Anwar Ibrahim’s conviction: A travesty of justice

– Jose Mario Dolor De Vega

The Malaysian Insider

March 10, 2014

I refer to “Judicial process and timing in Anwar’s case implies persecution not prosecution, says Bar Council”, The Malaysian Insider, March 9 concerning the latest conviction of the Malaysian opposition leader.

I overwhelmingly concur with the charge of the Malaysian Bar Council that
“the charge against Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim and the manner in which his appeal was handled fuels the perception that the opposition leader was persecuted and not prosecuted”
.

It is undeniable that because of the grave fear and extreme paranoia of the powers that be to the natural and charismatic power and genuine popularity of Anwar to the Malaysian public, they have used all the resources and arsenal of the government even to the point of compromising the integrity and independence of the courts.

Why? For the simple reason that they do not want Anwar to win in Kajang and subsequently be the Selangor menteri besar.

I am wondering, is it all worth it? Yes, they successfully blocked Anwar from contesting in the coming by-election. In fact, he is in danger once again of going back to prison, yet do they know the repercussions and consequences of what they did?

It is my ardent view and so held that even if PKR will put a dog or a rooster or a cat as its candidate for Kajang, that animal will win not only handsomely but with a landslide.

The deputy director of Asia division of Human Rights, Phil Robertson, said that Anwar’s trial “was all about knocking him out of politics and the government was prepared to do whatever it took to make that happen”.

In other words, they are delirious and desperate to stop Anwar at all cost!

The nefarious act of the powers that be, their continuing persecution of Anwar and his family that begun 15 years ago and all the evil methods that they’ve utilised just to silence the Opposition Leader, will return like a tsunami and will explode in their very faces one fine day!

They will be hurt tremendously by their foolishness! The people are angry and their collective wrath in time will erupt! Watch out!

I am equally in agreement with the contention of the Bar president, Christopher Leong specifically, when he said “that in the first place, the archaic provision under the Penal Code which criminalises sodomy and oral sex should never have been brought against Anwar”.

Leong unequivocally asserted that:

“The case has unnecessarily taken up judicial time and public funds, and has muddied the waters of our justice system.

“We also have grave misgivings with respect to the manner and timing in which the appeal was handled, especially over the way in which mitigation and sentencing proceeded… ”

On Friday, the Court of Appeals overturned the Kuala Lumpur High Court’s January 9, 2012 decision acquitting Anwar and declared him guilty of sodomy.

The decision of the court in my view is not only a travesty of justice but an extreme mockery of the whole administration of justice. This leads the wife of the Opposition Leader, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail to lament that:

“The proceedings had been conducted in the Palace of Justice, but inside there was only injustice.”

Judgment of Acquittal that is reviewable

Another thing that confused me since then, up to now is the stupid and idiotic principle of the Malaysian “legal” concept of reviewing the judgment of acquittal!

In many jurisdictions, once a person is acquitted he or she is immediately discharged and he or she will no longer be prosecuted (again) on the same charge, because it will violate the legal doctrine of Double Jeopardy which is a universally sanctioned and recognised legal principle.

Right or wrong, a judgment of acquittal is unappealable, irreversible and final, but in Malaysia, even if you are already acquitted, a higher court can still reverse the judgment of your acquittal. I believe that this principle or policy or practice is not only unfavourable to the accused but also mocks the very definition of due process.

So, in Malaysia for example, if an individual is acquitted, he or she cannot celebrate his or her vindication, because he or she must wait whether or not the prosecutor (which in truth and in fact must be called as the persecutor) will decide to appeal his or her judgment of acquittal!

This is preposterously unjust, hilarious to the maximum and stupid to the core, to say the least! Undeniably, this is the heights of absurdity and grave injustice! Shame!

Consider the following facts as reported by the Malaysian Insider:

“Court of Appeal registry had informed Anwar’s lawyers to reserve April 7 to 10 as the proposed hearing dates, to which the team agreed.

“However, these dates were abandoned and replaced with earlier dates.”

Question:

I am wondering why the court is acting like it is following a script or a schedule! Why the rush and the haste?

Leong further added that:

“If this is true, it raises the question as to why the Court of Appeal brought forward the appeal to be heard when the April dates had been agreed on.

“After all the defendant was facing a possible 20-year jail term and the April dates would have given the legal team more time to prepare… ”

The worst part of this fiasco in my view is the fact that the court had only taken approximately 90 minutes to consider before giving a unanimous decision in reversing the acquittal by the High Court and then when Anwar’s lead counsel, Karpal Singh and the defence team sought an adjournment until next week to allow them to prepare for mitigation the court refused it flatly and one justice even ordered Karpal to submit the mitigation in one hour’s time.

Of course, this farce led Anwar to react angrily. He stood up and shouted, “Do it now!”

Indeed, as Leong quipped: “these matters raise many questions, cause much speculation, and lend to the perception that justice may have been hijacked… ”

Commentaries:

Imagine the scenario the Opposition Leader’s acquittal two years ago was overturned, while his lead counsel, Karpal was also convicted of sedition a month ago.

Wow! I am wondering what kind of judicial system now is being practice in Malaysia and what kind of administration of justice are they following?

Anwar is convicted, Karpal is convicted; I am inclined to ask? It is Tian Chua’s turn to be convicted? Hullabaloo, it seems to be that the powers that be are convicting all the opposition leaders!

These convictions and outrageous trials clearly shows that the establishment is compose of power-hungry despots and they will not stop from wiping out the true people’s representatives!

Yes, these men are convicted; it is because they are men of conviction and principle.

This is a shame, a farce and grim day for all Malaysians!

Local and International condemnation of Anwar’s “conviction”

As already noted, the people of Malaysia are angry with the decision which they viewed as a miscarriage of justice.

Besides the Malaysian Bar, Lawyer’s for Liberty, Bersih and other non-government organisations have also come out to question and criticize the said decision.

The international community’s reaction is more stringent and categorical to the core, to say the least.

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) condemned Anwar’s conviction as a mockery of justice and they even directly “casts doubts on the independence and impartiality of the Malaysian judiciary and tarnishes the reputation of the country’s legal system”.

Even the United States voiced its concern through State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki when she stated that:

“The decision to prosecute Mr Anwar, and his trial, have raised a number of concerns regarding the rule of law and the independence of the court…

“In this high-profile case, it is critical for Malaysia to apply the rule of law fairly, transparently and apolitically in order to promote confidence in Malaysia’s democracy and judiciary.”

Warning to the powers that be and a call to the people

We all know and so as the whole knows that this is an extreme travesty of justice! If the establishment thought and that colluding stupid “court” thinks that by jailing the opposition leader they will silence him; they are dead wrong! Anwar is used to being in jail!

This latest judicial perversity and political prostitution of the powers that be will only empower further the rakyat not only to resist, but inevitably to revolt!

It is beyond the shadow of doubt that this is exactly the time for them, the people themselves to act and to rise.

They must show in a collective sense that the true power of the government lies on their hands. They must now launch and unleash the Malaysian people power in its full force!

HIDUP RAKYAT!

REFORMASI 2.0!

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!! – March 10, 2014.

* Jose Mario Dolor De Vega is a philosophy lecturer at the College of Arts and Letters, Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

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As leads fail to pan out, search for MH370 stretches from Sumatra to Hong Kong

The Malaysian Insider

March 11, 2014

Searchers are scouring more than 500,000 square nautical miles from the shores of Sumatra to Hong Kong to look for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 today as lead after lead failed to pan out over the past three days since the passenger jet vanished.

The flotilla of naval ships and some three dozen aircraft will comb both sea and the jungle-clad Malaysian-Thai border for the lost Boeing 777-200ER jet with 239 people onboard.

One thing the search and rescue team know is that the twin-engine aircraft is not in the air as it had only 7½ hours of fuel left when it vanished 40 minutes into the six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Saturday.

The teams trying to find the passenger jet, which has a 61m wingspan, will scour data for radar signatures while seeking to detect pinging from black boxes as the search for visible wreckage proves elusive, Bloomberg reported last night.

The Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) and Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said yesterday that none of the debris found were linked to the plane while an oil slick close the flight path proved to be bunker fuel, not jet fuel.

American experts said the first 72 hours was crucial for anyone to survive a plane crash but authorities are hopeful as nothing has turned up to suggest MH370 has met a watery end.

Search and rescue mission

“It is still a search and rescue mission,” director-general of Civil Aviation Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters at KLIA in Sepang last night.

“Unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we have not found anything that appears to be objects from the aircraft, let alone the aircraft,” he had said at an earlier briefing.

He announced the expanded search area after an international search and rescue mission failed to turn up any clues to what he called “an unprecedented aviation mystery”.

Authorities were sending ships to investigate a report of debris found south of Hong Kong, but it would likely be today before authorities know if there was anything to those reports, he said.

But aircraft lost in waters kilometres deep have been found by remote-controlled submarines, or experts have gathered enough clues to determine what happened, accident reports since 1970 show.

