps.

Since that report, passport security hasn’t improved much, mostly because it has not been exploited in a recent U.S. attack, said Michael Greenberg, a former Clinton administration official and founder and director of the University of Maryland Center for Health and Homeland Security.

“Passports are a very weak link in the security system,” he said, noting there’s still no effective way to ensure that the person presenting a passport is the person to whom it was issued. He says they’re easy to steal, replicate and alter, and international fliers not leaving from or arriving at a U.S. airport face a different system from the one used by the United States.

Despite the 9/11 report’s discussion of biometric passports aÂ€Â” virtually impossible to replicate and intrinsically linked to whomever it was issued aÂ€Â” “the federal government keeps the system we have in place and hopes nothing bad happens,” Greenberg said.

Still, he said the U.S. system, which involves checking reported stolen or false passports against its own watch list, is better than the one used internationally. Had the Malaysia Airlines flight been headed to the United States, he said, the passenger manifest would have been checked before takeoff, primarily against the U.S. watch list rather than Interpol’s database.

Many nations, he said, neither maintain their own watch lists nor check any list as carefully as the U.S. “So if you’re flying between two foreign airports, you’re at the mercy of whatever the host and receiving countries are doing,” Greenberg said.

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Global Times (China)

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Timeline for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370

BYLINE: Globaltimes.cn

LENGTH: 1199 words

March 8

0:41 am Flight MH370, operating a B777-200 aircraft left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 00:41 am (1641 GMT, March 7) and was expected to land in Beijing at 06:30 am (2230 GMT, March 7).

2:40 amFlight MH370 carrying 239 people, including 227 passengers and 12 crew members, has lost contact with air traffic control after leaving Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, the carrier said on March 8.

6:30 amFlight MH370 is scheduled to land at Beijing Capital International Airport.

7:24 amMalaysia Airlines released the first statement on its website and announced it had lost contact five hours earlier with the flight.9:05 amMalaysia Airlines released the second statement on its website and published the contact information.

Around 9:40 amA senior Malaysia Airlines official has told CNN that the jet was carrying about 7.5 hours of fuel and they fear that the aircraft ran out of fuel.Around 9:45 am Chinese Foreign Ministry has activated emergency response systems, after Malaysia Airlines plane bound for Beijing went missing in the morning of March 8.

9:55 amChina’s Civil Aviation Administration has confirmed that 158 of the 227 passengers are Chinese nationals. Search and rescue operations are currently underway.

10:30 am Yang Chuantang, Chinese Minister of Transport, announced the launch of the highest-degree emergency response mechanism.

10:30 am The Malaysia Airlines released a list of the passengers of 14 different nationalities in its third statement. This flight was a code share with China Southern Airlines.

0:25 pm CCTV has confirmed that China has sent two ships for search and rescue operations in South China Sea in connection with the missing flight MH370.

0:31 pm A Vietnamese rescue official denied that the signal of the missing Malaysian plane has been detected.

Around 0:50 pm Premier Li has ordered to activate emergency systems to help in rescue operations regarding missing flight MH370.2:30 pm1. Malaysia Airlines held a press conference at the Lido Hotel in Beijing shortly to provide updates and confirmed the flight MH370 lost contact with air traffic control. 2. Malaysia’s acting Transport Minister provided the last known coordinates of flight MH370, 065515 north (longitude) & 1033443 east (latitude), before it went missing.3:00 pm Chinese President Xi Jinping urged emergency measures over the missing Malaysian flight bound for Beijing with more than 150 Chinese nationals on board.

All-out efforts must be made for any emergency treatment necessary in the aftermath of the incident, Xi said in his instruction.

3:10 pm No signs have been found that a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, carrying 239 people, has crashed, Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said.

4:20 pm The fourth statement from Malaysia Airlines said the company is working with international authorities on the search and rescue mission of flight MH370.

4:55 pm China’s Civil Aviation Administration says they have been informed that Vietnam, Malaysia & Singapore are jointly searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane near Tho Chu Island, Vietnam.

7:00 pmMalaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak denied reports that a missing Malaysian flight bound for Beijing had crashed.

7:20 pmThe Malaysia Airlines released the passenger manifest in the fifth media statement.

8:00 pmA Chinese coast guard vessel, coded 3411, is rushing to the waters where a missing Malaysian plane may be located, said the State Oceanic Administration.

8:01 pmVietnamese Deputy Transport Minister Pham Quy Tieu said rescuers were expected to arrive in waters near the southern Phu Quoc Island where two “suspicious” oil slicks were spotted.

“The oil spills are suspicious but the (search) plane could not reduce height at the time. We are sending rescue ships to the area,” he said, adding search aircraft had returned to base because it was now too dark.

<p/>

<p/>March 90:22 amThe United States officials are investigating terrorism concerns over the missing Malaysia Airlines plane after two people listed as passengers of the MH 370 flight were confirmed not on board, and their passports were reported stolen in Thailand, NBC reported.

2:00 amThe sixth media statement on Malaysia Airlines’ website said that the search and rescue team has so far failed to find any evidence of wreckage of the jet. It also promised that “once the whereabouts of the aircraft is determined, Malaysia Airlines will fly members of the family to the location.”

3:00 amTwo 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, navy sources said.

9:00 amAn emergency response team assembled by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) set out early morning of March 9 from South China’s Sanya Port in Hainan Province to the sea area where it is thought the missing Malaysia Airline flight MH370 may have crashed.

Rescue vessel South China Sea Rescue 101 is carrying 12 divers and salvagers, and will join another rescue vessel, South China Sea Rescue 115, at the rescue site.

9:30 amThe 7th press release issued by Malaysia Airlines said that “fearing for the worst, a disaster recovery management specialist from Atlanta, USA will be assisting” it.

10:00 amLi Jiaxiang, Director-General of CAAC, said while confirmation is awaited, suspected floats have been detected in the sea area, 6 degrees 42 points N (Latitude) & 103 degrees 29 points E (Longitude).

11:00 amVietnamese search and rescue helicopters on March 9 morning found oil slicks stretching 80 meters in waters 150 km off the coast of Vietnam’s southernmost Ca Mau province.

12:00 amThe Chinese maritime police vessel 3411 has joined the search effort for the missing flight MH370. However, there are still no signs indicating the whereabouts of the plane.

1:00 pmLooking at recording on the radar, there is a possibility that the aircraft turned back. Search area has been widened into the South China Sea, General Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief said.

1:27 pm1 US navy ship, 3 vessels from China, 3 from Singapore, 5 from Indonesia and 1 from Thailand are involved in search.

3:00 pmThe Malaysia Airlines held the third press conference to release the updates regarding the missing flight MH370, and announced that they will set up a command center in either Malaysia or Vietnam as soon as aircraft’s location is established. They have been giving updates to family members of the passengers onboard MH370 and making arrangements for those family members who wish to go from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur.Around 4:30 pmA large oil slick 100 nautical miles from Tok Bali, Kelantan was found by Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, Malaysian state news agency Bernama reported.

