MH370: FAMILIES LASH OUT OVER SUSPENSION OF SEARCH MISSION

The family members of a group of Chinese passengers who presumably died aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have lashed out at the decision to suspend a search operation, calling it a “wrong, sloppy and unilateral” choice made by the authorities.

The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014. Of the 239 people on board, 153 were from China.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, members of at least three such families in Beijing termed the decision as insensitive and “completely wrong”. At least one of them said even the Chinese working group for affected families had stopped communicating.

Jiang Hui – whose mother was on the ill-fated flight – feels “disappointed, helpless and angry”. Besides the “wrong decision” to call off the search, he expressed frustration over the callousness with which the authorities made announcements related to the operation over the years.

Xu, whose 67-year-old mother was on the flight, termed the suspension as “unreasonable”.

“It is definitely wrong. Once, the Australian PM said the location of the crash was here. But when nothing was found, they just planned to end up with nothing definite,” she told HT.

Xu said a Malaysian Airlines official informed her about the suspension of the search on Tuesday afternoon.

“But when I asked him about their plans for the future, he said he didn’t know. He said he will have to find out.”