Four flew with false ID aboard Malaysia Airlines plane that vanished over South China Sea
Malaysian Airlines flight vanishes over South China Sea
(4 months later)
BEIJING — Emergency teams expanded their search early Sunday for a Malaysia Airlines flight that is presumed to have crashed in the Gulf of Thailand off Vietnam with 239 people aboard, including four that the Malaysian government said may have boarded with false documents, according to reports.
BEIJING — A Malaysian Airlines flight carrying 239 people, including four Americans, went missing over the South China Sea as it flew from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Saturday, prompting countries in the region to launch maritime search and rescue operations.
In a search operation involving at least a half-dozen nations that’s now lasted for more than a day, authorities have turned up no clear signs of wreckage, but Malaysia Airlines said it was “fearing the worst.”
The airline said it was still investigating the incident, and that there had been no distress signal from the plane before it lost contact with air traffic control.
The information about the suspect passengers has led to speculation about terrorism and added to the mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a red-eye carrying passengers from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing that vanished from radar after midnight Saturday (Friday afternoon EST).
Malaysian authorities denied a Vietnamese report that the plane had been found to have crashed into the sea. But with no sign of the plane 12 hours after it vanished, experts said the plane would not have carried enough fuel to still be flying.
Saturday European officials indicated two of the people on board were using passports that had been stolen in Thailand. On Sunday Malaysia’s transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said Malaysian intelligence officials were also checking the identities of two other passengers, according to The Associated Press.
Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysia air traffic control at 2:40 a.m. (18:40 GMT Friday), two hours after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, the airline said in a statement. It had been due to land at Beijing at 6:30 a.m. (22:30 GMT Friday). On board were 227 passengers and 12 crew, from 14 countries, including 152 Chinese citizens. The four Americans on board included one infant.
“All the four names are with me and have been given to our intelligence agencies,” Hishammuddin said, according to The AP. “We do not want to target only the four; we are investigating the whole passenger manifest. We are looking at all possibilities.”
“We are extremely worried,” China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing, according to state media. “The news is very disturbing. We hope everyone is safe.”
The mystery deepened on Sunday as Malaysia said the flight might have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.
Malaysia and Vietnam were conducting a joint search and rescue operation in the area, Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur, according to the Reuters news agency, while China has also sent two rescue ships to the area, state television reported.
“What we have done is actually look into the recording on the radar that we have and we realized there is a possibility the aircraft did make a turnback,” Rodzali Daud, the Royal Malaysian Air Force chief, told reporters at a news conference, according to the Reuters news agency.
The Boeing 777-200ER last had contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu, Jauhari said. The deputy chief of staff of Vietnam’s army, Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan said the plane’s radar signal had vanished “one minute before it entered Vietnam’s air traffic control,” in a statement carried by the Associated Press.
Malaysia said it had now expanded its search to the country’s western coast, the opposite side of the peninsular from the plane’s last sighting.
Col. Dou Kai of Vietnam’s Navy was reported by Chinese state media as having said the plane had crashed into the sea at the junction of the territorial waters of Malaysia and Vietnam. But the Navy Admiral Ngo Van Phat told Reuters only that the plane “could have” crashed in Malaysian waters, 153 miles off the coast of Vietnam’s Tho Cuo island.
The Vietnamese government said in a statement that two oil slicks spotted off the southern tip of the country were between six and nine miles long and were consistent with what would be left by fuel from a crashed jet, according to the Associated Press.
Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein said they were still awaiting information from the Vietnamese side.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday night in Washington that a team of investigators was en route from the United States to Asia to assist with the investigation.
“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 told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, according to Reuters. “We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side.”
As the search resumed Sunday, the airline posted a notice saying that it was “still unable to detect the whereabouts of the missing aircraft,” a Boeing 777-200.
In Beijing, relatives and friends of those on board were taken by minibus from the airport to a hotel in the city to wait for news.
The airline said it would establish a command center either in Kota Bharu, Malaysia, or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, as soon as the location of the aircraft is established. A 94-person caregiver team was providing emotional support for families, the airline said, and an additional team was on the way to Beijing.
“The airline hasn’t given us any new information, and didn’t tell us how they will handle this,” said one woman in her 30s, who said her father had been on board the plane, and whose voice was breaking.
There was no distress signal from the plane’s pilots, and crashes usually happen during takeoff or landing. That heightened concerns about reports that passengers listed in the airline’s manifest were not on the flight. There were no immediate reports on whether the suspect passengers were seated with one another.
Malaysia Airlines cited speculation that the plane might have landed at Nanming in Vietnam. But Boeing China President Marc Allen said on his Sina Weibo account that earlier reports that the plane had been found were “in error.”
The men, one from Italy and the other from Austria, had reported to authorities that their passports had been stolen in Thailand.
“The search continues. Our deepest concerns remain with the families of those on board,” he wrote.
“We are aware of the stolen passport issue and are carrying out an investigation,” Azharuddin told reporters.
At the hotel in Beijing, frustration mounted among relatives at the lack of news. “I haven’t even met a single person from Malaysia Airlines, just Chinese volunteers,” a 30-year old man who had come to meet his cousin told a throng of reporters. “I just need to confirm one thing: they told me it landed, does that mean a crash? Because I heard a crash from the news, and it drives me crazy.”