Around 5:00 pmSingaporean vessels searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger plane have found some suspicious floating objects, Vietnamese official media outlets reported.As of 7:00 pmNo information has been confirmed so far to suggest terrorism is behind the loss of contact with Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, still unlocated as of Sunday evening, said the carrier in Beijing.Source: Xinhua/ CCTVNEWS official Sina Weibo account/ official Sina Weibo account of People’s Daily/ ifeng.com

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JOURNAL-CODE: 1448

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13 of 30 DOCUMENTS

The Independent on Sunday

March 9, 2014

Second Edition

The fate of flight MH370 and the legacy for air safety

BYLINE: Simon Calder

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 412 words

Today, as every day, close to a million passengers will step aboard Boeing 777s at airports worldwide. Unlike other days, though, many travellers may note that they are flying on the make of aircraft lost in the early hours of Saturday morning.

No other form of transport enjoys aviation’s level of safety. The death toll aboard Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was 239, barely more than the daily carnage on the roads of China.

So why do aviation tragedies attain their high profile? Because of the haunting characteristic of multiple casualties occurring in uncertain circumstances.

Boarding a Boeing 777 is about the most risk-free activity you can hope to undertake. This twin-jet entered service in 1995, and has become one of the world’s safest and most successful aircraft. The 777 is the long-haul mainstay of dozens of airlines – including British Airways, which operates more than 50 from Heathrow and Gatwick.

One aircraft was written off at Heathrow in 2008, when both engines on BA38 from Beijing were starved of fuel and the plane came down short of the runway. No lives were lost. Until this weekend, the only 777 fatal accident was last July, when an aircraft operated by the Korean airline, Asiana, crash-landed on arrival at San Francisco. Three passengers died.

Both these accidents occurred at the most dangerous phase of a flight, the approach and landing.

In contrast, the loss of MH370 is unusual: an aircraft vanishing from radar screens at 35,000 feet with no distress signals sent. The mystery helps to explain, if not excuse, the misleading social media speculation. On Saturday morning, users of Twitter were assured variously that the plane had landed safely at Nanning airport in southern China, that it had run out of fuel, and that it had been downed by a missile.

Fortunately, the air accident investigators will begin with open minds. A possible failure of both engines will be looked at, but in such circumstances the crew would be expected to broadcast emergency messages. The cargo manifest will be studied for potential hazards – as will the passenger list. The possibility that the jet was deliberately downed, for example by a hijacker or a bomb, can’t be ruled out. But the cause of the tragedy may, once again, turn out to be a sequence of unlikely events that combined catastrophically.

Lessons will be learnt, fixes implemented, and risk will dwindle still further. Aviation safety is built upon such tragedies.

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Malaysia General News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

COUNSELLING DIFFUSES STRESS AMONG FAMILIES OF PASSENGERS

LENGTH: 248 words

DATELINE: PUTRAJAYA March 9

Counselling services by the Welfare Department (JKM) and other agencies has helped to diffuse stress experienced by families of the passengers in MAS Flight MH370.

Women, Family and Community Development Deputy Minister Datuk Azizah Mohd Mohd Dun said that based on counsellors’ reports, the condition of the family members seemed better now than yesterday.

“Yesterday, some did not want to eat and remained grim but today they started to come forward to talk to our counsellors, and this is the situation we want to create among the families of the passengers and the counsellors,” she said after meeting the families at Hotel Everly, Putrajaya.

A total of 18 counsellors from the department and 38 from various other agencies are at the hotel here to help more than 100 relatives and family members who have been brough there while awaiting developments on the situation of the missing plane.

She said counseling services would continue as a follow-up even when the family members had returned to their respective homes.

Azizah also asked the people to stop any speculation related to the missing aircraft because it could increase anxiety among the next-of-kin.

Search and Rescue operations were launched since yesterday morning after MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41 am Saturday. It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30 am.

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Malaysia General News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

MOHAMAD SOFUAN’S FATHER REMAINS HOPEFUL OF SON’S RETURN

LENGTH: 213 words

DATELINE: PUTRAJAYA March 9

The father of Mohamad Sofuan Ibrahim, 33, a passenger on the Malaysian Airlines (MAS) MH370 which was reported missing, remains hopeful that his son would return home safely.

Ibrahim Abdul Razak said his youngest son was an Administrative and Diplomatic Service (PTD) officer who was stationed at the Malaysian Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) office in Beijing.

He said, though his son had never disappointed him, as a Muslim he would accept any provision of god.

“During a telephone call from MAS, I was at Sofuan’s house but the call was made to my village house. The call was answered by Sofuan’s sister,” he said.

Ibrahim said he and his wife rushed to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport after receiving the news and were still waiting to be taken to a location that has yet to be named.

Sofuan, who was the only son among five siblings, was previously an officer at Istana Negara before being posted to Beijing for six months.

The search and rescue operation was launched yesterday after MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41am Saturday.

It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

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Malaysia General News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

FAMILY MEMBERS OF PASSENGERS ONBOARD MISSING MH370 CONTINUE TO RECEIVE

LENGTH: 235 words

DATELINE: SEPANG March 9

Grieving family members of passengers onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 continuously received morale support to ease their trauma.

Three representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Malaysia have come forward to provide their support to families of passengers, bringing placards saying “We Are Praying For You” at the Observation Tower of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at level five.

Joseph Koh, who is a committee member of the Doulos Presbyterian Church in Petaling Jaya said the moral support was a sign of encouragement to family members of the passengers, to remain patient in facing such a situation.

“I have invited my friends in FB (Facebook), who pledged to be with us to provide morale support to the family members of the passengers and the crew,” he told reporters when met at the airport here today.

Koh said besides showing moral support on social websites, especially Facebook, they are also urging the people to come together and show their concern and support.

He said church members were also willing to contribute financial assistance to families of passengers whenever deemed necessary.

MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41 am Saturday. It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

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Malaysia General News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

M’SIA WELCOMES SAR ASSISTANCE FROM OTHER COUNTRIES, ORGANISATONS

LENGTH: 193 words

DATELINE: KUALA LUMPUR March 9

Malaysia welcomes assistance from other countries and international organisations in the search-and-rescue (SAR) operation for missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement here today.

It also expressed its gratitude to the countries involved in the SAR operation namely Vietnam, China, the United States, Singapore and Philippines for deploying their assets to support and assist in the operation.

It said the government recognised the anguish and anxiety of the next-of-kin and family members of those on board the flight.

It said the ministry would provide its fullest cooperation to the respective Foreign Missions in Malaysia whose nationals were passengers of Flight MH370.

An operations room had also been set up by the minstry and can be contacted at 03-88874570 or via email at dutyofficer@kln.gov.my, the statement added.

