Tag Archives: flight
Vietnam spots possible wreckage from Malaysian plane
Vietnam spots possible wreckage from Malaysian plane (AFP) / 10 March 2014 The United States sent an FBI team to investigate, but US officials stressed there was as yet no evidence of terrorism. Vietnamese searchers on Sunday spotted possible aircraft debris after combing the sea for nearly 48 hours in the hunt for a Malaysian passenger jet that vanished with 239 people aboard, officials said. The discovery, which could confirm the worst fears of anguished relatives, came after Malaysia’s government launched a terror probe into the Boeing 777’s disappearance, investigating suspect passengers who boarded with stolen passports. “We received information from a Vietnamese plane saying that they found two broken objects, which seem like those of an aircraft, located about 50 miles (80 kilometres) to the southwest of Tho Chu Island,” said an official from Vietnam’s National Committee for Search and Rescue, who did not want to be named. The island is part of a small archipelago off the southwestern tip of Vietnam, and lies northeast of Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur, from where Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 left early Saturday bound for Beijing. “As it is night they cannot fish them out for proper identification. They have located the position of the areas and flown back to land,” the Vietnamese official added. Planes and boats would be sent back to the area on Monday to investigate further, he said. Two large oil slicks which authorities suspect were caused by jet fuel were detected late Saturday farther south of the island chain, and observed later by an AFP journalist aboard a Vietnamese spotter plane. Both MAS and Malaysia’s civil aviation authority, however, said they had no new information to offer after the apparent Vietnamese discovery. Malaysian officials said earlier that MH370 may have inexplicably turned back towards Kuala Lumpur. The plane, captained by a veteran MAS pilot, had relayed no indications of distress, and weather at the time was said to be stable. The United States sent an FBI team to investigate, but US officials stressed there was as yet no evidence of terrorism. “There is a distinct possibility the airplane did a turn-back, deviating from the course,” said Malaysia’s air force chief, General Rodzali Daud, citing radar data. But MAS chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the Boeing 777’s systems would have set off alarm bells in that case. “When there is an air turn-back the pilot would be unable to proceed as planned,” he said, adding authorities were “quite puzzled” over the situation. A total of 40 ships and 34 aircraft from an array of Southeast Asian countries, China and the US have been involved in the search, with two Australian surveillance aircraft due to join in. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had asked Malaysia to continue the search, saying every minute counts, according to a report from the official Xinhua news agency early Monday. The report said he told his Malaysian counterpart Anifah Aman: “Search and rescue should not stop so long as there is a glimmer of hope.” The Chinese government will send a working group later Monday morning to Malaysia, Xinhua said. It will include officials from the foreign ministry, ministry of public security and transport ministry, according to the foreign ministry’s website. Its tasks will include investigating the incident and helping family members already in Malaysia. After it emerged that two people boarded the flight with stolen European passports, Malaysia’s transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said he was looking at four suspect passengers in all. He said authorities were examining CCTV footage of the two with fake passports. “We have managed to get visuals of them,” he said, adding that Malaysia was liaising with other countries’ intelligence agencies on the findings. He gave no more details. Hishammuddin also confirmed the FBI was dispatching personnel to Malaysia. “At the same time our own intelligence has been activated, and of course, the counter-terrorism units… from all the relevant countries have been informed,” he said, refusing to rule out the possibility of a hijack. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was quoted by The Star newspaper saying the government would review and enhance airport security protocols, if needed. Technical advisers from Boeing and the US Federal Aviation Administration are en route to Asia to help with the probe. The flight vanished about an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur. A total of 153 Chinese nationals were on board, and relatives camping out at Beijing’s main international airport complained about the lack of news. “The airline company didn’t contact me, it was a friend,” a middle-aged woman surnamed Nan told reporters, holding back tears. Her brother-in-law was on the flight. “I can’t understand the airline company. They should have contacted the families first thing.” MAS insisted it was doing its best to keep relatives in China informed given the confusion over the plane’s fate, and has offered to fly them to Malaysia to be closer to the search-and-rescue operation. Two European names — Christian Kozel, an Austrian, and Luigi Maraldi of Italy — were listed on the passenger manifest. But neither man boarded the plane, officials said. Both had their passports stolen in Thailand over the past two years. Thai police said on Sunday they were investigating a possible passport racket as flight information seen by AFP gave new details about bookings made in Thailand with the two stolen European passports. The tickets booked in Maraldi and Kozel’s names were made on March 6, 2014 and issued in the Thai city of Pattaya, a popular beach resort south of Bangkok. The e-ticket numbers for their flights are consecutive and both were paid for in Thai baht. Each ticket cost THB 20,215 (US$625). “Kozel” was booked to travel from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on MH370, then on to Amsterdam and Frankfurt. “Maraldi” was booked on the same flights until Amsterdam, where he was to continue to Copenhagen. Interpol confirmed that “at least two passports” recorded in its Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database were used by passengers on board the Malaysian flight. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Ministry says 77 killed in Algerian military air crash
