Malaysia authorities: ‘Puzzled’ over fate of MH370
Summary
“We remain puzzled,” he told a news conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. “To confirm what happened to this ill-fated aircraft, we need to see parts of the aircraft. We have not secured any parts of the aircraft today.”
Malaysian investigators said on Monday that they have still not found anything that could be parts of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 as the search effort entered its third day.
Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the director-general of Malaysia`s Department of Civil Aviation, said hijacking had not been ruled out and all possibilities were being explored in the disappearance of the plane, which he described as an “unprecedented aviation mystery.”
“We remain puzzled,” he told a news conference in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. “To confirm what happened to this ill-fated aircraft, we need to see parts of the aircraft. We have not secured any parts of the aircraft today.”
The next update from the Malaysian authorities is due at 4 pm local time.
Flight MH370 disappeared early on Saturday, about an hour into its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, after climbing to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet.
International police agency Interpol confirmed on Sunday that two passengers on the flight had used stolen Austrian and Italian passports, raising fears about a possible terrorist attack. Separately, Malaysian authorities said on Monday that five passengers did not board the flight.
About 40 ships and roughly 34 aircraft from countries including the U.S., China, Australia and Singapore are taking part in the search effort for the plane carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
“I think fundamentally, they are searching in the wrong location,” Scott Hamilton, founder of Seattle-based aviation consultancy Leeham, told CNBC.
“If the plane has gone down anywhere along the intended flight path, I feel very confident we would have seen debris. The fact that you haven`t seen debris suggests to me the airplane crashed some place else, whether on land or some place else in the water,” he said.
Verifying reports
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, a search and rescue plane from Vietnam spotted fragments of the missing Malaysian plane including parts of the door. Other reports focused on oil slicks that may have come from the plane.
Reuters meanwhile reported a senior source as saying that officials investigating the disappearance of the jet suspect it may have disintegrated in mid-flight.
Reports regarding the missing plane have not been verified, the Malaysian authorities said.
Highlighting the lack of information about the plane`s fate, a U.S. Navy P-3 aircraft capable of covering 1,500 square miles every hour swept the northern part of the Strait of Malacca on Monday, on the other side of the Malay peninsula where the Malaysia Airlines flight last made contact, Reuters reported.
Fuad Sharuji, vice president of operations control at Malaysia Airlines, said the airline had received several pieces of information that may be related to the missing aircraft but have so far proved inconclusive.
“At the moment, we are as desperate as anyone else to find evidence at all,” he told CNBC Asia`s “Squawk Box.”
Mystery
No distress signal was sent from the lost plane, which experts said suggested a sudden failure or explosion. Malaysia`s air force have said radar tracking showed the plane may have turned back from its route before it went missing.
“Certainly something unexpected happened and it had to be catastrophic in nature in order to prevent the crew from communicating it,” said John Goglia, former member of the National Transportation Safety Board in the U.S. “That doesn`t rule out mechanical failure and it doesn`t rule out some sort of activity by person or persons unknown.”
Analysts were drawing parallels to Air France flight 447, which crashed in the Atlantic midway through a flight in 2009 without sending a distress signal.
“You can only draw on previous crashes and I draw on ones I have worked on and there are many similarities to Air France 447,” said Mary Schiavo, an aviation attorney at Motely Rice and a former inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“Except that there`s one glaring dissimilarity and that is that we`ve got no information from the plane. And working on Air France 447, we were aided by the fact that the airplane itself sent information back to base,” she said.
The Malaysia Airlines jet last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, about an hour after take-off.
Distraught
Distraught families of loved ones on the Malaysia Airlines flight meanwhile continued to await news.
“The last time I heard from my son, he called before the flight to say he would be home before 9 am,” Lu Zhanzhong, the father of one passenger told CNBC in Beijing.
Another upset relative said: “My grandparents were on the plane and they were nearly 80 years old, we don`t have much hope.”
Families voiced their frustration about the lack of information, while there was also some anger towards Chinese authorities and the absence of senior officials at the Beijing crisis center where friends and relatives awaited news of loved ones.
The annual session of the National People`s Congress, China`s top legislature, is taking place in Beijing. China has sent ships to help in the search effort.
“Malaysia Airlines` primary focus at this point in time is to care for the families. 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,” Malaysia Airlines said in a statement.
It has said people of 14 nationalities were among the 227 passengers, including at least 152 Chinese, 38 Malaysians, seven Indonesians, six Australians, five Indians, four French and three Americans.
In Kuala Lumpur, shares of Malaysian Airlines dived almost 18 percent to hit a record low as markets reacted to the news of the missing Boeing 777 aircraft.
“This is one of the safest planes ever built in the history of the business and of course the weather in the area was quite clear. So I think we can probably rule out some kind of technical failure of the equipment,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at Teal Group Corporation, a firm which offers aerospace and defense industry market analysis.
“I think we are looking at some kind of human event unfortunately. Definitely the two passengers traveling on false passports is a red flag…That`s undoubtedly where the focus of the investigation is going to turn as soon as we know more about the location of the crash site,” he said.
Boeing has said it is monitoring the situation and has sent officials to help in the investigation.
– Reuters contributed to this report
Copyright 2011 cnbc.com
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