The SAR operation was launched yesterday after Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41am Saturday. It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

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Malaysia General News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

MYSTERY SURROUNDING MISSING MH370 AIRCRAFT ENTERS SECOND DAY

LENGTH: 546 words

DATELINE: KUALA LUMPUR March 9

Mystery surrounding the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 aircraft is now focused on two mysterious passengers who boarded the aircraft using fake passports belonging to citizens from Italy and Austria.

While family members of passengers on board the missing aircraft remained anxious for more than 24 hours, the mystery of the two passengers triggered numerous theories related to the disappearance of the MH370 aircraft.

Apart from focusing on the missing aircraft, foreign media reports have also not ruled out the possibility of the flight being hijacked or having exploded in midair, apparently due to presence of the two assailants in the aircraft.

However, the theory of the aircraft exploding in midair may have to be ruled out after The New York Times, quoting an United States government officer today, as saying that the early monitoring data inspected by the Pentagon suggested that the MH370 aircraft had not explode over the South China Sea yesterday based on its explosion monitoring system.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak when commenting on the possibility of terrorism threat, said the government would not come to any conclusion without strong evidence.

“There is no evidence now, although numerous theories are thrown around. We are forced to find all the possible indicators and must investigate before making a firm conclusion,” Najib told reporters after opening the 2014 National Unity programme here.

Meanwhile, the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azaharuddin Abdul Rahman said DCA investigated numerous aspects, including whether the aircraft was hijacked but could not confirm it as long as it was not found.

The MAS Flight MH370, carrying 227 passengers, including two infants, and 12 crew, went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing about an hour after taking off from the KL International Airport at 12.41 am Saturday. It should have landed in Beijing at 6.30 am.

Azaharuddin in his media conference today confirmed that the two mysterious passengers had boarded the MH370 aircraft and DCA had a recording of the closed circuit television when they registered to board the aircraft.

In reaction to this, Home Minister Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi stressed that detailed investigation would focus specifically on the Immigration Department in KLIA.

“I still wonder why it did not dawn on the (Immigration officers) of passengers with Italian and Austrian identity but looking like Asians,” he said.

The CNN in its report had said that the two bought tickets together through China Southern Airlines and that the passports of the two people had been reported missing several years ago in South East Asia and the authorities in Italy and Austria had confirmed none of their citizens were on the aircraft.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Meteorological Department’s National Weather Centre meteorological officer Khairul Najib Ibrahim said there was no drastic weather change near Malaysian waters which could threaten the MH370 aircraft when it was reported missing.

As of 8.30pm, the last media conference for today, Azaharuddin confirmed the search and rescue operation involving 34 aircraft and 40 ships, involving national assets and those of neigbouring countries, have yet to find the MH370 aircraft.

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The Observer (London)

March 9, 2014

Tears and shock at mystery of missing flight: Relatives endured hours in holding areas at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and in Beijing as rumours swirled over the whereabouts of missing flight MH370 and stolen passports added to the mystery over the airliner’s fate

BYLINE: Tania Branigan Beijing and Kate Hodal Songkhla, Thailand

SECTION: OBSERVER HOME NEWS PAGES; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1137 words

It was 12.41am on Saturday – just six minutes later than scheduled – when MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and climbed steadily into the clear skies, bound north-eastwards for China.

A few minutes earlier, the 227 passengers had been settling into their seats aboard the Boeing 777 as the 12-strong crew prepared for departure.

A young man made a last-minute call telling his sister he was on board and he would see her at the airport in Beijing. A Malaysian couple anticipated their holiday, a longed-for break after the anguish of a miscarriage. A Chinese father had his own vacation plans but was coming home from work one day early so that he had time to take his child to the dentist.

Flight data shows the plane rising steadily to a cruising altitude of 35,000ft as it flew across Malaysia and above the sea towards Vietnam. But six hours later, as friends and relatives in Beijing airport waited to greet passengers, a single line in red topped the arrivals board. Above the yellow rows of anticipated flights and blue rows of newly landed planes ran the words: MH370 – Kuala Lumpur – 6.30am – Delayed.

Malaysian Airlines announced it had lost all contact with the plane. And as night fell over the South China Sea, ships and aircraft from five nations would still be scouring thousands of square miles of ocean for any trace of it.

Reports – even from official sources – offer contradictory accounts as to when concerns first emerged. What is certain is that the plane vanished not long into the five-and-a-half-hour flight, hours before the alarm was raised publicly. The most dangerous points for a flight are takeoff and landing. The airline said it had lost contact two hours after departure, with the plane at a cruising altitude. Whatever happened to MH370 happened quickly: no distress signals were emitted and there was no other indication of difficulties.

Other sources suggest the problems set in much earlier than the airline has indicated. Online flight data for the plane halts abruptly around 20 or 40 minutes into the flight. Vietnamese aviation officials say it was due to check in with them 40 minutes after takeoff, but never did so. Its last recorded position – according to co-ordinates from the Malaysian government – was 120 nautical miles north-east of Kota Bharu, close to where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea.

Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records in the region; its last deadly incident was in 1995, when 34 died in a domestic crash. Similarly, Boeing 777s have been praised by analysts for their impressive performance – unblemished by a fatality until last year’s crash at San Francisco airport, which claimed three lives.

The captain of the flight was Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian with 18,000 hours’ flying on his logbook after 23 years with the company. Despite that substantial record, flying seems to have been a passion as well as a career; a Zaharie Ahmad Shah posted on several forums for flight simulation enthusiasts, on one occasion mentioning his employer as Malaysia Airlines.

The first officer, Fariq Hamid, was half Shah’s age but had amassed 2,750 hours of experience since joining the airline in 2007. The 10 other members of the flight crew were also Malaysian.

But their passengers – the youngest aged two; the eldest, 79 – came from 14 nations. More than 150 were Chinese; they included artists and their families, returning from a calligraphy exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. Another 38 were Malaysian. There were several Indonesians, Australians, Indians, French and US passengers on board and others from other parts of Asia and Europe.

Two, however, remain mysterious. The passenger manifest includes a 37-year-old Italian man named Luigi Maraldi. But Italian authorities said his passport was stolen in Thailand some time ago; although it was replaced, he was not aboard the plane.

“Mr Maraldi is now in Phuket, but somebody who used his passport died on the flight. It is something we don’t understand,” said Dr Francesco Pensato, Italy’s honorary consul in Phuket, where Maraldi lives. He noted it was possible there might be another person with the same name and date of birth. Shortly afterwards, the Austrian press agency said its foreign ministry had announced that an Austrian national listed on the flight was also safe and well. His passport, too, had been stolen in Thailand.

It is too early to know what connection, if any, the two unknown passengers have to the flight’s disappearance. As the hours ticked by at Terminal 3 of Beijing airport, concerns grew among waiting friends and relatives. One told reporters that when she first asked about the non-arrival of the flight, an airline employee said it had never taken off.

By mid-morning, a taciturn official had scrawled a notice upon a whiteboard, telling family members that transport was provided to take them to a nearby hotel. “They want us to go to the hotel; it cannot be good,” a woman said into her mobile phone as she wept.

