Malaysia Airlines crew says no one untouched by missing plane mystery

(CNN) -- Boarding Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport was normal enough. But once inside, passengers and even crew members couldn't help talking about the disappearance of a sister aircraft under circumstances so bizarre that it's become the greatest civil aviation mystery since Amelia Earhart vanished.

Why are we so gripped by missing Malaysia Airlines plane?

I was heading on a 12-hour flight across Europe, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a half a dozen other nations to Kuala Lumpur.

The cockpit door remained opened only briefly as the captain and first officer chatted with ground maintenance staff. Once it closed, attendants began their usual pre-flight routine.

About two hours into the flight, I introduced myself as a CNN journalist to two of the attendants, who agreed to talk to me as long as I did not use their names.

"This nightmare has affected every one of us," said one attendant who said she had been flying for Malaysia for years.

"Most of us knew each one of the cabin staff. The purser was a wonderful man who had children and grandchildren."

When I asked about the captain and first officer on board the lost flight, there was nothing but praise.

Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah "has a first-rate reputation," said another flight attendant, a woman who too has worked for the airline for years. "I can't imagine him being involved in even a tiny way in something."

More on Malaysia Flight 370's pilots

As Malaysia Flight 17 flew only a couple hundred miles north of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol (according to the plane's inflight tracking system), a cockpit crew member appeared. He also agreed to talk, on the condition again not to use his name.

"It's all so unbelievable," he said. "This totally defies logic."

He used the present tense to refer to Zaharie.

"I hope when they find him, they don't fire him," he said. He quickly returned to the cockpit.

My seatmate, who said he was an engineer for an oil company that had leases in Malaysian waters, said he too was transfixed by the drama of the missing plane.

"None of this makes any sense at all," he said. "Absolutely none of it."

Flight 17 proceeded normally through the night sky and made a landing 20 minutes earlier than scheduled in Kuala Lumpur. As passengers began to file off, one of the flight attendants with whom I had spoken said goodbye and asked me to pray for the passengers and crew.

"We must find them," she said. "We have no choice."

source: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-attendants-mood/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

China urges Malaysia to intensify search for flight MH370

China has urged Malaysia to "step up its efforts" in the search for the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane that disappeared on Saturday.

Malaysia said it was widening the hunt, after days of searching found no trace of the plane or the 239 people on board - most of whom were Chinese.

Rescue teams from nine countries will now scour areas stretching from the Malacca Strait to the South China Sea.

Beijing-bound flight MH370 vanished shortly after it left Kuala Lumpur.


Relatives of the missing passengers have been told to prepare for the worst.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang had earlier urged the Malaysian authorities to sharpen its search efforts.

"We have a responsibility to demand and urge the Malaysian side to step up search efforts, start an investigation as soon as possible and provide relevant information to China correctly and in a timely manner," he said.

Patience appears to be wearing thin in the search for the missing aeroplane, says the BBC's Celia Hatton in Beijing.

The Malaysian authorities are attempting to address Chinese concerns - they have reissued a pledge to fly worried family members to Kuala Lumpur so they can be closer to the search efforts, our correspondent adds.

But one victim's relative - Guo Qishun, whose son-in-law was on the plane - said he did not see the point of flying to Malaysia.

"If we go to Malaysia, we can do nothing but wait, just like we are doing in Beijing now. If we go to Malaysia, who can we rely on? Most of us don't speak English," he told the Associated Press news agency.

Malaysian-Chinese people have held vigils to pray for passengers on board the flight

Earlier, the Malaysian authorities said they had identified one of the two men travelling on the missing plane on stolen passports. 

Police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said they could not reveal his identity, but confirmed the man was not Malaysian.

International police agency Interpol has confirmed the passengers were travelling with Italian and Austrian passports stolen in Thailand years ago. 

At a news conference on Monday, Malaysia's civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the two men were "not Asian-looking men".

He insisted that all security protocols had been complied with before the plane took off.

Experts say the presence of two passengers with stolen passports is a breach of security, but is relatively common in the region and could relate to illegal migration. 

Search continues

Some 40 ships and 34 aircraft from nine different nations are taking part in the search in the seas off Vietnam and Malaysia.

Commander William Marks from the US Seventh Fleet, which is taking part in the search, said he expected the plane's flight recorders to be floating in the water.

He said the recorders, also known as "black boxes", were fitted with radio beacons that can be picked up by radar.

Despite a wide search, radar had not so far picked up any signals, he said.

None of the debris and oil slicks spotted in the water so far have proven to be linked to the disappearance.

Flight MH370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing at 00:41 local time on Saturday (16:41 GMT on Friday). But radio contact was lost at 17:30 GMT, somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam.

Officials say they still have no idea what went wrong.

Malaysian military officials said on Sunday they were widening the search area because of indications the plane, a Boeing 777-200ER, may have turned back from its scheduled route shortly before vanishing from radar screens.

Investigators are looking at all angles, including a possible terrorist attack. Counter-terrorism agencies and the FBI are involved in the operation.

The passengers on the flight were of 14 different nationalities. Two-thirds were from China, while others were from elsewhere in Asia, North America and Europe.

Malaysia Airlines is the country's national carrier, flying nearly 37,000 passengers daily to some 80 destinations worldwide.

On Monday, shares in Malaysia Airlines fell 18% to a record low.

source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26513506

Expecting the worst: Families await news of missing Malaysian airliner

Malaysia Airlines' VP on fuel concerns

(CNN) -- The search for a commercial jetliner that seemingly vanished without warning between Malaysia and Vietnam continued into the night as dark fell on Asia, officials said.

Nobody knows what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, other than air traffic controllers lost track of it not long after it left Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, on its way to Beijing.

The families and loved ones of the 239 passengers and crew aboard expected the worst as they awaited any significant development.

The only clue so far is some "rubbish" and a liquid spotted floating in the search area. A Vietnamese plane made the discovery, but it was too early to tell whether it was related to the missing plane.

In the meantime, the search area is being expanded and efforts to locate the plane will continue overnight, said Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, director general of civil aviation in Malaysia.

The area of focus has been in the South China Sea, where the Malaysian airspace and Vietnamese airspace meet.

"We have no idea where this aircraft is right now," Malaysia Airlines Vice President of Operations Control Fuad Sharuji said on CNN's "AC360."

Bits and pieces of information have begun to form, but it remains unclear how they fit into the bigger picture, if at all.

For instance, after the airline released a manifest, Austria denied that one of its citizens was onboard the flight as the list stated. The Austrian citizen was safe and sound, and his passport had been stolen two years ago, Austrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Weiss told CNN.

Similarly, Italy's foreign ministry confirmed that no Italians were onboard MH370, even though an Italian was listed on the manifest. Malaysian officials said they were aware of reports that the Italian's passport was also stolen, but had not confirmed it.

Malaysian authorities reiterated during a news conference that they are not ruling anything out regarding the missing aircraft.

China, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia were conducting search and rescue operations south of Tho Chu island in the South China Sea, reported Xinhua, China's official news agency. Ships, helicopters and airplanes are being utilized.

Officials appeared resigned to accepting the worst outcome.

"I'd just like to say our thoughts and prayers are with the bereaved families," Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said during a news conference.

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source: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/08/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane-missing/index.html?hpt=ias_c1