“The capability is there,” Ronald Schleede, a former investigator with the United States National Transportation Safety Board, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

“I think they’ll find it.”

In the case of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft, the waters beneath the area where it seems most likely to have gone down are about 50m deep, Bloomberg reported, versus 3,900m in the case of Air France flight 447, where wreckage was found and removed almost two years after the A330 jet disappeared.

Technology to the rescue

While a signal from the wide-body Boeing 777 transponder appears not to be working, local agencies would ordinarily have tracked the plane, said Paul Hayes, a safety expert at London-based Ascend, which logs air crashes.

“One assumes that Malaysian air-defence radars would be watching approaches to their airspace and they need to be asked to have a look,” he said.

Emergency beacons from the jetliner’s so-called black boxes would be another potential tool. Investigators have said they aren’t hearing any “pinging” from the flight data and voice recorders, though that may be because the search area was currently so ill-defined, Hayes said.

Honeywell International Inc makes the boxes for most Boeing 777 planes but company officials in Asia declined to comment on whether the Malaysian plane was carrying its equipment.

The recorders would normally begin sending signals if an aircraft broke up or hit the water, with the pinging lasting for 30 days until independent power supplies run out, Bloomberg reported.

Searchers can also use underwater microphones to help find the boxes, with Honeywell’s equipment emitting signals that can be heard from 4.5km deep, according to company reports in 2009 during the investigation of the Air France A330 disappearance over the Atlantic en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

The recorders are also designed to withstand 3,400 times the force of gravity on impact, making it highly likely the boxes will have withstood any breakup of the plane.

But at this point, it was impossible to know if the plane exploded at altitude or could have broken up on hitting water, though the struggle to locate surface wreckage was perplexing, said Hayes.

The long, wide search

The Malaysia Airlines aircraft took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am on Saturday with 227 passengers and 12 crew members to Beijing. It never arrived.

Since then, teams of searchers from Vietnam, China, Singapore, Indonesia, the United States, Thailand, Australia, the Philippines and New Zealand have been working alongside Malaysians to scour the Gulf of Thailand, part of the South China Sea that lies between several Southeast Asian countries.

The focus has now shifted to the Andaman Sea, near Thailand’s border, after radar data indicated the plane may have turned around to head back to Kuala Lumpur.

But the pilot apparently gave no signal to authorities that he was turning around, Malaysia Airlines chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya had said over the weekend.

Hours after it vanished, search planes flew from 7am to 7pm over the vast waters of the Gulf of Thailand while ships searched through the night. Nothing has turned up.

Stolen passports

CNN reported that it was perplexing enough that a jet seemed to have vanished without a trace. Adding to the mystery was the news that at least two people onboard were travelling on passports stolen from an Austrian and an Italian.

The two passengers who used the passports in question appear to have bought their tickets together.

Azharuddin said yesterday the authorities had reviewed security footage from the airport and the men who travelled on the stolen passports “are not Asian-looking men”.

The Financial Times reported that an Iranian had arranged for their tickets in the Thai resort town of Pattaya, bringing focus to Thailand as a hub for crime rings selling stolen and fake passports for drug runners and human trafficking syndicates.

Interpol tweeted on Sunday it was examining additional “suspect #passports”.

The passport mystery raised concerns about the possibility of terrorism, but officials cautioned that it was still too early to arrive at any conclusions. – March 11, 2014.

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Caucasian Names … Asian Faces … No, They’re Blacks! What’s Going On?

by Kee Thuan Chye

Yahoo! News

11.3.2014

The Government is being hit by criticism again, and this time not just from Malaysians but foreigners as well.

Its handling of the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370 bound for China from Kuala Lumpur is appalling. Instead of answering questions, it is provoking people to ask even more. Is it being cagey to cover up its own embarrassment for carelessly allowing the two men using stolen passports to board the plane? Or perhaps even more?

At a press conference held last Sunday, a New York Times reporter asked the Director-General of the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, what the Malaysian authorities saw on a CCTV recording of the two impostors and the D-G replied he couldn’t disclose this because of “security reasons”. Was it really just that?

As it turned out, we were told the next day that although the stolen passports carried Italian and Austrian names, the impostors looked Asian!

It even prompted Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi to hit out at immigration officers in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) for what appears a stupid blunder. “I am still puzzled how come (immigration officers) cannot think, an Italian and Austrian (passengers) but with Asian facial features,” he reportedly said.

Frankly, I was surprised he said that because it only made his own side, i.e. the Government, look awful.

After this disclosure, D-G Azharuddin was asked by the media for more information about the two impostors and whether their photographs would be released. Again, instead of being forthcoming, he hummed and hawed about the possibility of this jeopardising investigations and also that he would need to discuss it first with the investigating officers and relevant agencies.

Now his latest revelation (on Monday evening) is that the two men are black! He likens them to Mario Balotelli, the famous footballer who plays for A.C. Milan. He is a black Italian. Does this now justify why the immigration officers allowed the two men to pass through? Because when they looked at the names on the passports and then at the faces of the men, it occurred to them that there are Italians and Austrians who are black, and therefore they could answer to the names Luigi Maraldi and Christian Kozel? Were the officers fans of Balotelli?

But why has it taken Azharuddin so long to come out with this revelation? And now that he claims those two passengers are black, does it clear the air or does it make the mystery more of a mystery? Indeed, we are prompted to ask yet another question: Why then did Zahid say they had Asian faces?

Whatever it is, this still doesn’t detract from the other indication of the laxity of our airport security protocols. Interpol provides a database on stolen passports to all airports; if our immigration officers had checked that, they could have discovered that the two suspicious passengers were using those very passports. But they apparently didn’t check.

And it’s not acceptable for the Acting Transport Minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, to come out and attempt to justify this crucial oversight by saying, “Do you know how many passports are reported missing to Interpol? I was told it’s 40 million.” This reflects badly on his and his government’s attitude. It shows negligence, complacency and a lack of accountability.

Ya lor, there are so many anyway, so no need to check lor. Just don’t care lah. Let them through. Tak pa, everything will be all right. Is that how it goes? But according to Interpol, it takes only seconds to verify the validity of suspicious passports from the database.

And yet when Azaharuddin was asked whether there was a lapse in security, he reportedly refused to comment. He also declined to say whether security had since been heightened at KLIA. Instead, he said that KLIA’s security was already on par with international standards.

On par with international standards? Doesn’t that sound like what Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said last year about our education system being one of the best in the world, better than those of advanced countries? If our airport security were truly so, how could those two men have got through on stolen passports? Does that not constitute a lapse in security?

Are we seeing signs of self-denial akin to those we have often seen before in the Government’s reaction to some issue or incident in the past?

Meanwhile, what will happen to the passport officials responsible for letting the two men through? Azharuddin has reportedly promised that action will be taken against them. Well, let’s see if this is not something with the same value as a Government promise. Will we finally get to see a real example of janji ditepati (promise fulfilled)?

Perhaps when all this boils over, Azharuddin will himself consider taking the honourable Japanese option. He should know what I mean by that. Look East, my man! That’s what our leaders tell us.

After all, the way Malaysia has been handling the MH370 situation has allowed the world to see how competent we are and even chide us or laugh at us.

Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble has expressed “great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases”.

He added: “If Malaysia Airlines had checked the passport details of prospective passengers against Interpol’s database, then we would … know that stolen passports were not used by any of the passengers to board that flight.” Diplomatic as that may sound, it is no less a reproof.

The Sydney Morning Herald of Australia has run a story with the headline ‘Can’t immigration officials think?’ Doesn’t this make Malaysia a laughing stock?

The magical phrase “security reasons” that our officials have been invoking to avoid divulging information has tested China’s patience. And understandably so because most of the passengers on MH370 are China nationals.

According to a New York Times report, China’s foreign minister, Wang Li, has expressed disappointment at the way the Malaysian government is handling the crisis. He told his Malaysian counterpart, Anifah Aman, “The Chinese government is treating this very seriously, and the Chinese people are extremely anxious.”

He asked Malaysia to release the latest reports, and complained that Malaysia was often refusing to answer questions because of “security reasons”.

The Global Times newspaper of China has hit out at our government and MAS. It wrote in no uncertain terms: “The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities. The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough. There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities. If it is due to a deadly mechanical breakdown or pilot error, then Malaysia Airlines should take the blame. If this is a terrorist attack, then the security check at the Kuala Lumpur airport and on the flight is questionable.”

Whichever it is, we are damned.

In the light of all this, what does our trusty prime minister say? “We will review all security protocols and if needed, we will enhance them if necessary, because we still do not know the cause of the incident,” said Najib Razak. Is that all?

Well, I guess that’s enough for now. After all, tak pa lah, everything will be all right in the end.

Meanwhile, we’ll just have to keep hoping and praying that everyone on board MH370 is safe and well.

* Kee Thuan Chye is the author of the book The Elections Bullshit, now available in bookstores.