Relatives waited in a conference room for hours, without news, while rumours circulated. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told a press conference that the disappearance was “very disturbing”.

The cruellest speculation was a rumour that the plane had made a successful emergency landing at Nanning airport in southern China. In the hours of confusion, Malaysian Airlines and officials said they were looking into the story; it was simply untrue.

Malaysia Airlines, which was posting statements online, tweeted as complaints rose: “We understand everyone’s concern on MH370 pax & crew. We’re accelerating every effort with all relevant authorities to locate the aircraft.”

In Kuala Lumpur, officials asked relatives to bring their documents to the airport, ready to board evening flights to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the rescue operation was swinging into action. Tensions have run high in the area in recent years, thanks to a multi-party dispute over much of the South China Sea. This time neighbours were drawing together to co-operate. Singapore joined Vietnam and Malaysian teams in the search; China, too, dispatched search and rescue vessels, as did the Philippines. The US told Malaysia it would send extra support.

In the last stretch of light, Vietnamese officials said that its airforce had spotted one, perhaps two, oil slicks off its southern tip; each consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the fuel tanks from a crashed jetliner.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are missing on flight MH370,” said Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. “Today all Malaysians stand in solidarity with those on flight MH370 and their loved ones.”

Captions:

A couple leave a holding area at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for

family and friends of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane . Photograph: Lai Seng Sin/AP

LOAD-DATE: March 8, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

20 of 30 DOCUMENTS

The Observer (London)

March 9, 2014

Rumour, grief and mystery as flight MH370 goes missing: Relatives endured hours in holding areas at Kuala Lumpur International Airport and in Beijing as rumours swirled over the whereabouts of missing flight MH370 and stolen passports added to the mystery over the airliner’s fate

BYLINE: Tania Branigan, Beijing and Kate Hodal, Songkhla, Thailand

SECTION: OBSERVER HOME NEWS PAGES; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1224 words

It was 12.41am on Saturday – just six minutes later than scheduled – when flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur and climbed steadily into the clear skies, bound north-eastwards for China.

A few minutes earlier, the 227 passengers had been settling into their seats aboard the Boeing 777 as the 12-strong crew prepared for departure.

One young man made a last-minute call telling his sister he was on board and that he would see her at the airport in Beijing. A Malaysian couple were anticipated their holiday, a longed-for break after the anguish of a miscarriage. A Chinese father had his own vacation plans but was coming home from work one day early so that he had time to take his child to the dentist.

Flight data shows the plane rising steadily to a cruising altitude of 35,000ft as it flew across Malaysia and over the Gulf of Thailand towards Vietnam. But six hours later, as friends and relatives in Beijing airport waited to greet the passengers, a single line in red topped the arrivals board. Above the yellow rows of anticipated flights and blue rows of newly landed planes ran the words: MH370 -Kuala Lumpur – 6.30am – Delayed.

The most dangerous points for a flight are takeoff and landing. The airline reported that it had lost contact two hours after departure, with the plane at cruising altitude. Whatever happened to MH370 happened quickly: no distress signals were emitted and there was no other indication of difficulties.

Malaysia Airlines has one of the best safety records in the region; its last fatal incident was in 1995, when 34 people died in a domestic crash. Similarly, Boeing 777s have been praised by analysts for their impressive performance – unblemished by a single fatality until last year’s crash at San Francisco airport, which claimed three lives.

The captain of the flight was Zaharie Ahmad Shah, a 53-year-old Malaysian with 18,000 hours’ flying on his logbook after 23 years with the airline. Despite that substantial record, flying seems to have been a passion as well as a career; a Zaharie Ahmad Shah posted on several forums for flight simulation enthusiasts, on one occasion mentioning his employer as Malaysia Airlines.

The first officer, Fariq Hamid, was half Shah’s age but had amassed 2,750 hours of experience since joining the airline in 2007. The 10 other members of the flight crew were also Malaysian.

But their passengers – the youngest aged two, the eldest 79 – came from 14 nations. More than 150 were Chinese; they included artists and their families, returning from a calligraphy exhibition in Kuala Lumpur. Another 38 were Malaysian. There were several Indonesians, Australians, Indians, French and US passengers on board, as well as people from other parts of Asia and Europe.

Two of their number, however, remain mysterious. The passenger manifest lists a 37-year-old Italian man named Luigi Maraldi. But Italian authorities said his passport was stolen in Thailand some time ago; although it was replaced, he was not aboard the plane.

“Mr Maraldi is now in Phuket, but somebody who used his passport died on the flight. It is something we don’t understand,” said Dr Francesco Pensato, Italy’s honorary consul in Phuket, where Maraldi lives. He noted that it was possible there might be another person with the same name and date of birth. Shortly afterwards, the Austrian press agency said its foreign ministry had announced that an Austrian national listed on the flight was also safe and well. His passport had also been stolen in Thailand.

By mid-morning, a taciturn official had scrawled a notice on a whiteboard, telling family members that transport was provided to take them to a nearby hotel. “They want us to go to the hotel; it cannot be good,” a woman said into her mobile phone as she wept.

Relatives waited in a conference room for hours, without news, while rumours circulated. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told a press conference that the disappearance was “very disturbing”.

As the day wore on, and hope as well as patience was stretched thin, relatives complained that no one was helping them. “There’s no one from the company here; we can’t find a single person,” one man told Reuters. “They have just shut us in this room and told us to wait.”

Malaysia Airlines, which was posting regular statements online, tweeted as the volume of complaints rose: “We understand everyone’s concern on MH370 pax & crew. We’re accelerating every effort with all relevant authorities to locate the aircraft.”

In Kuala Lumpur, officials asked relatives to bring their documents to the airport, ready to board evening flights to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the rescue operation was swinging into action. Tensions have run high in the area in recent years, thanks to a multi-party dispute over much of the South China Sea. This time, however, neighbouring countries were drawing together to co-operate. Singapore joined Vietnamese and Malaysian teams in the search; China, too, dispatched search and rescue vessels, as did the Philippines. The US told Malaysia it would send extra support.

In the last hours of daylight, Vietnamese officials said that its air force had spotted one, perhaps two, oil slicks off the southern tip of the country, each between 10 and 15km long, and consistent with the kinds that would be produced by the fuel tanks from a crashed jetliner.

Malaysian officials said it was too soon to speculate on the fate of the craft. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are missing on flight MH370,” said Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. “Today all Malaysians stand in solidarity with those on flight MH370 and their loved ones.”

Captions:

A couple leave a holding area at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for family and friends of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines plane . Photograph: Lai Seng Sin/AP

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2014

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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

21 of 30 DOCUMENTS

Philippines News Agency

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Chinese rescuers on way to salvage mission

LENGTH: 321 words

DATELINE: SANYA

SANYA, March 9 — An emergency response team assembled by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) set out early Sunday from south China’s Sanya Port in Hainan Province to the sea area where it is thought the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 might have crashed.

