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Showing posts with label Chinese families. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese families. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Malaysia paying the price for flight MH370 !

Flight MH370: Paying The Price Of 6 Decades Of Nepotism, Racism, Rampant Corruption And Incompetence

On January 23, 2008 a very peculiar thing happened. Commercial airspace at one of the world's busiest airports was shut down for over 50 minutes. On that day, an aircraft without an approved flight plan entered Singapore's airspace. Immediately, the Republic of Singapore Air Force dispatched a pair of F-16D fighter jets to intercept the aircraft and escorted it to land at Singapore Changi Airport. Upon landing, airport police immediately surrounded the plane.

"At 6.42pm (2142 AEDT), two Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) F-16 fighters were scrambled to intercept a civilian aircraft, a Cessna 208, which was heading towards Singapore airspace without an approved flight plan,'' the ministry's director of public affairs, Colonel Darius Lim, said in a statement. "The aircraft was escorted to land at Singapore Changi Airport."

The above incident highlights the standard operating protocol an Air Force, Civil Aviation Authority and Local Police Force needs to follow in the event of an unidentified aircraft entering it's airspace without an approved flight plan.

However amidst this hoo-ha, there was one small detail worth noting. The plane took off from Koh Samui, Thailand. And running the full length between Thailand and Singapore is the land mass of Peninsular Malaysia.

In essence, this means that the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia and the Royal Malaysian Air Force had allowed an unknown aircraft to invade over 131 thousand square km of sovereign Malaysian territory and despite this occurring over a period of 3 hours, did not lift a finger to respond.

This incident highlighted a huge security flaw in Malaysia's Air Defence umbrella. One that if it had patched during any of the subsequent 6 years that followed, would have prevented a bigger tragedy that came with greater embarrassment, scrutiny and loss.

6 years later on 8 March 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 departed Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Beijing. It never landed at its intended destination. Instead, less than an hour after take-off, the transponder was turned off and 3 sets of military radars tracked the plane flying past Penang and across the breadth of Malaysia from the Gulf of Thailand towards the Indian Ocean.

Unlike the Cessna airplane in the earlier example which was intercepted by the RSAF, 3 sets of people manning Malaysia's military radars never sounded any alarms. The RMAF never dispatched any fighter jets on standby and the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia never shut down Malaysian airspace when a rogue plane very much larger than a Cessna aircraft flew across it's airspace.

Suffice to say, had the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia or the RMAF been doing their job properly as exemplified by the example given above, we would not have gone 9 days and counting into a search for a missing and possibly hijacked plane.

Investigators may have recently concluded that the plane had its transponders deliberately turned off and its flight plan deliberately altered but it is the greater observing public who have the biggest conclusion of all; that Malaysian leadership is sorely incompetent when it comes to handling a crisis. In this respect, Malaysia has much to learn from its Southern neighbour. Had the supposed hijackers targeted a plane flying through a more efficient jurisdiction, the outcome would have been very different today.

  Malaysia Flip Flop

Related:    

The Day When 2 Austrians Shut Down Singapore's Airspace for 50 Minutes.

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    Saturday, March 29, 2014

    Chinese families stage mass walkout, demanded China's inquiry into mysterious Flight MH370

    Lone voice: The Malaysian delegation listening to the Chinese committee member talk in the hotel ballroom in Beijing. - AFP

    BEIJING: Family members of Chinese passengers on board MH370 staged a mass walkout during a briefing by a high-level Malaysian delegation here.

    A member of the committee that represents the relatives had asked them to leave the Lido Hotel ballroom as a show of discontent.

    The families are convinced that the Malaysian authorities were hiding facts concerning the airliner, which had gone missing with 239 passengers and crew members.

    Delegation members had just finished answering questions posed to them by the families a day earlier when the committee member stood up and addressed the crowd.

    “Have you heard any updates related to our loved ones from the delegation?” he asked. “Have you heard any answers from the delegation in response to our key queries?”

    The crowd shouted “No” in unison.

    The man then asked the family members to leave the ballroom and to go “discuss the next course of action” with the committee in another room.

    He stressed that the families should do so voluntarily.

    After all the relatives had left, the man posed several questions to the delegation and then concluded with: “You have seen from the incident today that the Chinese people and the next-of-kin are united.

    “What you are hiding now will ultimately see the light of the day. There will certainly be people who will receive due punishment.”

    Despite the awkwardness of the situation, members of the delegation remained seated at the front of the ballroom.

    They were Malaysian ambassador to China Datuk Iskandar Sarudin, Royal Malaysian Air Force air operations commander Lt-Jen Datuk Seri Ackbal Abdul Samad, Department of Civil Aviation air traffic services director Ahmad Nizar Zolfakar and representatives from Malaysia Airlines.

    Lt-Jen Ackbal then spoke to the man.

    “We would like to ask you how we can move forward from here. We have been trying our best to keep you updated and we have nothing to hide.

    “We are telling you what we can tell. There are a few ongoing inquiries and we can only reveal information that will not jeopardise the investigations,” he said.

    The representative retorted: “I do not want to hear you saying that you need to go back and check when we ask you simple questions.

    “You no longer have to protect the safety of hostages. Which one do you put first, national interest or (the) search and rescue mission?”

    After that, the man asked the delegation and news media to leave the ballroom because the families wanted the place for a closed-door meeting.

    As the family members started streaming back in, the delegation and newsmen stood up and left.

    Yesterday’s meeting was the sixth between the delegation and the families; one session lasted seven hours without a break.

    Sources: The Star/Asia News Network

    Chinese MH370 relatives demand Beijing probe 
    - The Economic Times:

    BEIJING: Relatives of the Chinese passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have demanded China mount its own inquiry into the disappearance, a letter shows. The document, sent to Beijing's special envoy in Kuala Lumpur, denounced Malaysia's handling of the search and asked the Chinese government to set up its own "investigation office".

    Read more at: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/32831901.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

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    China stresses importance of international cooperation on MH370 search

    China has increased its efforts to find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane by dispactching two addi...
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