Ministry says 77 killed in Algerian military air crash (Reuters, AFP) / 12 February 2014 Defence ministry announcement brings death toll down to 77 instead of local media reports of 102 casualties. A total of 77 people died in the crash of an Algerian military transport plane carrying members of the armed forces and their relatives on Tuesday, the defence ministry said, fewer than the 103 dead that had been cited by local media. The ministry said in a statement bad weather was the likely cause of the accident, one of the worst air crashes in the North African country in a decade. Earlier, local media and emergency officials said the military aircraft carrying 103 people crashed in Algeria’s mountainous northeast, with just one survivor found in one of the country’s deadliest air disasters. The C-130 Hercules aircraft, which crashed in the Oum El Bouaghi region, was carrying 99 passengers — soldiers and their families — as well as four crew members, a security source told AFP. Emergency services officials told public radio that they had found a sole survivor, who was suffering from head trauma. By early evening, the emergency services had recovered 76 bodies from the crash site, including the remains of four women, public radio reported, after an extensive search and rescue operation was launched. A security source had said earlier that all on board had perished. The plane was flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in the deep south to the city of Constantine, 320 kilometres (200 miles) east of the capital, and lost contact with the control tower just as it was beginning its descent. The aircraft slammed into Mount Fertas in the Oum El Bouaghi region at around midday (1100 GMT), state media quoted army spokesman Colonel Bouguern as saying. “Very bad weather conditions, involving a storm and heavy snowfall, were behind the crash,” the defence ministry said in a statement. Military and civilian personnel were deployed for the search operation, the ministry added, with hospitals in Constantine and nearby Ain M’Lila placed on alert to treat any survivors. Nearly 250 rescue workers had reached the site of the crash, despite the difficulties caused by the mountainous terrain and wintry conditions. Tamanrasset, where the flight had departed from, lies in the far south of Algeria, near the border with Mali, and is the main base for the country’s southern military operations. Extra troops and equipment have been stationed there in recent months as part of efforts to beef up surveillance of Algeria’s frontiers with Mali and Libya, following a deadly hostage-taking by Islamist militants at a desert gas plant in January last year. The city lies 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) from Constantine, and was the site of the worst previous aviation disaster in Algeria, in March 2003. In that accident, all but one of 103 people on board were killed when an Air Algerie passenger plane crashed on takeoff after one of its engines caught fire. The sole survivor, a young Algerian soldier, was left in a critical condition. In December 2012, two military jets conducting routine training operations collided in mid air near Tlemcen, in the northwest, killing the pilots of both planes. A month earlier, a twin-turboprop CASA C-295 military transport aircraft, which was transporting a cargo of paper for the printing of banknotes in Algeria, crashed in southern France. The plane was carrying five soldiers and a representative of the Algerian central bank, none of whom survived. For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Sunanda’s autopsy reveals unnatural death and injury
Sunanda’s autopsy reveals unnatural death and injury Nithin Belle / 19 January 2014 The body of Shashi Tharoor’s wife cremated; doctors say it was a case of sudden, unnatural death. A day after her body was found in her hotel room, the mortal remains of Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor, wife of India’s junior minister for human resources Shashi Tharoor, were consigned to the flames at a crematorium in Delhi on Saturday evening. Tharoor, who was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) following “a cardiac event” on Friday night, was present to perform the last rites. Earlier in the day, a team of AIIMS doctors who performed autopsy on Sunanda’s body, declared that it was “a case of sudden, unnatural death”. While they found some injury marks on her body, the doctors refused to reveal much about it. The final report of the autopsy, which also rules out poisoning as a cause of death, will be submitted in a couple of days. There was speculation on Saturday that Sunanda might have taken an overdose of sleeping pills the previous day. Top figures in the ruling Congress party rallied round Tharoor. Premier Manmohan Singh wrote he was with the minister “in this hour of grief”, while Congress President Sonia Gandhi paid him a condolence visit at his home. The police were expected to record a statement from the minister about the death. A sub-divisional magistrate has also launched a mandatory probe, as the woman died within seven years of her marriage. The Tharoors got married in 2010 and it was the third marriage for both of them. However, the marriage appeared to be on the rocks over the past few days, especially after a bitter feud occurred between the couple over the exchange of messages between the minister and Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist. Sunanda confessed a few days earlier, both on social and mainstream media that she suspected her husband of having an affair with the journalist, a charge denied by Mehr. Just a day before her death, Tharoor had issued “a joint statement” with her, claiming that the two were happy and there were no problems in the marriage. But reports on Saturday mentioned that the two had fought on the flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi and even at the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi. nithin@khaleejtimes.com Also Read: Sunanda Pushkar’s death: Police gather CCTV footage Body of Sunanda Pushkar taken to hospital for autopsy Shashi Tharoor complains of chest pain, hospitalised Sunanda Pushkar found dead in south Delhi hotel Absolutely shocked: Mehr Tarar Security cover at Shashi Tharoor’s office, home Sunanda was seriously ill: Former diplomat Alleged affair threatens Indian minister’s poll prospects Angry wife outs Indian minister’s affair on Twitter Khaleej Times stands by report on Indian minister’s wife Sunanda Tharoor throws hissy fit in Dubai India’s Tharoor denies Swamy’s charges For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