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Former NST editor laments ‘lax’ security at KLIA, blaming ‘third world mentality’

The Malaysian Insider

March 10, 2014

Has Malaysia paid a high price with its Third World standards and attitude towards security and asset management issues, was the question posed by a veteran newsman when commenting on the missing Malaysia Airlines Beijing-bound flight MH370.

Former New Straits Times editor-in-chief Datuk A. Kadir Jasin said that while waiting for news on the missing MH370, it cannot be denied that the control and security checks at Malaysian airports, including the Kuala Lumpur International Airport can be said to be “relaxed” compared with those in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand.

He noted that even the mammoth Dubai airport had tighter control and security checks.

“Have we paid a high price for the attitude and third-world mentality towards security and asset management?

“Is this the repercussion for the corruption, abuse of power and negligence which have reportedly happened repeatedly in KLIA?” he asked in his latest blog posting, adding his voice to the growing criticism over poor airport security at the country’s main gateway.

The criticism comes as it was revealed that two men with stolen passports had boarded the MAS flight MH370, which has been missing since Saturday morning.

He also asked if the plane’s disappearance was the ultimate disaster as a result of corruption, abuse of power and flaws that are reported to be constantly happening at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

“Just look at the repeated delays in the opening of budget terminal klia2.

“Everyone is relaxed, everything appears to be alright and nobody is owning up or taking responsibility. Its business as usual,” he said in relation to klia2.

Kadir, writing in his blog said the missing jetliner remains a big question mark – given its sophistication, good safety record and being in the hands of an experienced pilot – to the point that it cannot be traced.

He said that a Malaysia Airlines flight, which crash landed in Gelang Patah in Johor in 1977, had also been hijacked. A hundred people made up of passengers and crew died in the tragedy. – March 10, 2014.

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Legal limbo hampers probe into missing MAS jet

Siva Govindasamy, Alwyn Scott and Tim Hepher, Reuters

Malaysiakini

Mar 11, 2014

Investigators trying to solve the disappearance without trace of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner face an extremely rare challenge that could hinder their efforts: they lack the powers of a formal air safety investigation.

Four days after Flight MH370 went missing in mid-air with 239 people on board, no nation has stepped forward to initiate and lead an official probe, leaving a formal leadership vacuum that industry experts say appears unprecedented.

Malaysian officials are conducting their own informal investigations, in cooperation with other governments and foreign agencies, but they lack the legal powers that would come with a formal international probe under UN-sanctioned rules.

Those powers include the legal rights to take testimony from all witnesses and other parties, the right to have exclusive control over the release of information and the ability to centralise a vast amount of fragmentary evidence.

A senior official familiar with the preliminary Malaysian probe said Malaysian authorities could not yet convene a formal investigation due to a lack of evidence on where – namely, in which national jurisdiction – the Boeing 777-200ER jet crashed.

He said this was not hampering their work, that preliminary investigations had begun and that they were working with their neighbours, US officials and the jet’s maker Boeing.

The Malaysians have begun collecting information from neighbouring countries without any problems, including air-traffic control communications and radar data, he said. “There have been no issues in getting that information.”

But Southeast Asian waters are rife with territorial disputes, and any decision by Malaysia to unilaterally open a formal investigation under UN rules could be seen as a subtle assertion of sovereignty if the crash site turns out to be inside another country’s territory.

Without a formal investigative process being convened quickly under rules set out by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN agency, there is a risk that crucial early detective work could be hampered, and potential clues and records lost, air accident experts said.

Witnesses such as cargo handlers, mechanics and company officials might be reluctant to speak to Malaysian investigators who were operating outside a formal ICAO-sanctioned probe which could offer them some protection from law suits, experts said.

“The sole objective of an accident investigation is to prevent future accidents and not to apportion blame or liability,” said aviation lawyer Simon Phippard of international legal firm Bird & Bird.

“The international standards attempt to provide a degree of protection, for example from criminal prosecution, for individuals who give statements to the enquiry.”

The lack of a formal investigation also means Malaysia does not have exclusive control over the release of information or the ability to centralize fragmentary evidence such as wreckage parts and witness accounts, effectively relying for cooperation on other parties’ good-will, the experts said.

Under a formal investigation, a board is set up to designate parties to the investigation, including the plane maker, engine maker, unions, the airline and aviation safety regulatory agency of the country where the airline is based.

Each of these parties typically has a representative on each of the working groups.

“If they haven’t even decided what country is in charge of the investigation, then whatever is being done at this point is probably suffering from a severe lack of top-down control and coordination,” said Ted Ellett, an aviation lawyer at Hogan Lovells in Washington and a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief counsel.

US investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), FAA and Boeing arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Monday and, according to the official familiar with the Malaysian probe, have been talking with the Malaysian investigators.

An NTSB-led team, including the FAA and Boeing officials, is “standing by for when the aircraft is located and they are in touch with Malaysian officials and have offered our assistance and support for anything they may need,” NTSB spokeswoman Kelly Nantel said.

Boeing and FAA declined to comment.

Lacking formal powers

A lack of clarity over the investigation already appears to be a source of tension between Malaysia and China, which had up to 154 citizens on the Beijing-bound flight and is pushing for a significant role in the investigation. China’s Foreign Ministry urged Malaysia on Monday to step up its search efforts and start an investigation “as soon as possible and correctly”.

The deputy head of China’s civil aviation authority urged Malaysia to help a team of investigators it has said is ready to fly to the Southeast Asian nation to help with the probe.

Governments usually step forward quickly after an accident to claim leadership of the investigation, based primarily on the territory where the plane crashed.

That crucial information remains unknown in this case, as navies, military aircraft, coastguard and civilian ships from 10 nations scour a huge swathe of the sea from the South China Sea to the Strait of Malacca.

The official familiar with the preliminary Malaysian investigation said the Malaysian government could not launch a formal probe until the crash site had been found, and that it planned to work closely with US authorities and Australia.

“If we wait, we will lose precious time. We know that. That is why our guys have been gathering all of the records and data,” the official said.

Under UN rules, if a plane crashes in international waters, the country where the aircraft is registered – in this case, Malaysia – is in charge of the investigation.

So, for example, Air France quickly took control of the official investigation when its passenger jet crashed in waters far out into the Atlantic Ocean in 2009, even though no wreckage had yet been found.

Legal protection

Vietnam would have jurisdiction if the plane crashed in its territory, but it does not have the resources to lead an investigation and would likely have to get outside help, two regional aviation officials said.

Under rules governed by ICAO, setting up an investigation grants “unhampered access” to all relevant materials including wreckage and data and “unrestricted control” over the evidence and public communications.

“Parties don’t relish the idea of their officials or employees being queried or formally interviewed in these accident investigations,” Ellett said.

“If there’s any question about who has the authority to do it, the parties involved could say we’re not going to participate until we know who’s really in charge.”

With lawsuits potentially swirling, the investigation is meant to encourage witnesses to speak freely about the incident in the interests of airline safety.

Investigators will typically “freeze” documents and records, especially the maintenance records of the aircraft, and acquire radar images and air traffic control recordings. Groups specialising in operations, maintenance and sometimes human factors are set up to sift through each scrap of evidence.

“I can’t remember anything like this. Usually it is pretty clear who is responsible for the investigation and they get to work straight away,” said one European air safety official, who asked not to be identified.

“It is very important to get all the factual information as soon as possible.”

– Reuters

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Timeline: The search for MH370

Malaysiakini/Reuters

Mar 10, 2014

Here is a timeline of events in the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jetliner which vanished from radar screens on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing early on Saturday:

Saturday, March 8

– Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Flight departs at 12.21am (1421 GMT Friday), and is due to land in Beijing at 6.30am (2230 GMT) the same day. On board the Boeing 777-200ER are 227 passengers and 12 crew.

– Airline loses contact with plane between 1-2 hours after takeoff. No distress signal and weather is clear at the time.

– Missing plane last has contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian town of Kota Bharu.

– Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam says plane failed to check in as scheduled at 1721 GMT while flying over sea between Malaysia and Ho Chi Minh City.

– Flight tracking website flightaware.com shows plane flew northeast over Malaysia after takeoff and climbed to altitude of 35,000 feet. The flight vanished from website’s tracking records a minute later while still climbing.

– Malaysia search ships see no sign of wreckage in area where flights last made contact. Vietnam says giant oil slick and column of smoke seen in its waters.

– Two men, from Austria and Italy, listed among the passengers on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight, are not in fact on board. They say their passports were stolen.

Sunday, March 9

– Malaysia Airlines says it fears the worst and is working with US company that specialises in disaster recovery.

– Radar indicates flight may have turned back from its scheduled route to Beijing before disappearing.

– Malaysian rescue teams expand their search to the country’s western coast.

– Interpol says at least two passports recorded as lost or stolen in its database were used by passengers, and it is “examining additional suspect passports”.

– Malaysia’s state news agency quotes Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi (right) as saying the passengers using the stolen European passports were of Asian appearance.

– Investigators narrow focus of inquiries on possibility plane disintegrated in mid-flight, a source who is involved in the investigations in Malaysia tells Reuters.

Monday, March 10

– The United States review of American spy satellite imagery shows no signs of mid-air explosion.

– As dozens of ships and aircraft from seven countries scour the seas around Malaysia and south of Vietnam, questions mounted over whether a bomb or hijacking could have brought down the

Boeing airliner.

– Hijacking could not be ruled out, said the head of Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Authority, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, adding: the missing jet was an “unprecedented aviation mystery”.

– The disappearance of the Malaysian airliner could dent the national carrier’s plan to return to profit by end-2014, equity analysts said. Shares in MAS hit a record low on Monday. – Reuters

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After Anwar and Karpal, who’s next?

P Ramakrishnan

Free Malaysia Today

March 12, 2014

There seems to be a trend now to get rid of Pakatan leaders through the court process so that Umno can remain in power.

COMMENT

Malaysian courts have brought infamy to the justice system. The way justice has been dished out is nothing short of disgraceful and dishonourable.

What Karpal Singh did following the undemocratic overthrow of the duly elected Perak Pakatan Rakyat government was to express an opinion based on the Federal Constitution. The provision in the constitution provided for this opinion to be expressed.

At no time did Karpal Singh question His Royal Highness, the Sultan of Perak. At no time was Karpal offensive in expressing this opinion. No insult was meant.

The Sultan’s authority was not challenged. Karpal was not disrespectful to the royal personage.

The prevailing situation then needed a professional legal opinion on what had transpired. And Karpal Singh merely gave his professional legal opinion honestly, without fear or favour.

This is expected of an elected member of parliament and an experienced lawyer. Karpal was discharging his duty and responsibility by commenting on a matter of public interest.

It is a great national tragedy that the court is unable to differentiate an honest opinion from crass and gross verbal onslaught crudely expressed without any respect to the royal personage.

In Karpal Singh’s case, this is clearly a travesty of justice which is most unfair and undeserved.

We are told that the court had taken into consideration Karpal Singh’s health in not imposing a jail sentence, but that means nothing.

When Anwar Ibrahim’s lawyer pleaded for time to submit a report on his health before sentence was passed, it was summarily dismissed as of no consequence. The court was in a hurry to dispose of him.

The court must have been mindful of the fact that a jail sentence for Karpal Singh would have outraged the nation and there would have been an international outcry against this. So the court imposed a fine.

But the fact is, if the whole case against Karpal Singh was meant to knock him out as a member of parliament, that objective was achieved by this RM4,000 fine, which could disqualify him in the event he fails in his appeal.

There seems to be a trend now to get rid of Pakatan Rakyat leaders through the court process so that Umno can remain in power.

Who’s next?

Anwar was put away on Friday; it was Karpal’s turn on Tuesday. Who else next?

In the pending cases involving Pakatan leaders, this would be the outcome. One by one, the Pakatan leaders will be disabled and dispatched off through the predictably subservient judiciary.

The majority of Malaysians roundly condemn this atrocious targeting of opposition leaders. They will show their anger and displeasure when they hold the ballot papers in their hands. There is no doubt about it.

They understand the truth in the saying, “If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.”

When will Umno understand that the majority of Malaysians don’t condone these wrongs and don’t approve of their modus operandi?

Don’t they see this is contrary to all democratic principles which Malaysians aspire to nowadays?

P Ramakrishnan is Aliran executive committee member

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As more clues surface, MH370 mystery only deepens

By Justin Ong

The Malay Mail Online

March 12, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — With the clock ticking away on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, efforts to locate the inexplicably missing plane appear to be going farther astray with each new clue.

What was first thought to be a clear-cut search and rescue mission has now become a conundrum that has “puzzled” investigators with the inability of the nearly 100 air and sea vessels from 10 countries to locate a shred of evidence of the plane’s whereabouts.

At over 63 metres long and weighing nearly 140 tonnes unladen, the Boeing 777-200ER should have left debris all over miles of ocean, but four days after its disappearance, not a single piece of the aircraft or its contents has been recovered.

“The lack of debris is more perplexing than anything else … the floating pieces should be there, and they’re not,” Bill Waldock, a safety expert and crash investigator from the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told US daily Wall Street Journal

Shortly after midnight on Saturday, MH370 left Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing with 239 onboard. It ascended to its cruising altitude of over 10km without any reported incident, before ground radar tracking it to somewhere off the coast of Kelantan lost sight of the plane.

The pilots never made a distress call and the two emergency locator beacons (ELT) that would have been activated in the event the Boeing 777-200ER went down have remained eerily silent.

Malaysian aviation regulators have dubbed its disappearance an “unprecedented mystery”, and it appears every new purported discovery stretches search resources thinner and thinner.

Search was initially centred on a 50-mile radius in the so-called Checkpoint Igari between Malaysia and Vietnam, but reported debris sightings — all of which proved to be false alarms — have forced the search team to cast their net wider and wider; now, the search zone encompasses an area twice the size of the original.

Then the Malaysian military drops a bombshell: It says its radar observed MH370 heading back the way it came. In response, rescuers were forced to deploy another team to the Strait of Malacca, on the opposite side of the country.

While rescuers are grappling with the “where” in the mystery of MH370, investigators are also no closer to “how” it seemingly vanished from thin air.

Shortly after it disappeared, news surfaced that at least two individuals had boarded using passports stolen from an Italian and an Austrian. Coupled with the recent separatist unrest stemming from China’s Xinjiang region, signs began to point to possible foul play.

A Malaysian official then sent the rumour mill into overdrive when he expressed consternation over the failure of Immigration officers to flag men with “Asian features” using passports with European names.

Interpol, meanwhile, expressed “great concern” that the two stolen passports were used to board MH370.

But yesterday the theory was unravelled when Malaysian authorities and Interpol released the identities of the two men — Iranians Pouria Nour Mohammad Mehrdad and Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza — who now are believed to be asylum seekers or human trafficking subjects trying to smuggle themselves into Frankfurt, Germany and Copenhagen, Denmark.

“The more information we get, the more we are inclined to conclude it (MH370) was not a terrorist incident,” Ronald K. Noble, head of Interpol, told reporters in Paris yesterday.

More obscure theories about MH370 flying below radar to evade detection was also rubbished by an aviation specialist, who explained that the ubiquity of observer stations, both civilian and military, along the many borders where the plane disappeared precluded such an aerial feat.

“With so many borders around and countries around the sea, it is impossible to skip all the radars,” Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific aerospace and defence consultant Ravi Madavaram told The Malay Mail Online in an email interview.

As hours turn into days, aviation observers are increasingly drawing parallels between MH370 and the 2009 disaster of the Air France flight AF447 headed from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris. Like the MAS flight, AF447 disappeared without a single squawk of distress.

But more unnerving for families hoping for quick closure is the implication of how long the search may take: AF447 went down in June 2009 and the wreckage was not recovered until May 2011.

For now, the similarities being drawn will be of concern for rescuers racing against the clock to reach MH370 and any possible survivors nearly four days after it would have run out of fuel.

“The way that we in the Navy look at this is that for the first 72 hours, we consider it still a search mission for survivors,” Cmdr William Marks of the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet now aiding search efforts told the New York Times about how long such efforts should continue.

Marks explained that survivors have been known to “make it at least that long”.

“After that, it’s at the decision of the Malaysian government what they want us to do, and where they want us to be,” he added.

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Aviation experts: MH370 could go dark if someone ‘forced’ pilots

The Malay Mail

March 12, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — An airplane’s transponders can be manually disabled from the cockpit to render the aircraft invisible to civilian radar, aviation experts said as authorities broaden the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 further west.

After Malaysia’s military radar showed the Beijing-bound jumbo jet may have turned back west from where it came, the biggest question is how it completely vanished from sight of all tracking maps.

Mikael Robertsson, the co-founder of Flightradar24, a global communicating system for commercial aircraft, suggested that the transponder aboard MH370 may have been switched off by the pilots as the plane had not sent any signal to the ground receiver.

“I guess to me it sounds like they were turned off deliberately,” he was quoted saying by the New York Times (NYT) in a report yesterday.

Flightradar24 has been reported to operate a beacon in Kota Baru and Robertsson said its systems picks up all aircraft signals sent its way.

He noted that the last known contact with MH370’s transponder happened about the same time the pilots stopped communicating with ground controllers by radio, which supports his argument although he added that the transponder will stop transmitting if it is damaged.

Another expert added that it was also unlikely for one of the two pilots to manipulate the system without the knowledge of the other.

Former US Federal Aviation Administration safety inspector David Soucie told news service CNN in a broadcast interview that both pilots of MH370 were needed to man the controls while making the transition from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace, leaving neither one an opportunity to manipulate the system.

The author of “Why Planes Crash” also explained in the broadcast that that it was unlikely for all electrical systems aboard MH370 to have been wiped out completely.

“The chance that all the electrical system was out on that aircraft indicated a much more massive failure of some kind,” he told CNN in a broadcast interview yesterday.

He explained that all the electrical, charging, battery, communications systems, including its transponders, aboard a Boeing 777 was highly sophisticated and made to be “triple redundant”.

