Vietnamese authorities searching waters for the missing Boeing 777
jetliner spotted an object Sunday that they suspected was one of the
plane’s doors, as international intelligence agencies joined the
investigation into two passengers who boarded the aircraft with stolen
passports.
More than a day and half after Malaysia Airlines Flight
MH370 went missing, no confirmed debris from the plane had been found,
and the final minutes before it disappeared remained a mystery. The
plane, which was carrying 239 people, lost contact with ground
controllers somewhere be
The state-run Thanh Nien newspaper cited Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy
chief of staff of Vietnam’s army, as saying searchers in a low-flying
plane had spotted an object suspected of being a door from the missing
jet. It was found in waters about 90 kilometres south of Tho Chu island,
in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday.
“From
this object, hopefully [we] will find the missing plane,” Mr. Tuan said.
The Thanh Nien newspaper said two ships from the maritime police were
heading to the site.
The missing plane apparently fell from the
sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either
unable or had no time to send a distress signal — unusual circumstances
under which a modern jetliner operated by a professional airline would
crash.
Malaysia’s air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar
indicated that the plane may have turned back, but did not give further
details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.
“We
are trying to make sense of this,” Mr. Daud said at a news conference.
“The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn
back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar.”
Malaysia
Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed
to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a
U-turn. “From what we have, there was no such distress signal or
distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled,” he said.
Authorities
were checking on the identities of the two passengers who boarded the
plane with stolen passports. On Saturday, the foreign ministries in
Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight’s
manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.
“I
can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV,”
Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news
conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. “We
have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board.”
The Transport Minister declined to give further details, saying it may jeopardize the investigation.
“Our
focus now is to find the aircraft,” he said, adding that finding the
plane would make it easier for authorities to investigate any possible
foul play.
Interpol confirmed that at least two stolen passports
used by passengers on the plane were registered in its databases. It
said no one had checked the databases, but added that most airlines and
countries do not usually check for stolen passports.
Mr. Hussein
said only two passengers had used stolen passports, and that earlier
reports that the identities of two others were under investigation were
not true.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony
Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that
investigators had reached no conclusions.
In addition to the
plane’s sudden disappearance, which experts say is consistent with a
possible onboard explosion, the stolen passports have strengthened
concerns about terrorism as a possible cause. Al-Qaida militants have
used similar tactics to try and disguise their identities.
Still,
other possible causes would seem just as likely at this stage, including
a catastrophic failure of the plane’s engines, extreme turbulence, or
pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any
certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed
examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.
European
authorities on Saturday confirmed the names and nationalities of the
two stolen passports: One was an Italian-issued document bearing the
name Luigi Maraldi, the other Austrian under the name Christian Kozel.
Police in Thailand said Mr. Maraldi’s passport was stolen on the island
of Phuket last July.
A telephone operator on a China-based KLM
hotline on Sunday confirmed that “Maraldi” and “Kozel” were both booked
to leave Beijing on a KLM flight to Amsterdam on March 8. Mr. Maraldi
was then to fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, on KLM on March 8, and Mr. Kozel
to Frankfurt, Germany, on March 8.
She said since the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, she had no information on where they bought them.
Having
onward reservations to Europe from Beijing would have meant the pair,
as holders of EU passports, would not have needed visas for China.
Meanwhile,
the multinational search for the missing plane was continuing. A total
of 34 aircraft and 40 ships have been deployed to the area by Malaysia,
Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States,
in addition to Vietnam’s fleet.
Vietnamese air force jets spotted
two large oil slicks Saturday, but it was unclear whether they were
linked to the missing plane.
Two-thirds of the jet’s passengers were Chinese. The rest were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.
The flight manifest identifies the two Canadians as Xiaomo Bai, 37, and Muktesh Mukherjee, 42.
Mr.
Mukherjee and Ms. Bai were married and lived with their two children in
Beijing, where Mr. Mukherjee was working for Pennsylvania-based Xcoal
Energy & Resources, CEO Ernie Thrasher said in an email to The
Canadian Press.
After more than 30 hours without contact with the
aircraft, Malaysia Airlines told family members they should “prepare
themselves for the worst,” Hugh Dunleavy, the commercial director for
the airline, told reporters.
Finding traces of an aircraft that
disappears over sea can take days or longer, even with a sustained
search effort. Depending on the circumstances of the crash, wreckage can
be scattered over many square kilometres (miles). If the plane enters
the water before breaking up, there can be relatively little debris.
A
team of American experts was en route to Asia to be ready to assist in
the investigation into the crash. The team includes accident
investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, as well as
technical experts from the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing,
the safety board said in a statement.
Malaysia Airlines has a good
safety record, as does the 777, which had not had a fatal crash in its
19-year history until an Asiana Airlines plane crashed last July in San
Francisco, killing three passengers, all Chinese teenagers.
tween Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala
Lumpur early Saturday morning for Beijing.
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