Rescue vessel “South China Sea Rescue 101” is carrying 12 divers and salvagers, and will join another rescue vessel, “South China Sea Rescue 115,” at the rescue site.

The latter ship is scheduled to arrive at the site on Monday afternoon, while “South China Sea Rescue 101” will get there on Tuesday afternoon, according to the MOT.

Rescue work remains challenging as there is no exact location of the possible crash site and it will take about two days for the rescue ship to reach the water, said Zeng Ying, leader of the emergency team.

“But we will try our best,” added Zeng.

Sanya Port is about 700 sea miles from the possible site. Both of the rescue vessels have helipads which enable air search and rescue.

“South China Sea Rescue 101” is 109.7 meters long, with 6,200 tonnes of full load displacement.

Meanwhile, another rescue vessel, “Tai Shun Hai” of China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company arrived at the possible site at 9 a.m. Sunday and started searching, according to the MOT.

A Boeing 777-200 aircraft operated by Malaysia Airlines left Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12:41 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday and was expected to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m., after a 3,700-km trip.

Contact with the flight was lost along with its radar signal at 1:20 a.m. Beijing time on Saturday when it was flying over the Ho Chi Minh air traffic control area in Vietnam.

The flight was carrying 12 crew members and 227 passengers, including 154 Chinese. (PNA/Xinhua)

Published by HT Syndication with permission from Philippines News Agency. For any query with respect to this article or any other content requirement, please contact Editor at htsyndication@hindustantimes.com

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2014

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PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication

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Postmedia Breaking News

March 9, 2014 Sunday

Were terrorists behind Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 tragedy over South China Sea?

SECTION: WORLD

LENGTH: 1542 words

Air safety experts were investigating Saturday night whether an airliner that went missing in the Far East could have been the target of a terrorist attack.

Twenty-four hours after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the South China Sea, the only clue to the fate of its 239 passengers was the disclosure that at least two people on board were using stolen passports.

It raised fears that terrorists could have used the passports to board the craft, which went missing with no prior signals of trouble to air traffic controllers.

The plane was heading from 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 called it the country’s own “9/11.”

Last night, it was stressed that it was too early to say whether terrorism was a likely cause of the Malaysia airlines crash. But U.S. officials said they were 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 expert on aviation safety said it was “extraordinary” that the pilots of the aircraft did not have time to make a distress call. David Learmount, of the aviation magazine Flight Global, said that because the plane was cruising at about 35,000ft 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.

AP PhotoA worker wearing a mask helps the relative of a knife attack victim look through unclaimed luggage after the attack at the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming, in western China’s Yunnan province Sunday, March 2, 2014.

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

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 night closed in. But there was a surprise after Malaysia Airlines released the passenger list for Flight MH370 between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

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.

AP Photo/Krissada MuanhawangItalian Luigi Maraldi, left, whose stolen passport was used by a passenger boarding a missing Malaysian airliner, shows his passport as he reports himself to Thai police at Phuket police station in Phuket province, southern Thailand Sunday, March 9, 2014. Maraldi spoke at a police news conference where he showed his current passport, which replaced the stolen one, and expressed surprise that anyone could use his old one.

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

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

Oil slicks the guide as search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 continues( http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/07/malaysia-airlines-loses-contact-with-flight-mh370-carrying-239-people-from-kuala-lumpur-to-beijing/ )

At least two of the passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines Plane were using stolen EU passports( http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/08/at-least-two-of-the-passengers-on-the-missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-were-using-stolen-eu-passports/ )

Missing airplane may have done a U-turn before vanishing over South China Sea with 239 people on board( http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/03/09/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-may-have-turned-back-before-vanishing-over-south-china-sea-with-239-people-on-board/ )

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 U.S. 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.”

It was 1.20 a.m. on Saturday when Flight MH370 disappeared, 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 two Canadian passengers on board.

The pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, 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 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.

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

In Beijing, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, 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 relations away from a mass of Chinese and foreign journalists and to a conference room in a 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.

Flightradar24 / AFP PHOTO HANDOUTThis image courtesy of Flightradar24, shows the flight track of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 on March 7, 2014. Contact with Flight MH370 with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was lost somewhere between Malaysia’s east coast and southern Vietnam, relaying no distress signal or other signs of trouble. No trace had been found by nightfall Saturday but Vietnam said its search planes spotted oil slicks 15 to 20 kilometres (10-12 miles) long in the sea, in the first hint at the Boeing 777-200’s possible fate.

At 12.15 p.m., 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 Hercules planes to search overhead. A Vietnamese journalist on board a search and rescue helicopter said they had spotted oil slicks on the waters.

But Hishamuddin Hussein, the Malaysian transport minister, 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 one of the world’s safest planes.

AP Photo/Kyodo NewsThis photo taken in April, 2013, shows a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER at Narita Airport in Narita, near Tokyo. A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 carrying 239 people lost contact with air traffic control early Saturday morning, March 8, 2014 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and international aviation authorities still hadn’t located the jetliner several hours later.

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 people were killed.

Experts said 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.

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.” It added: “The sea mission will continue while the air mission will recommence at daylight.”

The families of the passengers in Beijing were furious, having been held throughout the day in the hotel with minimal information. As the day came to a close, the relations retired to rooms in the hotel, still without any news, their hopes fading.

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

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Xinhua General News Service

March 9, 2014 Sunday 11:32 PM EST

Malaysia Airlines to focus on caring for families of missing jet passengers: statement KUALA LUMPUR, March 10 (Xinhua) — Malaysia Airlines’ primary focus at this point is to care for the families of passengers of the missing MH370 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, the company said Monday morning in its 9th statement since the weekend disappearance of the passenger jet with 239 people aboard.

SECTION: DOMESTIC NEWS; Political

LENGTH: 239 words

This means providing them with timely information, travel facilities, accommodation, meals, medical and emotional support. The costs for these are all borne by Malaysia Airlines, said the statement released at 10 a.m. Monday morning, or 0200 GMT.

At least one caregiver is assigned to each family. These caregivers are well-trained staff and volunteers from Malaysia and other organizations, the company said in the statement.

Malaysia Airlines said that it has been actively cooperating with the search and rescue authorities coordinated by the Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia (DCA), but so far no positive finding has been established on the whereabouts of the aircraft.

DCA has confirmed that search and rescue teams from Australia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and the United States of America have come forward to assist. When the aircraft is located, a Response Coordination Center ( RCC) will be activated within the vicinity to support the needs of the families, the statement said. The Boeing 777-200 aircraft operated by Malaysia Airlines left Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing at 00:41 a.m. Saturday, and lost contact with Subang Air Traffic Control at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. The aircraft was carrying 12 crew members and 227 passengers including 154 Chinese. There has been no confirmed information about the fate of the plane yet.

LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2014

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ABC News Transcript

March 10, 2014 Monday

SHOW: WORLD NEWS WITH DIANE SAWYER 6:33 PM EST

THE INVESTIGATION;

WAS THE PLANE TARGETED?

ANCHORS: DIANE SAWYER

REPORTERS: PIERRE THOMAS (WASHINGTON, DC USA)

LENGTH: 324 words

CONTENT: FLIGHT MH370, TERRORISM, KING

GRAPHICS: SEARCH FOR CLUES

DIANE SAWYER (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) And as Bob said, we turn to two big possibilities. Was there terrorism or a problem on the plane, whether structural or pilot error?

GRAPHICS: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT 370

DIANE SAWYER (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) So we have two reports next, starting with ABC’s senior justice correspondent Pierre Thomas questioning his sources about terrorism. Pierre?

GRAPHICS: THE INVESTIGATION

PIERRE THOMAS (ABC NEWS)

(Voiceover) Tonight, the FBI is urgently trying to find out why those imposters, one posing as this Italian man, used stolen passports to get on Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

GRAPHICS: WAS THE PLANE TARGETED?

PIERRE THOMAS (ABC NEWS)

(Voiceover) Sources tell ABC News, the FBI is planning to compare fingerprints and photographs recovered at the airport to those of known terrorists. The fingerprints and stolen passports represent tantalizing clues. But investigators point out the stolen passports do not necessarily indicate terrorism, but are often used by drug smugglers and other criminals.

REPRESENTATIVE PETER KING (REP) (NEW YORK)

There’s at least 40,000 stolen passports every year. And it leaves us very vulnerable, not just to terrorist attacks, but also it facilitates other criminal activity.

PIERRE THOMAS (ABC NEWS)

(Voiceover) Police in Thailand are questioning the owners of these travel agencies, which sold the one-way tickets used by the imposters. ABC News has learned they were purchased at the same time by an Iranian man known as Mr. Ali. Some investigators believe that suggests the men coordinated their activities.

PIERRE THOMAS (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Another critical clue, the surveillance video of the suspects moving through the airport. FBI officials hope to get that, too, so they can study the luggage of the imposters and their demeanor. Diane?

DIANE SAWYER (ABC NEWS)

(Off-camera) Tracking it tonight. Thank you, Pierre.

LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Transcript

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The Advertiser (Australia)

March 10, 2014 Monday

Advertiser2 Edition

MALAYSIA AIRLINES TRAGEDY THE DISAPPEARANCE OF FLIGHT MH370

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 620 words

3.11am: Malaysia Airlines flight

MH370 takes off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

The Boeing 777-200 was carrying 239 people on board, including two infants, and 12 crew members. Six on board are reported to be Australian.

5.10am: Signal with the plane was lost and it disappeared from Department of Civil Aviation radar. The aircraft did not enter airspace controlled by China.

2.30pm: Vietnam confirms the plane went missing while in its airspace. Reports that the plane’s signal had been picked up are denied.

2.45pm: DFAT releases a statement confirming Australian consular officials are in “urgent and ongoing” contact with Malaysia Airlines and says the airline was making contact with the families of passengers.

2.55pm: Details about the plane’s pilot are released. He is named as 53-year-old Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah who had flown with the airline since 1981 and had total flying time of 18,365 hours.

3.01pm: China dispatched two maritime rescue ships to the South China Sea to help with the search and rescue of the missing aircraft.

3.20pm: It is confirmed that six Australians were on board the flight. Two couples from Queensland and one from NSW.

4.45pm: Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs Brett Mason said: “At present, there’s no clarity as to what has occurred. Can I just add that the families of the seven (sic) missing Australian passengers must be desperately concerned and the thoughts of the Australian Government, and I’m sure all Australians, go out to them at the moment.” 4.54pm: Australian Government releases a statement.

5pm: Vietnamese media claimed a navy official said the plane had crashed into the sea between Vietnam and Malaysia. The report was not confirmed and later denied.

5.10pm: Malaysia’s Transport Minister released this statement: “We have activated the military, our air force and our navy. I have discussed it with them earlier this morning. It has been activated.

Our national Security Council with coastguard is also on it and we are working very closely with our neighbours, especially with China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, where we have requested assistance.” 5.30pm: Malaysia’s Transport Minister held a press conference to deny that wreckage had been found. He confirmed that the location of the plane was unknown and said helicopters and ships were searching for it.

7.30pm: Malaysia Airlines releases another statement saying it was still unable to establish any contact.

8.30pm: The Australians on board the flight are named as Niajun Gu, 31, and Yuan Li, 33, from Sydney, and Cathy, 54, and Robert Lawton, 58, and Rodney, 59, and Mary Burrows, 54, from Queensland.

11.30pm: Two oil slicks were spotted by Vietnamese air force planes. A Vietnamese government statement said the slicks, spotted off the southern tip of Vietnam, were each between 9 and 15 kilometres long. It said the slicks were consistent with the kinds that would be left by fuel from a crashed airliner.

3.30am: It is revealed that an Italian and an Austrian feared to have died on the flight had their passports stolen and are safe. Italian Luigi Maraldi, 37, was on holiday in Thailand and immediately phoned home after seeing on the news that an Italian with his name was on the vanished airliner.

Sunday morning: Air search resumed at first light.

9.30am: The US announced it will send FBI agents to Malaysia along with other experts to help with the investigation. At least three US citizens, and an infant who could be a US citizen, were on board the plane.

1pm: Quotes are released from a pilot who was flying 30 minutes ahead of the missing plane. He said he had made contact before the flight vanished and said he heard no Mayday or distress call.*All times are South Australian.

LOAD-DATE: March 9, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: The Advertiser

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Agence France Presse — English

March 10, 2014 Monday 4:08 PM GMT

Q&A: What happened to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370?

LENGTH: 983 words

DATELINE: SINGAPORE, March 10 2014

Nearly three days after it disappeared while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, mystery still shrouds the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and the 239 people on board.

No debris from the Boeing 777-200ER has been recovered despite an international search involving the navies and air forces of several Asian nations as well as the United States.

Following are some questions surrounding the disappearance and the search, and answers by industry experts who spoke to AFP:

Q: Could the plane have disintegrated in mid-air?

The failure of the plane’s pilots to send a distress signal has given rise to speculation there was a sudden catastrophe — possibly caused by a mechanical failure or an explosion.

The lack of wreckage recovered so far also suggests a high-altitude disaster which spread debris across an area too wide to be easily detected.

“If it had been an impact at sea level of the whole craft, chances are more debris will be found immediately,” said Chris de Lavigne, an expert on aerospace and defence issues at business consultancy Frost & Sullivan.

Sudden, accidental structural failures are considered extremely unlikely in today’s passenger aircraft. This is especially so with the Boeing 777-200, which has one of the best safety records of any jet.

Authorities said the plane was at cruising altitude, 35,000 feet (11 kilometres) above sea level, when it last made contact.

“It’s the safest point in the flight,” de Lavigne said. “It’s an extremely safe aircraft with very, very few incidents in its history. This is just overly puzzling.”