“So to think that all of that happened to make the aircraft invisible and to turn around and go the other direction, like you said, if this information is correct, it really stands a lot to reason to me that someone forced those pilots to take control of the aircraft and take it off course,” Soucie said.

He noted that investigators had expanded the search area for the missing plane to include the Straits of Malacca on the opposite side of the country from where it was headed, after Malaysia’s military radar showed the plane had turned back west.

“There’s a huge area where it could go. But if this information is correct, it’s very significant indeed and that would narrow the search down,” Socie told CNN.

“Without that, the chance of finding that aircraft, particularly if it didn’t have an inflight breakup and strewn material in a long direction, the chances of finding that aircraft are very, very slim,” he added.

Robertsson said the MH370’s fuel could last a great distance beyond its last reported position as it was bound for Beijing, a six-hour journey away from Kuala Lumpur.

“The aircraft could have continued another five or six hours out into the ocean. It could have gone to India,” he was quoted saying by NYT.

Responding to speculation of foul play, MAS said it has “no reason to suspect the experienced pilot” of MH370.

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Aviation experts rap M’sian authorities

Malaysiakini

11:11AM Mar 12, 2014

Malaysian authorities have come under fire from aviation experts for fuelling what is believed to be misleading speculations about flight MH370,
The Guardian
reported.

“What is so mysterious here is the complete absence of any information, which to me tends to support a complete catastrophic failure at altitude. If the aircraft had come under control, it would have been picked up by some radar, or some radio communication.

“The complete absence of any information suggests there was a big failure and it was very sudden,” said Steve Marks, a lawyer at the US firm Podhurst Orseck, which represented relatives of victims of a SilkAir crash in Asia in 1997 and the Air France crash in 2009 (right).

Marks said he was suspicious of information being released by Malaysia.

“In my opinion terrorism and pilot suicide are very remote and farfetched. It can’t be ruled out 100 percent, but it certainly shouldn’t be the focus.

“That kind of speculation without proof is very damaging and hurtful to the families,” he said, adding that the  most likely explanation for the plane’s disappearance was a sudden technical failure.

“It is not uncommon in plane crashes over water to have a very extended search.”

A Malaysian military source told Reuters that the Beijing-bound plane changed course and was detected over the Malacca Straits at a lower altitude, several hundred miles from where it lost contact with air traffic control. But this was later denied.

Commenting on the report, Marks said: “I want to know the basis for those claims. If they were visible observations they are not going to be reliable, especially at higher altitudes. For them to positively identify that the aircraft came over the Malacca Straits, the transponder would have to have been working.”

“If there was power to the transponder there would have been power to the radio. In that event why would the pilot not have communicated a problem? There are a lot of questions about that claim,” he told the British newspaper.

Authorities not sharing full info

The Guardian’s Flightglobal operations and safety editor David Learmount said Malaysian investigators should be more transparent.

“The Malaysia authorities are likely to have a lot more information than they are sharing with us,” he said.

“I think the Malaysian military knows a lot more about the position of the aircraft than has come out. But the military don’t appear to be in charge of the search.

“The problem is that the various government agencies are not communicating effectively,” Learmount said.

“If they have military tracking information, why are they still looking both sides of the peninsula?”

“It’s impossible to deduce what happened. If a pilot changes the course of an aircraft he usually tells air traffic control straightaway,” Learmount added.

Sharing his views on his blog, Learmount said there were many information sources that do not appear to have been effectively used in this case.

“As a result the families of the missing passengers and crew are being kept in the dark, and the search areas now extended to both sides of the peninsula have become so wide that it is clear that tracking information on the aircraft has not been used effectively.

“There is an all-pervasive sense of a chaotic lack of coordination between the Malaysian agencies which has hindered the establishment of an effective search strategy,” he added.

‘Handling it like a domestic issue’

Meanwhile, a Bloomberg report took the Malaysian government to task over the matter.

“They’re handling a huge global issue as if it was domestic politics,” Clive Kessler, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales told Bloomberg.

“With the cause of the disappearance still unknown you can understand the need for discretion and caution, but it’s being perceived in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region as a bid to hide the truth,” he added.

Kessler said Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s administration is sending the message that people should let the “government tell them what they need to know, when they need to know it, and not before.”

“That’s the way they’ve acted for generations and they are starting to find out it doesn’t work anymore,” he added.

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Failing to manage MH370 crisis exposes leadership limit

The Malay Mail Online

March 12, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — Malaysia, aspiring to become a developed nation in six years, is finding that more than 50 years under one coalition and tight control over information is a mismatch for handling a rapidly growing crisis followed across the world.

China is calling on Malaysia to be more transparent as Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak lets his cousin, Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein, be the face of the investigation into why a Malaysian Airline System Bhd. plane vanished on March 8. It was en route to Beijing with 239 people on board. Investigators from at least nine countries are trying to locate the jet.

Najib’s United Malays National Organisation leads the coalition governing the Southeast Asian nation. Only in recent years has it seen a move toward competitive elections, in some districts, that put a premium on public speaking. The government’s lack of a clear message, compounded by a series of false leads on the plane’s whereabouts and questions on coordination, risks undermining its image internationally.

“They’re handling a huge global issue as if it was domestic politics,” said Clive Kessler, Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, who has analysed the nation’s politics for half a century.

“With the cause of the disappearance still unknown you can understand the need for discretion and caution but it’s being perceived in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region as a bid to hide the truth.”

‘Doesn’t Work’

Najib’s administration is sending the message that people should let the “government tell them what they need to know, when they need to know it, and not before,” Kessler said.

“That’s the way they’ve acted for generations and they are starting to find out it doesn’t work anymore.”

Many newspapers and television networks in Malaysia are controlled by the government directly or indirectly. And Najib, 60, has yet to make good on a pledge to replace the nation’s Sedition Act with legislation that would protect free speech while preventing incitement of religious or ethnic hatred. The law, which dates back to 1948 when Malaysia was under British control, mandates jail sentences of at least three years for words deemed seditious, including those that “excite dissatisfaction” against the government.

Government-controlled Malaysian Airlines said in a statement yesterday it would “continue to be transparent in communicating with the general public via the media” on all matters affecting Flight 370.

Stolen Passports

Nations searching for the plane had little to go on with no distress calls, emergency-beacon signals, bad weather or other signs why an airliner would lose touch in one of the safest phases of flight. The discovery that two passengers boarded the missing flight using stolen passports raised concern about Malaysia’s immigration security practices.

“The Malaysian side cannot shirk its responsibilities,” the Global Times, a Chinese government-controlled newspaper, said in an editorial on March 10. “The initial response from Malaysia was not swift enough. There are loopholes in the work of Malaysia Airlines and security authorities.”

Faced with pressure from families of the 153 Chinese nationals who were on the flight, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang for a second day yesterday noted the lack of progress in finding the Boeing Co. 777-200.

“We once again request and urge the Malaysia side to enhance and strengthen rescue and searching efforts,” Qin told reporters in Beijing.

Chinese Trade

“The Chinese government is under quite a lot of pressure,” said Xu Liping, senior fellow at the National Institute of International Strategy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing. Ordinary people in China feel the investigation “has not been professional.”

Broader ties between Malaysia and China probably won’t suffer, he said, citing a phone conversation between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Najib on March 8 about the missing flight. “This channel has been unimpeded.”

China accounted for RM8.262 billion of Malaysia’s exports in January, the second-largest amount after Singapore. Malaysia approved US$920 million (RM3 billion) of foreign investment from China in the manufacturing sector in 2013, up from US$646 million the year earlier, according to the Malaysian Investment Development Authority.

The Malaysia market has not shown much reaction this week to the missing plane, with the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index down 0.2 per cent this week.

Cautious Personality

It is understandable that Najib doesn’t want a high profile in this situation given his cautious personality, according to Joseph Liow, associate dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“He’s not one who would go to the front of the camera and do lots of chest thumping and wave the flag and all that without being certain that there’s substantive” progress in the investigation, he said.

“Hisham is very different from his cousin. He’s someone who is not uncomfortable with the limelight,” he said, referring to Hishammuddin.

Hishammuddin, 52, has been the acting minister since a general election last May. He is unable to formally take the role given internal coalition rules on which party takes particular posts in cabinet.

Other Asian leaders have faced questions for not reacting to crises immediately. Philippine President Benigno Aquino was criticized for taking two days to visit victims of Super Typhoon Haiyan last year. So was China’s former premier, Wen Jiabao, when he took more than two weeks to visit the site of the country’s worst snow storms in 50 years in 2008.

Delegating Tasks

In the US, President George W. Bush was criticised for his handling of damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 after he remained on vacation as New Orleans flooded. He cut short the break by two days to survey the damage from the air, something he later said was a “huge mistake” since it made him look “detached and uncaring.”

Najib needs to assure Malaysians and the international community that his government is doing all it can, said Vishnu Varathan, an economist at Mizuho Bank Ltd. in Singapore.

