Tag Archives: Boeing 777

Five years on, MH370 families band together to seek closure

FILE PHOTO: A woman leaves a message of support and hope for the passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 in central Kuala Lumpur March 16, 2014. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Rozanna Latiff

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Five years ago, their loved ones boarded a plane and vanished.

The group of Malaysians meet about once a month – usually at a coffee shop or a home in Kuala Lumpur – to support each other and try to keep missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in the public eye.

Their relatives were among the 239 people onboard the Boeing 777 when it vanished enroute from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 and became the world’s greatest aviation mystery.

Scraps of aircraft debris have washed up on the east African coastline, but two underwater searches in the southern Indian Ocean proved fruitless, leaving few clues as to what happened.

Starved for information and struggling to resume their lives, the families have come to lean on each other for support, said Jacquita Gonzales, whose husband Patrick Gomes was MH370’s inflight supervisor.

“It goes beyond a group waiting for answers,” said Gonzales, a 57-year-old kindergarten teacher who often hosts the group at her home on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

“It has become a family as well, an extended family,” she told Reuters.

For five years the group has campaigned to keep public attention on MH370 and help each other cope with their grief and try to live normal lives by returning to work, raising children and, in Gonzales’ case, battle illness.

She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016 for the second time in her life, but it has since gone into remission.

“When I first had cancer, I had my husband for support,” she said.

“This second time, no. But I had a lot of family members around, my friends, my children, and now my MH370 families… so that kept us going.”

In her living room hangs a painting of a blue-and-yellow field – a gift from Calvin Shim, another MH370 next-of-kin, to help her stay calm while recovering from surgery.

Shim, a father of two, said the group helped him to adjust to life as a single parent. His wife, Christine Tan, was a member of the MH370 crew.

“The other families know exactly how each of us feel,” he said during a meeting at Gonzales’ home.

“Emotionally, that’s been a good support and help to us, especially since the plane has not been found,” he added.

“WE HAVE NOT SAID GOODBYE”

In early 2017, Malaysia, China and Australia called off a two-year, $144 million search in the southern Indian Ocean after finding no trace of the plane.

A second three-month search north of the original target area, led by U.S. exploration firm Ocean Infinity, ended similarly in May 2018.

A 495-page report published in July said the Boeing 777 was likely deliberately taken off course but investigators were unable to determine who was responsible.

The Malaysian government has said it would consider resuming a search if new evidence came to light.

Not knowing what happened in the aircraft’s final moments has made closure “impossible”, Gonzales said.

“When friends tell me that their spouses have passed away, I get very jealous because they have closure,” she said.

“They’ve said goodbye. But for us, we’ve not said goodbye at all.”

(Reporting by Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Darren Schuettler)

United Passenger jet lands in Hawaii after engine covering rips apart

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Peter Lemme/via REUTERS

(Reuters) – Passengers aboard a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Honolulu had a scary trip over the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, after the casing around one of the engines ripped apart, officials said.

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

The plane with engine problems is seen on the tarmac in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this picture obtained from social media. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

United flight 1175, with more than 370 people on board including crew members, landed without incident at Honolulu International Airport, United Airlines Inc spokesman Charles Hobart said in an email.

Passengers brace during the plane landing in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this still image taken from a social media video. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

Passengers brace during the plane landing in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S., February 13, 2018 in this still image taken from a social media video. Mariah Amerine/via REUTERS

“Scariest flight of my life,” Maria Falaschi, a marketing consultant from San Francisco, wrote on Twitter. She posted photos on the social media website of the aircraft’s engine with its covering, also known as the cowling, missing.

Hobart said he could not immediately say whether or not the engine on the Boeing 777 continued to function after the cowling came off.

The pilots of United flight 1175 declared an emergency due to a vibration in the right engine before the plane landed safely, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman Ian Gregor said in an email. The FAA will investigate the incident.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles)

Underwater search for missing Malaysian flight ends without a trace

Handwritten notes on how a crew member should report the sighting of debris in the southern Indian Ocean is pictured on a window aboard a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3K2 Orion aircraft searching for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370

By Tom Westbrook and Jonathan Barrett

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The deep-sea search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 ended on Tuesday without any trace being found of the plane that vanished in 2014 with 239 people on board, the three countries involved in the search said.

The location of Flight MH370 has become one of the world’s greatest aviation mysteries since the plane, a Boeing 777, disappeared en route to Beijing from the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

“Despite every effort using the best science available … the search has not been able to locate the aircraft,” Malaysian, Australian and Chinese authorities said in a statement.

“The decision to suspend the underwater search has not been taken lightly nor without sadness.”

The last search vessel left the area on Tuesday, the three countries said, after scouring the 120,000-sq-km (46,000-sq-mile) area of the Indian Ocean sea floor that has been the focus of the almost-three-year search.

Malaysia, Australia and China agreed in July to suspend the $145 million search if the plane was not found, or if new evidence that might offer a clue as to its whereabouts was not uncovered, once that area had been checked.

Australia last month dismissed an investigators’ recommendation to shift the search further north, saying that no new evidence had emerged to support that.

Since the crash, there have been competing theories over whether one, both or no pilots were in control, whether it was hijacked – or whether all aboard perished and the plane was not controlled at all when it hit the water.

Adding to the mystery, investigators believe someone may have deliberately switched off the plane’s transponder before diverting it thousands of miles out over the Indian Ocean.

A next-of-kin support group called Voice 370 said in a statement investigators could not leave the matter unsolved.

“In our view, extending the search to the new area defined by the experts is an inescapable duty owed to the flying public in the interest of aviation safety,” Voice 370 said.

Most of the passengers were from China.

TRACES

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, asked about the end of the search, said China placed great importance on the search and had actively participated in it alongside Australia and Malaysia. The spokeswoman did not elaborate.

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) said the hunt had been “thorough and comprehensive” and it “stands guided by the decision of the three governments to suspend the search”.

“MAS remains hopeful that in the near future, new and significant information will come to light and the aircraft would eventually be located,” it said.

Boeing said it accepted the conclusion of the authorities leading the search.

Malaysia and Australia have contributed the bulk of search financing.

Malaysia holds ultimate responsibility given Malaysia Airlines is registered there. The aircraft is thought to have crashed west of Australia, placing it in its maritime zone of responsibility.

Grace Nathan, whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the plane said the governments should consider the recommendation to search an additional 25,000 square kilometres.

“If money is a concern, prioritise within this area,” Nathan said.

In China, Jiang Hui, whose mother was also on board the flight, said he felt “disappointed, helpless and angry” because the search had been ended “purely due to a funding shortage”.

“The 370 incident is the most important thing in my life,” he said, referring to the flight number.

The only confirmed traces of the plane have been three pieces of debris found washed up on the island country Mauritius, the French island Reunion and an island off Tanzania.

As many as 30 other pieces of wreckage found there and on beaches in Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa are suspected to have come from the plane.

The engineering group leading the search, Fugro has raised the prospect someone could have glided the aircraft outside of the defined search zone to explain why it has not been found.

A Fugro representative was not immediately available for comment.

Twelve of the 239 on board were crew. According to the flight manifest, 152 passengers were Chinese, 50 Malaysian, seven Indonesian, six Australian, five Indian, four French and three were American.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook and Jonathan Barrett in SYDNEY. Additional reporting by Rozanna Latiff in KUALA LUMPUR and Christian Shepherd in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel)