ACHING HEARTS
Officials say it could be one of the jet’s doors
A woman cries Sunday at a Beijing hotel where family, friends of passengers on the missing Malaysia Airlines jet await news. Officials say debris in waters off Vietnam could be from the Boeing 777. Meanwhile, analysts say the disaster likely won’t tarnish Boeing.
A low-flying plane on Sunday spotted an object in waters off Vietnam that could be a piece of the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines jet that disappeared early Saturday, authorities said.
Vietnamese officials said they believe it is one of the plane’s doors, local media reports said.
Vietnam civil administration chief Pham Viet Dung said search teams headed to the area 56 miles south of Tho Chu island, where an oil slick was seen.
Searchers worked through the night but nothing was found, Doan Huu Gia, chief of Vietnam’s search and rescue coordination center, said today.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 vanished with 239 people aboard, two hours into a six-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysian air force chief Rodzali Daud said military radar indicated the flight “may have made a turn back,” but he did not say how far it got. “We are trying to make sense of this,” Daud said.
Military ships and aircraft from a half-dozen nations continued searching for the Boeing 777. The U.S. Navy sent the USS Pinckney, a guided-missile destroyer that carries two MH-60R helicopters, and a P-3C Orion with long-range search, radar and communications capabilities.
An international team was investigating. U.S. experts include the National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing.
Authorities were investigating the possibility of terrorism after discovering that two passengers apparently were using stolen passports. Interpol, the international policing agency, confirmed Sunday that the Italian and Austrian passports had been entered into its database after they were reported stolen in 2012 and 2013.
No country had checked the passports with Interpol since the thefts, both of which took place in Thailand, the agency said. It was reviewing the passports of everyone on the flight manifest.
“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol’s databases,” said Interpol Secretary- General Ronald Noble.
Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said authorities are looking at four possible cases of suspect identities.
When the plane is found, the airline will set up a command center in Malaysia’s Kota Bharu or in Vietnam, depending on its location. The airline plans to send two family members for each missing passenger to the com- mand center.
The 11-year-old twin-engine jet was last inspected 10 days ago and found in “proper condition,” the airline said.
The lack of a distress signal “suggests something very sudden and very violent happened,” said William Waldock, who teaches accident investigation at EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.
Weather was not believed to be a factor. Light rain and snow were falling well below the aircraft’s last known altitude of 35,000 feet.
The mother of Philip Wood, one of three Americans on board, was resigned that he was gone.
“You want to know how it feels to lose a son at the age of 50? It’s devastating,” Sandra Wood said. She saw her son, an IBM executive who worked in Malaysia, a week ago.
Freescale Semiconductor, an Austin-based tech company, said 20 employees from China and Malaysia were aboard.
Subang Air Traffic Control lost contact with the flight at 2:40 a.m. local time (1:40 p.m. ET Friday). It was scheduled to land in Beijing at 6:30 a.m. local time. The last radar signal was received as it approached Vietnamese airspace near the Ca Mau province.
The twin-engine jet had 227 passengers and 12 crewmembers. They’re from 14 countries, including 153 from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, three from France, two each from New Zealand, Ukraine and Canada and sole travelers from Russia, Italy, Taiwan, Austria and the Netherlands.
Besides Wood, the other Americans on the manifest are children — Nicole Meng, 4, and Yan Zhang, 2.
Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Juahari Yahya said the company is working with emergency responders. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all affected passengers and crew and their family members,” Yahya said.
The flight had seasoned pilots, the airline said. Capt. Zaharie Ahman Shah, 53, of Malaysia has 18,365 flight hours. First Officer Fariq Ab Hamid, 27, also of Malaysia, has 2,763 flight hours.
The search for the Malaysia Airlines flight comes amid one of the safer stretches of commercial aviation. In the USA, 2012 was the industry’s safest year since the dawn of the jet age. The last major airline disaster was in 2009, when an Air France Airbus 330 crashed en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew. Malaysia Airlines’ last air fatalities were in 1995, when a flight crashed near Tawau, Malaysia, killing 34.