“What could have been done was the prime minister delegating the transport secretary to locating the plane and assigning one other person in charge of investigating the security breach and another to handle international relations,” he said.

“It’s not easy to convey all that is happening in the background and the government needs to highlight these things.”

Airline Statement

Compounding the image that authorities in charge of the investigation are struggling to communicate effectively, Malaysian Airlines issued three versions of a press statement yesterday to correct several errors. One was a reference to an “expensive” rescue operation, which it meant to call “extensive.”

While he has remained silent on the details of the investigation, Najib postponed a trip to Mauritius, according to Malaysia’s state-run news service, Bernama. He also met the families of the crew from the missing plane at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, his press office said on Twitter on March 8.

“I assure you we are doing everything possible within our means,” Najib said on Twitter on March 9. “We thank you for your prayers, assistance and show of solidarity.”

Najib’s office directed queries on China’s concerns about the handling of the incident to authorities involved in the investigation.

‘Hisham’s Test’

Hishammuddin, who is also defense minister, was elected a vice president of UMNO in October, putting him in line to possibly succeed Najib. He is the nephew of Malaysia’s second prime minister, Najib’s father, Abdul Razak Hussein.

“It’s a lack of experience, anybody would be tested,” said Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at Singapore Management University. “This is Hisham’s test, and Najib’s government’s test.”

Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who led the country through the 1998 Asian financial crisis, “was a stronger leader,” said RSIS’s Liow.

Mahathir responded with capital controls when investors fled Asian economies during the crisis. He called billionaire financier George Soros a “moron” who was trying to destroy growth through speculative attacks on the currency. — Bloomberg

– See more at: http://www.themalaymailonline.com/malaysia/article/failing-to-manage-mh370-crisis-exposes-leadership-limit#sthash.JVu8Lx6x.dpuf

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Flight MH370 sent engine data before vanishing, says magazine

BY THE MALAYSIAN INSIDER

March 12, 2014

The missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER sent at least two bursts of technical data back to the airline before it disappeared, according to the New Scientist magazine.

The data may help investigators understand what went wrong with the aircraft, no trace of which has yet been found since it disappeared early Saturday morning, the magazine reported yesterday.

“Malaysia Airlines has not revealed if it has learned anything from ACARS data, or if it has any,” it said, referring to the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which automatically collates and files four technical reports during every flight so that engineers can spot problems.

These reports are sent via VHF radio or satellite at take-off, during the climb, at some point while cruising, and on landing.

The magazine noted that Malaysia Airlines’ 11th media statement had said, “All Malaysia Airlines aircraft are equipped with ACARS which transmits data automatically. Nevertheless, there were no distress calls and no information was relayed.”

“This would suggest no concrete data is to hand. But New Scientist understands that the maker of the missing Boeing 777’s Trent 800 engines, Rolls Royce, received two data reports from flight MH370 at its global engine health monitoring centre in Derby, UK, where it keeps real-time tabs on its engines in use.

“One was broadcast as MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, the other during the 777’s climb out towards Beijing,” it said.

It noted that as the engine data is filtered from a larger ACARS report covering all the plane’s critical flight systems and avionics, “it could mean the airline has some useful clues about the condition of the aircraft prior to its disappearance.”

“The plane does not appear to have been cruising long enough to issue any more ACARS reports,”the report said, referring to reports that said the plane vanished from radar at 1.30am local time, halfway between Malaysia and Vietnam over the Gulf of Thailand.

Under International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, such reports are normally kept secret until air investigators need them, it said.

The search for the missing aircraft continues for the fifth day today, covering the Andaman Sea, the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea.

There has been no trace of the plane since it disappeared, leading to it being dubbed as an “unprecedented aviation mystery”. – March 12, 2014.

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From patience to anger over MH370 search and rescue boo-boos

The Malaysian Insider

March 12, 2014

The mood among Malaysians now is moving from patience in the search for the 239 people aboard the missing flight MH370 to embarrassment and anger over discrepancies about passengers, offloaded baggage and concealed information about its last known position.

First, the discrepancy over whether five passengers did go onboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER bound for Beijing early Saturday but had their baggage offloaded when they did not turn up in the plane.

Up to Monday, the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) said it did happen and the bags were offloaded and passed security checks.

Yesterday, the Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said it did not happen. And Malaysia Airlines confirmed his version of events later in the evening.

Why didn’t Malaysia Airlines officials clarify the matter immediately when the director-general of Civil Aviation, Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman (pic), disclosed the matter earlier?

And now this – the revelation that the passenger jet could have actually turned back and flown to the Strait of Malacca where it then disappeared from radar.

Why did it take the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) so long to share that key information with their counterparts and the public? The initial information has got everyone searching in the wrong area.

Keeping the information close to their chests also had the public puzzled over the strange move to search in the Andaman Sea, the Strait of Malacca and the jungle-clad border areas between Malaysia and Thailand.

And, in fact, until yesterday, the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency (MMEA) confirmed that it was in the dark about a military radar tracking the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER (registration number 9M-MRO) overland to the busy shipway until it vanished at 2.40am last Saturday, more than an hour after it was last spotted on civilian radar.

Up to yesterday, Vietnam has also said it would increase the number of vessels in the intensive international search and rescue mission to find flight MH370.

The Chinese, too, have put in more resources and pointed 10 satellites to the area to look for the passenger jet, where more than two-thirds are Chinese nationals.

Is it a wonder that the Chinese are fuming and have asked Putrajaya to be more forthcoming on information about the missing MH370? Is it surprising that even the Vietnamese feel the same?

Then there is the curious case of the two Iranians who used stolen Italian and Austrian passports respectively to take a roundabout way via Beijing to their final destination in Europe.

Global police organisation Interpol said the duo used their own passports to leave Iran on February 28 for Malaysia before using the stolen passports to get aboard flight MH370 for the flight to Beijing on March 8.

Malaysian immigration authorities said both used the stolen passports to enter Malaysia on February 28. Yet, Interpol says they used their own Iranian passports.

So who is right? Did the passport switch happen in the plane?

Are we in for more discrepancies and concealed information getting their time of day soon? Have the government and all the relevant agencies told us everything they know?

Or do we have to wait and wonder for more than 24 hours the reasons for the expanded search at the Sumatra coast and the Andaman Sea because Azharuddin could only say cryptically: “There are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can’t.”

More importantly, will any of this delay make it even harder to find the 239 people onboard flight MH370 which has been missing for more than 100 hours now?

The whole world is watching Malaysia now because an aircraft with a wingspan of 61m does not fall off the sky or disappear into thin air just like that.

Relatives and friends of the 227 passengers and 12 crew members are also watching every step taken by the authorities. Any wrong move will diminish their confidence and trust that Malaysians are serious about the search and rescue mission.

As it is, the Malaysians will have a hard time explaining to their counterparts how they finally figured that flight MH370 turned back and was tracked until 2.40am Saturday – the same time Malaysia Airlines first said the jet disappeared.

Right now, 239 lives are at stake until they can be found. And time is running out unless the Malaysians get their act together and follow Beijing’s advice of telling all they know about flight MH370. – March 12, 2014.

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Malaysia Airlines mystery: US issued warnings over Boeing 777 ‘weak spot’

By David Millward, US Correspondent

The Telegraph

11 Mar 2014

Potential weakness in fuselage of Boeing 777s was identified by the Federal Aviation Administration last year

American transport officials warned of a potential weak spot in Boeing 777s which could lead to the “loss of structural integrity of the aircraft” four months before the disappearance of Malaysia airlines Flight MH370.

The Federal Aviation Administration in Washington drew up an Airworthiness Directive in November. It was triggered by reports of cracking in the fuselage skin underneath a Boeing aircraft’s satellite antennae.

In its directive the FAA, which is responsible for supervising the safety of American-made aircraft such as Boeing, told airlines to look out for corrosion under the fuselage skin.

This, the FAA said, could lead to a situation where the fuselage was compromised leading to possible rapid decompression as well as the plane breaking up.

“We received a report of cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin underneath the SATCOM antenna adapter,” the FAA warned. “During a maintenance planning data inspection, one operator reported a 16-inch crack under the 3-bay SATCOM antenna adapter plate in the crown skin of the fuselage on an aeroplane that was 14 years old with approximately 14,000 total flight cycles.

“Subsequent to this crack finding, the same operator inspected 42 other aeroplanes that are between 6 and 16 years old and found some local corrosion, but no other cracking. Cracking and corrosion in the fuselage skin, if not corrected, could lead to rapid decompression and loss of structural integrity of the aeroplane.”

The FAA directive in November called for additional checks to be incorporated into the routine maintenance schedule of the worldwide 777 Boeing fleet.

According to a Malaysia Airlines spokesman, the missing aircraft was serviced on February 23, with further maintenance scheduled for June 19.

The FAA stated that carrying out necessary inspection work would cost airlines $3.060 (£1,841).

With terrorism now appearing less likely as a cause of the Malaysian airlines disaster, which claimed 239 lives, focus has switched to problems with the aircraft or pilot error.