Have there been other plane mysteries like this?

Air France flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009 while on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing 216 passengers and 12 crew. Debris was not found for days and it took years to locate the wreckage. Investigators eventually concluded that both technical and human error were to blame for the tragedy.

Adam Air flight 574 with 102 people on board disappeared from radar in January 2007, also at its cruise phase during a domestic flight in Indonesia. Debris was found nine days later after an extensive search and it took months to recover the plane’s black box.

Indonesian authorities said the pilots lost control after becoming preoccupied with malfunctioning navigational equipment.

Q: What are the theories on what happened to MH370?

“One possibility is a mid-air explosion,” said Gerry Soejatman, an Indonesia-based independent aviation analyst.

“The other is when there is a simple problem and then the crew tries to diagnose it, gets caught up in it and then they don’t realise what’s happening and the plane crashes. That’s what happened with the Air France case. At the moment, until we find anything, it has to be one of these two scenarios.”

De Lavigne said that at this stage, with so little information, all possibilities must be considered.

“It’s either a serious mechanical failure or something a little bit more sinister,” he said.

“It’s pretty surprising that there was no SOS call from the plane and it just disappeared. It would lead to the conclusion that something fast and drastic happened.”

Malaysian authorities have launched a terror investigation, but are refusing to rule anything out, including a possible hijacking.

Q: Why is it so hard to find evidence?

The region being searched, including the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, are busy shipping lanes with large amounts of flotsam that will complicate the search for any wreckage.

“When they see something, it is not blatantly obvious that it is a wing or tail. They have to go and examine what it is, it takes time,” Soejatman said.

Q: Why have authorities not picked up any signals?

Aircraft have an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) which is designed mainly for when the plane crashes on land and pilots are still trying to control it. In the event of a major crash, it may not work.

“Basically what this beacon does is simply say ‘I’ve been activated, find me!'” Soejatman said. “It is not fool-proof but it is the best thing that we have at the moment.”

The plane also has a “black box” consisting of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. If immersed in water they should activate a “pinger” that can draw investigators to the location. However, the sound cannot be heard over long distances.

“You need a ship equipped with a listening sonar to pick up the signal within the area,” Soejatman said, cautioning however that the shallow waters of the MH370 search site could create interference.

The missing Boeing 777-200ER was also equipped with ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System), a system which sends short messages to ground controllers — either automatically or manually depending on the airline.

“If Malaysia Airlines does have these messages, that would be very useful” to determine events before it lost contact, Soejatman said.

Malaysia Airlines’ chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told reporters at a press conference late Monday that the missing aircraft was equipped with ACARS, but did not provide any further details.

An airline representative later confirmed: “The aircraft has got the ACARS system which transmits automatically. There were no distress calls. No information was relayed.”

Q: Is security at Kuala Lumpur International Airport questionable?

Revelations that at least two people aboard the plane were using stolen European passports have heightened fears about a security breach.

Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the passport issue could indicate a “glaring flaw” in the airport’s immigration clearance.

He noted that Interpol maintains a database of stolen passports that should have raised alarms at the immigration counter.

“There are two categories of people who use these (stolen passports) — criminals and terrorists,” he said.

bjp-mba/rc/sls/jit/erf/lto

LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

27 of 30 DOCUMENTS

AlArabiya.net

March 10, 2014 Monday

Two Iranians used stolen passports in missing plane

LENGTH: 1093 words

The two men who boarded the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 with stolen passports were reportedly Iranian and their tickets were purchased by a man known only as Mr. Ali, Al Arabiya. Net reported.

A Thai travel agent has revealed that she booked the two men who traveled on stolen passports and that Mr. Ali payed for the tickets.

The two travelers were meant to fly out of Kuala Lumpur to Amsterdam via Bejing. One of them would then have taken a connecting flight to Copenhagen, and the other to Frankfurt.

Malaysian authorities said on Monday they identified one of the two men but did not release his name. Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the man is a non-Malaysian. Authorities were able to identify him using airport video surveillance, AFP reported.

“That’s all we can reveal,” he told AFP. “We are still ascertaining whether they (the two suspects using stolen passports) came in legally or illegally.”

The country’s civil aviation chief said the disappearance of the jetliner is an “unprecedented mystery” as a massive air and sea search now in its third day failed to find any trace of the plane or 239 people on board.

Dozens of ships and aircraft from 10 countries scoured the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, and questions mounted over possible security lapses and whether a bomb or hijacking attempt could have brought down the Boeing 777-200ER airliner flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

A senior police official told Reuters that people armed with explosives and carrying false identity papers had tried to fly out of Kuala Lumpur in the past, and that current investigations were focused on two passengers who were on the missing plane with stolen passports, according to Reuters.

“We have stopped men with false or stolen passports and carrying explosives, who have tried to get past KLIA (airport) security and get on to a plane,” he said. “There have been two or three incidents, but I will not divulge the details.”

Interpol confirmed on Sunday at least two passengers used stolen passports and said it was checking whether others aboard had used false identity documents.

However, they cautioned against a rush to judgement, citing ongoing investigations and widespread disregard of international databases on stolen passports.

The head of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said a hijacking attempt could not be ruled out as investigators explore all theories for the loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

“Unfortunately we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he told a news conference.

“As far as we are concerned, we have to find the aircraft. We have to find a piece of the aircraft if possible,” according to Reuters.

A senior source involved in preliminary investigations in Malaysia said the failure to find any debris indicated the plane may have broken up mid-flight, which could disperse wreckage over a very wide area.

“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.

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.

Still, the source said the closest parallels were the bomb explosions on board an Air India jetliner in 1985 when it was over the Atlantic Ocean and a Pan Am aircraft over the Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988. Both planes were cruising at around 31,000 feet at the time.

The United States extensively reviewed imagery taken by American spy satellites for evidence of a mid-air explosion, but saw none, a U.S. government source said. The source described US satellite coverage of the region as thorough.

Hopes for a breakthrough rose briefly when Vietnam scrambled helicopters to investigate a floating yellow object it was thought could have been a life raft. But the country’s Civil Aviation Authority said on its website that the object turned out to be a “moss-covered cap of a cable reel.”

Flight MH370 disappeared from radar screens in the early hours of Saturday, about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur, after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 ft (10,670 metres).

Underlining the lack of hard information about the plane’s fate, a U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft capable of covering 1,500 sq miles every hour was sweeping the northern part of the Strait of Malacca, on the other side of the Malaysian peninsula from where the last contact with MH370 was made.

No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said suggested a sudden catastrophic failure or explosion, but Malaysia’s air force chief said radar tracking showed it may have turned back from its scheduled route before it disappeared.

The Boeing 777 has one of the best safety records of any commercial aircraft in service. Its only previous fatal crash came on July 6 last year when Asiana Airlines flight 214 struck a seawall on landing in San Francisco, killing three people.

