Chinese families' aggression will not help search effort

KUALA LUMPUR:  Aggression by the families of the Chinese nationals onboard the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 will not help in efforts to find the missing aircraft.

According to South China Morning Post (SCMP) in an article by Alex Lo yesterday, many of the Chinese relatives and their online supporters behaved like "raging bulls", made wild accusations and physically confronted Malaysian officials.

This, it said, was in contrast to how the non-Chinese families of the missing passengers were grieving.

"Perhaps, they (Chinese families) find it natural to act out their anger and frustrations. That's understandable. Whether or not that helps anyone in the search for the plane is a different matter.

"Non-Chinese families of the missing passengers (may) grieve as much as the Chinese but you don't see them displaying the same level of aggression," the Hong-Kong based English daily said in the article entitled "Chinese Families' Aggression Won't Help to Find Missing Flight MH370".

The daily said, because officialdom in China was often unresponsive and unaccountable, it had become second nature for many Chinese to mistrust government accounts and flight officials.

"Confrontation and aggression become their default mode in fighting for what they think are within their rights to demand. Such behaviour has been on ample display in the relatives' dealings with the Malaysians.

"But whatever their faults, I am sure the officials from the Malaysian airline and the government are not murderers or conspirators, as some Chinese families have accused them of being."

The daily said no doubt that MAS and the government initially "fumbled" in their handling of arguably the greatest aviation crisis the country had faced.

"But to be fair, their performance and coordination improved over the following weeks and the officials from Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak downwards have shown patience and humanity," it added.

Bernama

Chinese patrol ship detects signal in Indian Ocean

Chinese patrol ship Haixun 01 - File Photo

KUALA LUMPUR: A Chinese patrol ship discovered a pulse signal with a frequency of 37.5 kHz while looking for the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported.

According to a pinger manufacturer, that is same frequency used for black boxes – the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder.

“That is the standard beacon frequency,” Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom told CNN.

However the latest find has not been verified by the Joint Coordination Centre in Perth, who is coordinating the search operation for flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

Experts cautioned that the signal could come from a number of different objects apart from the aircraft.

This latest development comes 29 days after the Boeing 777-200 aircraft mysteriously disappeared while on route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

A few hours before the Xinhua report, Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein had announced Malaysia will appoint an independent Investigator-In-Charge, orICC, to lead an investigating team into the disappearance of flight MH370.

The team will include Australia, China, the United States, Britain and France.

Australian and British vessels are currently involved in a round-the-clock underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, hoping to pick up a signal from the plane’s black box recorder, but the battery powering those emissions is nearing the end of its roughly 30-day life span.

Xinhua said in a brief dispatch, the Haixun 01 picked up the signal at about 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.

“Suspected pulse signal picked up by Haixun 01 has not been identified yet,” the China Maritime Search and Rescue Center said on a verified microblog.

Australian Defence Minister David Johnston echoed the call, saying he had not received a report on the signal and warned that it may not be from the plane.

“This is not the first time we have had something that has turned out to be very disappointing,” he told ABC television.

He added he was going to wait for JACC chief Angus Houstan and his team to come forward with something that’s positive as the search operation for the missing flight MH370 was a very difficult task.

Authorities still have no idea how or why the plane vanished, and warn that unless the black box is found, the mystery may never be solved.

The Ocean Shield, which is carrying a US Navy "black box" detector, and HMS Echo, are searching a 240-kilometre track of ocean in hopes of detecting sonic pings from the recorder.

However, progress is painstaking as vessels must move slowly to improve readings, and officials have acknowledge there is no solid evidence the plane went down in that stretch of sea.

"The search using sub-surface equipment needs to be methodical and carefully executed in order to effectively detect the faint signal of the pinger," Commodore Peter Leavy said.

Astro Awani