Despite both the Boeing 777 and Malaysia Airlines having good safety records, there have been other incidents which could prove relevant during the investigation of the disappearance.

In 2005, a 777 operated by Malaysia Airlines suffered problems with its autopilot system on a flight between Perth and Kuala Lumpur.

It led to the plane pitching up into a sudden 3,000-foot climb, almost causing the plane to stall.

The problem led to another airworthiness directive to correct a computer fault that had been found on 500 Boeing 777s.

Airworthiness directives are commonplace, similar to car recalls.

In the majority of cases, airlines are told to look for and correct the fault, if found, during maintenance.

On rare occasions an entire fleet will be grounded as happened in January last year when the FAA ordered Boeing to stop flying its flagship 787 Dreamliner after faults were discovered with the plane’s batteries.

While investigators from Malaysia and the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington search for the plane’s black box, they will also be able to glean vital information from a live-data stream broadcast during the flight.

Known as Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System, it is the equivalent of an “online black box”.

However James Healy-Pratt, an aviation lawyer who has represented bereaved families in other air accidents, warned they face a long wait before the original black boxes are recovered.

A Boeing spokesman said it was working with the NTSB as a technical adviser.

“The team is now in position in the region to offer whatever assistance is required.”

The company declined to comment further.

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Malaysia Airlines struggling with press

Grant Bradley

The New Zealand Herald

Mar 12, 2014

Malaysia Airlines faces an uphill public relations battle as it struggles to get on the front foot after the disappearance of MH370.

The airline’s response to the loss of its aircraft in the first three days was described as a mess, partly because of inexperience in dealing with Western journalists, said veteran aviation industry commentator Geoffrey Thomas.

Furious relatives among the 227 passengers reportedly complained they had been “treated worse than dogs”, at one point storming out of a hotel room where they had been taken in Beijing and starting a petition to demand more information.

Video

Media briefings by Malaysia Airlines had initially been fleeting, with spokesmen not taking questions.

Thomas, the editor-in-chief of AirlineRatings.com, said the lack of international experience among Malaysia Airlines’ public relations was a problem. “Their PR department has been missing in action. It’s when something like this happens you really need them,” he said.

The airline’s representatives were accustomed to dealing with a more compliant local media, not journalists from around the world who were more demanding.

“From what we can see the handling of this has been very badly confused, and the amount of contradictory information coming from them is extraordinary. It’s a mess.”

As is commonly the case after aircraft accidents, the airline’s website has reduced branding and has been stripped of promotional information, instead featuring press releases about the missing plane on its front page.

Initial releases, the first of which was posted five hours after the last contact with MH370, had basic details about the missing plane, the sequence of events and expressed regret. By the time of the sixth release 24 hours after last contact, the airline asked all Malaysians and people around the world to pray for those on board.

Yesterday it said the care and comfort of the passengers’ families was the utmost concern as the search continued. The airline said it was bringing relatives to Kuala Lumpur, although the travel arrangements are being kept confidential.

“This is to protect the privacy and wellbeing of the families during this difficult time and to respect their space,” it said.

“Malaysia Airlines’ primary focus at this point in time is to care for the families of the passengers and crew of MH370. 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.”

Thomas said Asiana Airlines’ handling of its crash at San Francisco last July, in which three people were killed, had been a debacle.

In that case the South Korean airline was also penalised US$500,000 for failing to help family members of passengers on the flight.

Loss-making Malaysia Airlines is struggling to match new budget operators, with margins eroded on popular routes.

In the first day of trading after the plane’s disappearance the company’s shares tumbled by 20 per cent before recovering to be down 4 per cent at the close of trading.

Disaster plan a starting point, says Fyfe

Former Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe says airlines have a checklist for handling disasters but can operate beyond it.

Fyfe won praise for his handling of the aftermath of an Air NZ plane crash at Perpignan in 2008 in which four airline staff died along with three others.

Former Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe. Former Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe.

While he could not comment on Malaysia Airlines’ handling of its missing plane, he said his airline had regular disaster drills which helped it cope with the crash in France.

“Air New Zealand did have a safety and emergency manual with a checklist and every three to six months we would run full scale emergency exercises,” he said. “We had a number of decisions to make [following the crash] but the framework was well established with people who were well trained and mobilised to support families.”

However, the decision to take a leading role and accompany relatives to the crash site wasn’t in the manual.

“It was quite a hard decision at the time – was I better off sitting in the control room directing all the activity or was it better to get to the accident site as soon as possible with family members because at that stage we weren’t sure whether everyone had lost their lives. That was a personal decision.”

Fyfe, who retired from Air NZ in 2012, said airlines had to be upfront and open with any information to the media and families otherwise people started filling the void with speculation.

Air NZ got first reports of the Perpignan crash shortly before 7am and had its first media conference at 8am.

“We made a decision that we wanted the media to be able to look confidently to us as the primary source of information and have that belief that as any new information came to light we would share it.”

Air NZ had between 300 and 400 “special assistance” team members trained in support techniques. In the case of a major incident the airline would allocate one of those team members to each family who had relatives involved to “give them confidence they have access to an open timely flow of information to them as anything emerges”.

The airline was able to deploy a special assistance team to the West Coast in 2010 after the Pike River coal mine blast.

Fyfe said after an aircraft accident airlines had to take practical steps including confirming the passenger manifest, securing aircraft maintenance information and any surveillance tapes.

Airlines would help other carriers with “best practice” information and they could also call in specialist crisis management firms.

– NZ Herald

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Missing MH370 may have strayed toward Andaman Sea, says air force

The Malaysian Insider

March 12, 2014

KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — Malaysia’s military has traced what could have been the jetliner missing for almost five days to an area near India’s Andaman and Nicobar islands, hundreds of miles from its last known position, the country’s air force chief said today.

After a series of at times conflicting statements, the latest revelation underlined that authorities remain uncertain even where to look for the plane, and no closer to explaining what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 or the 239 people on board.

The flight disappeared from civilian radar screens shortly before 1:30am on Saturday, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, as it flew northeast across the mouth of the Gulf of Thailand bound for Beijing. What happened next is one of the most baffling mysteries in modern aviation history.

Malaysian air force chief Tan Sri Rodzali Daud told a news conference that an aircraft was plotted on military radar at 2:15am, 320km northwest of Penang Island off Malaysia’s west coast.

It was not confirmed that the unidentified plane was Flight MH370, but Malaysia was sharing the data with international civilian and military authorities, Rodzali said.

“We are corroborating this,” he added. “We are still working with the experts, it’s an unidentified plot.”

Agonising wait

According to the data from Rodzali, if it was the missing plane it would have flown for 45 minutes and lost only about 1,500 metres in altitude.

There was no word on which direction it was headed and still no clue what happened aboard, prolonging the agonising wait for news for hundreds of relatives of those on board.

A position 200 miles northwest of Penang, in the northern part of the Straits of Malacca, would put the plane roughly south of the Thai holiday island of Phuket and east of the tip of Indonesia’s Aceh province and India’s Nicobar island chain.

Indonesia and Thailand have said their militaries detected no sign of any unusual aircraft in their airspace.

The position is hundreds of miles west of the point where the Boeing 777-200ER dropped off air traffic control screens. Malaysia has asked India for help in tracing the aircraft and New Delhi’s coastguard planes have joined the search.

Authorities, however, are continuing to search around both locations — at the last known position of the plane over the Gulf of Thailand and around the radar plotting site where the Malacca Strait meets the Andaman Sea.

In total, the search is over 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 sq km), an area the size of Hungary or Indiana.

Until now, there has been no confirmed sighting of the plane or any debris.

A dozen countries are helping Malaysia in the search, with 42 ships and 39 aircraft involved, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said.

“My heart reaches out to the families of the passengers and crew,” he said. “And I give you my assurance we will not reduce the tempo and that we will not spare any effort to find the missing plane.”

Confusing information

Malaysia has been criticised for giving conflicting and confusing information on the last known location of aircraft.

Earlier today, air force chief Daud had denied saying military radar had tracked MH370 flying over the Straits of Malacca.

Vietnam briefly scaled down search operations in waters off its southern coast, saying it was receiving scanty and confusing information from Malaysia over where the aircraft may have headed after it lost contact with air traffic control.

Hanoi later said the search — now in its fifth day — was back on in full force and was even extending on to land. China also said its air force would sweep areas in the sea, clarifying however that no searches over land were planned.

“As long as the plane is not found, we would continue doing our mission,” Vo Van Tuan, spokesman for Vietnam Search and Rescue Committee, told reporters in Hanoi.

“We should always keep up hope, there can be miracles, human can survive for a long time in difficult conditions. We must not give up hope that the missing people are still alive.”

Nothing ruled out

In the absence of any concrete evidence to explain the plane’s disappearance, authorities have not ruled out anything. Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking, sabotage or mechanical failure.

The airline said it was taking seriously a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing plane had invited her and a female companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.

“Malaysia Airlines has become aware of the allegations being made against First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid which we take very seriously. We are shocked by these allegations. We have not been able to confirm the validity of the pictures and videos of the alleged incident,” the airline said in a statement.