About two-thirds of the 227 passengers and 12 crew now presumed to have died aboard the plane were Chinese. The airline said other nationalities included 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.

The passenger manifest issued by the airline included the names of two Europeans – Austrian Christian Kozel and Italian Luigi Maraldi – who were not on the plane. Their passports had been stolen in Thailand during the past two years.

An Interpol spokeswoman said a check of all documents used to board the plane had revealed more “suspect passports”, which were being investigated.

“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.

A European diplomat in Kuala Lumpur cautioned that the Malaysian capital was an Asian hub for illegal migrants, many of whom used false documents and complex routes including via Beijing or West Africa to reach a final destination in Europe.

“You shouldn’t automatically think that the fact there were two people on the plane with false passports had anything to do with the disappearance of the plane,” the diplomat said.

“The more you know about the role of Kuala Lumpur in this chain, the more doubtful you are of the chances of a linkage.”

[With Reuters and AFP}

LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

JOURNAL-CODE: 174

Provided by Syndigate.info, an Albawaba.com company

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BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific – Political

Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring

March 10, 2014 Monday

Passenger with stolen passport not Malaysian, not from Xinjiang – official

LENGTH: 186 words

Text of report by Malaysian newspaper The Star website on 10 March

Kuala Lumpur: One of the two suspects who used stolen passports to board the missing MH370 flight has been identified.

Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said the man has been identified based on CCTV footage gathered from KLIA.

“I can confirm that he is not a Malaysian, but cannot divulge which country he is from yet,” said Inspector General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar at the Kajang police headquarters yesterday.

When asked if both of the men had immigration records of entering the country, Khalid said that they were in the midst of investigating the issue.

“The man is not from XinJiang China.

“We do not have verification of a Chinese militant group claiming responsibility for the missing plane,” he said adding that his personnel were investigating the case from all angles.

He added that they have yet to classify the missing plane as linked to terrorism.

“Let us investigate the matter thoroughly,” he said urging the public not to speculate further on the matter.

Source: The Star website, Kuala Lumpur, in English 10 Mar 14

LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Transcript

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The Christian Science Monitor

March 10, 2014 Monday

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Why is it taking so long to find?;

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Why has the search area been widened to include the west side of the Malaysia peninsula? In the hunt for Flight MH370 are there lessons to be learned from Air France Flight 447?

BYLINE: David Clark Scott Staff writer

SECTION: World

LENGTH: 857 words

When Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris went down over the Atlantic on June 1, 2009, resulting in 228 deaths, floating debris and a jet fuel slick were found within two days.

It’s been three days since Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared over the Gulf of Thailand.

Why can’t this aircraft be found?

Are there any lessons to be learned from the Air France flight?

In both cases, there was no “mayday” or distress call from pilots. The planes just “disappeared” from the sky.

In the case of AF447, bad weather was a factor. The Air France pilots didn’t radio for help because they didn’t realize, until it was too late, the severity of their problems. And as some pilots have noted, they don’t see a lack of communication as necessarily a sign of a terrorist bomb or the catastrophic failure of the aircraft. As one put it, the priorities are “aviate, navigate, and then communicate.”

All reports so far indicate that MH370 encountered no bad weather.

In the case of AF447, good clues quickly emerged as to the aircraft’s last location and what might have gone wrong. Brazilian air traffic control had recent contact with the Air France jet and the aircraft had sent a series of electronic messages over a three-minute period from an on-board monitoring system via the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS).

Four days after the crash of AF447, the airline released a transcript of the ACARS data, which indicated that in the last four minutes of the aircraft’s flight there were six failure reports and 19 warnings involving navigation, auto-flight, flight controls, and cabin air-conditioning. The ACARS data gave early clues to what went wrong. Ultimately, among the causes of the crash were pilot errors in response to faulty readings from air-speed sensors.

It’s not clear whether Malaysia Airways Boeing 777 was equipped with ACARS. Flightglobal reportedly asked Malaysia Airlines about signals from the 777’s ACARS, but the carrier declined to comment citing “pending investigations” by Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation.

If authorities had ACARS data telling them what went wrong with the Malaysia Airways flight, that might give them a better idea of where to look.

The last reported position of Flight MH370 – and last radar contact – was over an area of sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. The aircraft disappeared about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

As of late Monday, no debris had been found, and authorities said they were widening the search area. But a map of the widened search area is now raising new questions about how much Malaysian officials know about the missing aircraft’s last position.

The search area map now includes not only a wider area around the last publicly reported position of the aircraft, but also a new area in the Strait of Malacca, on the west side of Malaysia peninsula.

That raises new questions about how much authorities know – but aren’t telling the public.

Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters Sunday that military radar recordings had revealed the possibility that the aircraft had turned back from its scheduled flight path.

That would be highly unusual and under normal circumstances the pilot would have called Malaysia air traffic control to signal a change in the original flight path.

If the aircraft had turned back toward Malaysia, and flown over it, that might explain why the search area now includes both the Gulf of Thailand and the Strait of Malacca. It wouldn’t explain why an aircraft would overfly land, and possibly airports, without landing or radioing its position or its transponder giving away its position.

Normally, an aircraft transponder would enable air traffic controllers to locate its position. Assuming, of course, the transponder was still functioning and hadn’t been turned off.

This new search zone, and the lack of any debris found in the original search area, has commenters on global aviation sites speculating (in the absence of new facts) that Malaysia Airways Flight 370 was hijacked or taken on a suicide mission by one of its pilots.

“Looking on the other side of the peninsula is just odd, it means they [Malaysia authorities] saw the airplane go over the peninsula on radar, or there are parts of the peninsula that lack radar coverage,” writes Web500sjc, who’s listed on Airliners.net as a commercial flight instructor in the US.

As another commenter noted, if the engines had died on a Boeing 777 at 35,000 feet, the glide slope would indicate that it could be about 100 miles from the last known location. The Strait of Malacca is more than 250 miles away.

Of course, Malaysian officials may simply be as confounded as everyone else. They certainly sound that way:

“Unfortunately, we have not found anything that appears to be an object from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft … There are many theories that have been said in the media; many experts around the world have contributed their expertise and knowledge about what could happen, what happened … We are puzzled as well,” said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia’s civil aviation chief late Monday.

LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

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The New York Times Blogs

(The New York Times News Minute)

March 10, 2014 Monday

Times Minute | Searching for MH370

SECTION: MULTIMEDIA

LENGTH: 50 words

HIGHLIGHT: Also on the Minute, a generational power divide among Republicans, and the season finale of HBO’s “True Detective.”

In the Video

Search for Missing Jet Compounds the Mystery
‘True Detective’ Finds Philosophical Answers by Season’s End

Times Minute | Highlights From CPAC
Times Minute | California’s Drought
Times Minute | Ex-SAC Trader Convicted
Times Minute | Tray Tables Up
Times Minute | Compromising on the Environment

LOAD-DATE: March 10, 2014

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

DOCUMENT-TYPE: News

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Blog

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