Asked earlier whether terrorism was suspected in the plane’s disappearance, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said authorities were “looking at all possibilities, but it is too early to make any conclusive remarks.”
A little later, a small group of relatives left the hotel.
U.S. officials said Sunday that the cause of the crash remained unclear but that intelligence agencies were examining the possibility of a connection to terrorism.
“Let us out, let us out,” one man shouted as he left. “We have been here for more than three hours. They are keeping 200 family members in a room and only giving us information released at 10:30 am. This is not fair. They didn’t even give us the full list of passengers on the plane, so we are not staying any more.”
There were no reports of bad weather in the area.
If the plane is found to have crashed, it would mark the second fatal accident involving a 777 since it was introduced into service in 1995. In July 2013, an Asiana Airlines Boeing 777-200ER crash-landed in San Francisco, killing three passengers and injuring more than 180.
The plane carried passengers from 14 countries, including three Americans, according to the manifest posted on the airline’s Web site. They were identified as Philip Wood, 51, an IBM employee working in Malaysia; Nicole Meng, 4; and Yan Zhang, 2.
The United States could have a role in any investigation as the plane was built there, according to Kelly Nantel , a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. “We won’t know who would lead the investigation until the location is identified,” she told the Associated Press.
In a brief interview, Wood’s mother, Sondra Wood of Keller, Tex., said she had received a call from the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia. Her son had just been in Texas visiting her and her husband, she said, and she knew he would be on the Malaysia Airlines flight.
Boeing said it was assembling a team to help with the investigation. “It’s too early to make any speculation on the causes of the accident,” said China spokesman Wang Yukui.
“He was a wonderful person and very intelligent,” she said. “I could talk forever about him. He’s my son, and any mother would be proud of their son.”
Malaysia Airlines said its focus was to work with emergency responders and authorities. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members,” it said in a statement.
Aside from his work at IBM, Sondra Wood said, her son loved building furniture. “He was very artistic,” she said. Philip Wood has two sons, ages 20 and 24, his mother said.
Liu Liu, Gu Jinglu and Xu Jing contributed to this report.
Austin-based Freescale Semiconductor confirmed Saturday that 20 of its employees were aboard the plane. Twelve are from Malaysia and eight are from China, the firm’s president and chief executive, Gregg Lowe, said in a statement.
“At present, we are solely focused on our employees and their families,” Lowe said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this tragic event.”
Vessels and planes from Southeast Asia have been scouring the waters in the part of the ocean where the oil slicks were spotted, and Razak said “the search-and-rescue operations will continue as long as necessary.”
The Philippines and Singapore sent planes to help in the search, while vessels were dispatched from the Philippines and China, news agencies reported. Vietnamese fishermen were also put on alert.
U.S. 7th Fleet officials said in a statement that the USS Pinckney, a guided-missile destroyer, and a P-3C Orion aircraft were being sent to help in the search.
Meanwhile, there were questions about the identities of two passengers after evidence emerged that they could have been traveling with stolen passports.
Italian news media had initially listed Luigi Maraldi, 37, among the passengers, but he reportedly phoned his parents Saturday to say he was safe in Thailand. His passport had been stolen there last year, the reports said, and he had been issued new documents.
“One hypothesis, therefore, is that he was listed because someone boarded the plane using his stolen passport,” the Corriere della Serra newspaper reported.
Similarly, Austrian news media reported that an Austrian citizen had been listed as among the passengers but had been found safe. His passport was stolen in Thailand two years ago, the Austrian Foreign Ministry said.
Flight MH370 lost contact with Malaysian air traffic control at 1:20 a.m. Saturday (12:20 p.m. EST Friday), less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur and as it was completing its ascent. It vanished on the border of the territorial waters of Malaysia and Vietnam, where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea. It had been due to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. Saturday (5:30 p.m. EST Friday).
In Beijing, relatives and friends of those on board were taken by minibus from the airport to a hotel in the city to wait for news. Grief was mixed with anger at the lack of information, with Malaysia Airlines insisting it was still investigating the incident. Earlier, it had cited speculation that the plane might have landed in Vietnam, but that was later denied.
The airline said it had sent a team from Malaysia to the hotel in Beijing to look after the relatives. It said it would pay for immediate family members of passengers to gather at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
The plane’s sudden disappearance without a call for help brought back memories of an Air France flight that disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, 2009.
While some wreckage and bodies were found in subsequent weeks, it took nearly two years for the main wreckage and the plane’s flight recorders to be recovered. The final report said that pilot errors in responding to technical problems led to the crash.
“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,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters near the Kuala Lumpur airport, according to Reuters. “We are looking for accurate information from the Malaysian military. They are waiting for information from the Vietnamese side.”
The South China Sea is a tense region of competing territorial claims among a number of countries, but the plane disappeared well away from the disputed waters, and countries in the region appeared to put aside their differences in their search for the plane.
“In times of emergencies like this, we have to show unity of efforts that transcends boundaries and issues,” said Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda, commander of the Philippine military’s Western Command, according to the Associated Press.
Barnes reported from Washington. Harlan reported from Seoul. Liu Liu, Gu Jinglu and Xu Jing in Beijing and Karen DeYoung and Ian R. Shapira in Washington contributed to this report.