The woman, Jonti Roos, told Reuters that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by Fariq and the pilot between Phuket, Thailand, and Kuala Lumpur in December 2011.

“I thought that they were highly skilled and highly competent and since they were doing it that it was allowed,” Roos said. “I want to make it clear, at no point did I feel we were in danger or that they were acting irresponsibly.”

Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director of Malaysia Airlines, told Reuters there was no reason to blame the crew.

“We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any actions, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft,” he said.

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.

US planemaker Boeing has declined to comment beyond a brief statement saying it was monitoring the situation. — Reuters

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Panglima Udara nafi pesawat MH370 di Pulau Perak

Astro Awani

Mac 12, 2014 07:08 (MYT)

KUALA LUMPUR: Panglima Tentera Udara, Jeneral Tan Sri Rodzali Daud menafikan membuat pengesahan bahawa pangkalan udara Tentera Di-Raja Malaysia di Butterworth mengesan pesawat MH370 berada dekat kawasan Pulau Perak di Selat Melaka pada pukul 2.40 pagi Sabtu lepas sebelum isyaratnya hilang tanpa sebarang petunjuk.

Kata beliau, laporan akhbar Berita Harian pada Selasa yang memetik kenyataannya itu telah tersalah lapor.

“Saya minta laporan itu dibetulkan bagi mengelak sebarang salah tafsir yang seterusnya tentang apa yang jelas tidak tepat dan salah lapor,” katanya dalam satu kenyataan yang dikeluarkan lewat malam tadi.

Berita Harian melaporkan Rodzali berkata pada malam kejadian, pangkalan udara di Butterworth mengesan isyarat kedudukan pesawat berkenaan yang berpatah balik menghala ke laluan asalnya ke Kota Bharu, Kelantan sebelum dipercayai melalui ruang udara Pantai Timur dan Utara tanah air.

Menurut Rodzali beliau telah diminta mengesahkan kejadian itu oleh wartawan Berita Harian tetapi beliau tidak menjawab soalan tersebut.

“Sebaliknya apa yang saya katakan kepada wartawan itu ialah ‘sila rujuk kepada kenyataan yang saya buat pada 9 Mac 2014 semasa sidang media bersama Ketua Angkatan Tentera di Sama-sama Hotel, Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Kuala Lumpur,” katanya.

Pada sidang media itu, Rodzali berkata:

    “TUDM tidak menolak kemungkinan pesawat berpatah balik ke arah bertentangan sebelum pesawat itu hilang daripada radar dan ini menyebabkan operasi mencari dan menyelamat diperluaskan ke kawasan perairan Pulau Pinang.”

Sementara itu, agensi berita Reuters memetik sumber pegawai kanan tentera Malaysia yang telah diberi taklimat tentang siasatan yang mengesahkan pesawat itu “mengubah laluan selepas Kota Bharu dan mengambil altitud lebih rendah” dan “terbang ke Selat Melaka”.

Selat Melaka adalah perairan dunia yang paling sibuk yang menjadi laluan perkapalan utama antara timur dan barat.

Laporan media pada Selasa itu menunjukkan satu perkara: ada percanggahan antara kenyataan pertama Malaysia Airlines beberapa jam selepas pesawat Boeing 777-200 miliknya itu hilang.

Dalam kenyataan pertama pada 8 Mac itu, pesawat MH370 dikatakan dikesan kali terakhir di ruang udara Laut China Selatan dekat dengan kawasan perairan Vietnam.

Ia pada mulanya dilaporkan hilang pada pukul 2.40 pagi dan kemudian dibetulkan kepada pukul 1.30 pagi. Pesawat itu berlepas dari KLIA tidak sampai satu jam sebelumnya iaitu pada pukul 12.41 pagi dan dijadual tiba di Beijing pada 6.30 pagi.

Penduduk di sekitar lokasi laluan pesawat itu juga tampil mendakwa melihat ada pesawat terbang rendah di kawasan tersebut pada malam kejadian.

Usaha mencari dan menyelamat yang digerakkan sejak awal pagi Sabtu itu sehingga ini gagal menemui sebarang petunjuk. Penemuan beberapa petunjuk termasuk tompokan minyak di permukaan laut dan objek terapung kemudiannya tidak dapat dikaitkan dengan pesawat itu.

Operasi itu kemudian diperluaskan meliputi 100 batu nautika daripada titik terakhir pesawat itu dikesan. Ia kini meliputi perairan di sebelah barat dan timur Semenanjung Malaysia mencecah sampai ke Vietnam dan utara Sumatera. Operasi disertai oleh 22 buah pesawat udara dan 44 buah kapal dari lapan buah negara.

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The search for MH370: Key areas of confusion

The Malaysian Insider

March 12, 2014

False alarms, swirling rumours and contradictory statements have made the wait all the more agonising for the families of the 239 people on board the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

As the search dragged into its fifth day, here are some of the key areas of confusion:

Did the plane veer off course?

Malaysia’s air force chief on Sunday raised the possibility that the plane inexplicably turned back after taking off from Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing a day earlier.

RMAF’s Tan Sri General Rodzali Daud said the theory was “corroborated by civil radar”, without giving further details.

Late Tuesday, Rodzali was quoted by a local Bahasa Malaysia daily as saying the aircraft had been tracked hundreds of miles from its intended flight path, over the Strait of Malacca.

Vietnam had initially said the plane was approaching its airspace when it vanished from radar screens.

Rodzali has since insisted that he did not make the comments attributed to him by the Berita Harian newspaper, and the report was “inaccurate and incorrect”.

The search today swung even further up Malaysia’s west coast, towards the Andaman Sea, but officials gave no indication there was a firm reason to expand the search other than its failure to bear fruit so far.

Timings

Officials say contact with the aircraft was lost at around 1.30am Malaysian time, about an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Initially, Malaysia Airlines had put the last contact time at 2.40am.

The timing of 1.30 am would place the plane between Malaysia and Vietnam, where Vietnamese air traffic control and flight-tracking websites say the plane vanished off radar.

The later time of 2.40 am could suggest the plane had indeed veered radically off-course.

Despite the Malaysian air force chief’s denial of the Berita Harian report, that theory has gained credence given the expanded search area off Malaysia’s west coast.

Search areas

The search began in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand, on the approach to Vietnamese airspace.

Since then, Malaysian authorities have widened the search radius several times as well as shifting its focus, fuelling accusations of official bungling and a slow-footed response.

Authorities have not said whether they have any firm indications that the plane might be in the Andaman Sea.

Vietnam suspended its air search and scaled back a sea search today – awaiting clarification from Malaysia about the potential new direction for the search, which involves dozens of ships and aircraft from several countries including China and the United States.

Debris

There have been several false alarms linked to debris spotted in busy shipping lanes in Southeast Asian waters.

Large oil slicks found by Vietnamese planes on Saturday yielded no trace of the plane, nor did debris found Sunday near Tho Chu island, part of a small archipelago off southwest Vietnam.

Malaysia sent ships to investigate a sighting of a possible life raft on Monday, but a Vietnamese vessel that got there first found only flotsam.

Chemical analysis by Malaysia on Monday found no link between the oil slick found at sea and the missing plane.

Stolen passports

Revelations that two of the passengers were travelling on stolen EU passports fuelled early speculation that the plane was the victim of a terrorist attack.

Malaysia’s national news agency, Bernama on Sunday quoted Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi as saying the two suspect passengers had “Asian features”, without elaborating.

It emerged on Tuesday that the pair appear to be Iranian illegal immigrants who were seeking a new life in Europe.

Phones ringing

Chinese media have reported that relatives have heard ringing tones when trying to call their missing loved ones’ mobile phones.

The accounts of some passengers on Chinese messaging tool QQ show they had been online, other reports say, although the operator says that failure to shut the software down properly can give that impression.

Alfred Siew, a Singapore-based technology commentator, admits it is a “mystery”, but said the matter could be merely due to a network error affecting some phones.

Luggage

Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, head of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, said Monday that five passengers who had purchased tickets and checked baggage did not make the flight.

He told journalists their luggage was removed from the plane, as per standard procedure, when routine checks indicated the five passengers had not boarded before take-off.

But Malaysia’s chief of police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar insisted yesterday that all passengers who booked the flight did board in the end.

However, muddying things further, Malaysia Airlines issued a statement hours later saying there were indeed four passengers who had valid bookings but did not check-in for the flight.

Balotelli

Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Azharuddin, also drew scorn on social media by referring to black Italian footballer Mario Balotelli when discussing the two suspicious passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports.

When asked what the two suspects travelling on EU passports looked like, Azharuddin referenced Balotelli, who was born in Italy to Ghanaian parents and is an Italian international player, as an example of how one’s skin colour does not necessarily indicate nationality.

Malaysia’s transport ministry later issued a statement saying “no ill feelings” were meant by the comment, but the social media reaction underlined feelings of embarrassment with so much world attention focussed on the plane search. – AFP, March 12, 2014.

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