AIRLINER TRAGEDIES
MISSING MH370: Travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with veteran captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, with 18,365 flying hours to his name, Malaysia Airlines’ flight 370 vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board. Relatives of the missing passengers were left in angry and distraught as the largest search in aviation history slowly spread from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean. As weeks stretched to months and the numerous reports of floating debris led nowhere, baffled aviation experts have admitted the MH370’s final resting-place could take years to discover.
Flight MH370 was a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. A total of 227 passengers and 12 crew members were on board. Among the passengers, six were from Australia, two from Canada, 152 from China, four from France, five from India, seven from Indonesia, two from Iran, 50 from Malaysia including all 12 crew members, two from New Zealand, three from United States, two from Ukraine and one from each of these countries – Hong Kong, Netherlands, Russia and Taiwan.
Search for the missing aircraft was expanded from Southeast Asia to Southern Indian Ocean by many government and private organisations. The operation went on-surface and underwater in thousands of square kilometres. The official search operation is to be called off and the jet would be declared “lost” by the end of 2014.
Sources: The Strait Times, Reuters, BBC
MH17 CRASH: On July 17, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down near the village of Grabove in rebel-held territory of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, with 298 people on board, of which none survived. The Boeing 777-200ER airliner lost contact about 50 kilometres away from the Ukraine–Russia border and crashed near Torez in Donetsk.
Of the 283 passengers and 15 crew members – 193 were from Netherlands, 43 from Malaysia, 27 from Australia, 12 from Indonesia, 10 from United Kingdom, four from Belgium, four from Germany, three from the Philippines and one each from Canada and New Zealand.
The Dutch Safety Board, which is currently leading a probe into the incident, said in its initial report on September 9 that MH17 broke up in mid-air after being hit by ‘objects’ that ‘pierced the plane at high velocity’. Its final report is expected in August 2015.
Sources: New York Times, Kiev Post, Malaysia Airlines
AIRASIA CRASH: An AirAsia flight QZ8501 travelling between Indonesia and Singapore went missing with 162 people on board on December 28. Ground control lost contact with QZ8501 after it made a request for “deviation” from its usual path because of bad weather.
Due to arrive in Singapore at 8:30am, the Airbus A320-200 lost contact with Indonesian Air Traffic Control over the Java Sea at 7:24am. There were 162 people on board including 155 passengers and seven crew members. Of the passengers, one was from Singapore, one from Malaysia, three from South Korea, one from United Kingdom and 149 from Indonesia.
Search and rescue operations were launched by both Indonesia and Singapore - with military planes and ships involved in the operation. At 11:30 GMT Indonesian authorities confirmed the search for QZ8501 was halted. Most observers believed it to be an accident.
Source: The Daily Star
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