ASIA / PACIFIC
Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
March 21, 2016
Malaysian PM is hopeful Flight 370 will be found
By Eileen Ng
The Associated Press
UALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib
Razak says he is hopeful that
missing Flight 370 will still be found as
lawmakers observed a moment of silence
in parliament to mark the second
anniversary of the plane’s disappearance.
Najib said the wing part found on
France’s Reunion Island last July was
evidence the flight tragically ended in the
southern Indian Ocean. An ongoing search
is expected to be completed later this year
and he said Malaysia “remains hopeful”
that the plane will be found.
If the search turns up nothing, he said,
Malaysia, Australia, and China will hold a
meeting to determine the way forward.
“The search has been the most
challenging in aviation history,” Najib said
in a statement. “We remain committed to
doing everything within our means to
solving what is an agonizing mystery for
the loved ones of those who were lost.”
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jet
vanished mysteriously with 239 people on
board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to
Beijing on March 8, 2014. After two years,
it remains one of the biggest mysteries in
modern aviation.
K
The Australia-led search effort has
spent more than $130 million looking
through a vast area of the Indian Ocean
nearly four miles deep. Investigators have
said the search will end by June unless
fresh clues are found.
Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai said
crews have combed about three-quarters
of the 46,000-square-mile search zone.
The international investigating team
issued an interim statement as required
by international aviation laws on the
anniversary of the plane’s disappearance,
but didn’t provide any fresh clues about
the cause.
The statement said a final report will be
completed only when the aircraft
wreckage is located or the search for the
wreckage is terminated.
Families of those on board have
appealed to authorities to keep the search
alive.
AGONIZING MYSTERY. A man wearing an
MH370 hat prays with relatives of passengers aboard
missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 at the Lama Tem-
ple in Beijing, on March 8, 2016, which marked the
second anniversary of the disappearance of MH370,
which vanished March 8, 2014 while en route from
Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefel-
bein)
In Beijing, a large group of Chinese
relatives gathered at a Buddhist temple,
burning incense and praying to deities for
their loved ones.
“My hope is that they will find the plane.
I also hope that the Malaysian side will not
stop the search and that they will continue
until they find the plane. I heard they are
going to stop. That cannot happen,” said
Zhang Qian, whose husband, Wang
Houbin, was among 153 Chinese citizens
on the plane.
Some still held on to hope that their
loved ones are alive, with several relatives
holding placards that read “Mom is
waiting for you” and “Pray for the plane’s
safe return.”
“We think our relatives are alive. We
know this feeling is not very scientific, but
we strongly believe this,” said Dai Shuqin,
a 62-year-old woman whose younger sister
was on the flight.
AP videojournalists Helene Franchineau and
Isolda Morillo in Beijing contributed to this report.
First things to be raised if MH370 is found: More questions
Continued from page one
Australian capital, Canberra, where Malaysian and
Australian experts would analyze the data.
Funds available, for now
There are still enough funds in the budget Australia set
aside for the search to fund the recovery, said Dolan. But if
the plane is discovered when that budget has run dry,
Australia will have to confer with other countries to figure
out how to pay for what would be a complex effort
requiring specialized equipment.
The ATSB has gathered a list of companies with
equipment capable of retrieving wreckage from the
seabed. Crews would need to photograph and map the
debris field, then get the specialized vessels and crews to
the remote search site. All of that would take a couple of
months.
Black boxes have limits
If the black boxes are recovered, the data recorder
should reveal details related to the plane’s controls,
q
Lights out: Cities worldwide
mark the 10th annual Earth Hour
Continued from page 5
go dark in Taiwan’s capital.
Philippine officials in
metropolitan Manila led
hundreds of environmental
activists, students, and
movie
and
television
celebrities in switching off
lights at the Quezon
Memorial
Circle
in
suburban Quezon city.
Amid the darkness, some
participants
pedalled
bamboo bikes attached to
small energy generators to
power LED lights and
illuminate
a
giant
Philippine
map
to
symbolize the country’s
yearning to shift to
renewable energy sources,
organizers said.
The first Earth Hour
event was held on March
31, 2007, when the WWF
conservation
group
inspired people in Sydney
to turn out the lights for an
hour. Since then, the
WWF-organized event has
expanded to thousands of
cities and towns around the
world and has been held
every March.
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including whether aircraft systems that might have
helped track the plane were deliberately turned off, as
some investigators theorize. But data recorders won’t
necessarily reveal who took those actions and why.
Conversations captured by the cockpit voice recorder
could reveal more about what happened, but the device
aboard the lost Boeing 777 could hold only the last two
hours of recordings. Information from early in the flight
was likely erased. That flight recorder exceeded the
international standard at the time.
Airliners built after January 1, 2021 must be equipped
with 25-hour voice recorders capable of recording the
entire flight under new rules recently approved by the
International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency
that sets global aviation standards. However, there is no
requirement to retrofit existing planes with longer
recorders.
Joan Lowy reported from Washington.