‘Good night’ were last known words of MH370

BEIJING — The last radio transmission from the cockpit of missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 was “Alright, good night”, Kuala Lumpur’s ambassador to Beijing reportedly said Wednesday during a meeting with Chinese relatives.

Iskandar Sarudin was speaking to passengers’ relatives and friends at a Beijing hotel. A total of 153 of the 239 people on board the aircraft are Chinese.

The flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing disappeared from radar screens early on Saturday without making a distress call and no confirmed wreckage has been found, despite a vast search.

The “alright, good night” comment from one of the pilots came as the flight switched from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace, Singapore’s Straits Times newspaper quoted the ambassador as saying.

As confusion deepens over the search area and whether Malaysian military radar tracked the aircraft, he said “now is not the time” to reveal what information the military had supplied civilian authorities.

He also defended the crew, after an Australian television report that co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, violated airline rules in 2011 by allowing two young South African women into their cockpit during a flight.

Relatives told AFP the event had been “orderly”, in contrast to a meeting with Chinese officials on Monday, when reports said family members hurled abuse at government representatives.

Some attacked Beijing’s own response as the crisis entered its fifth day.

“I think the Chinese government needs to be more active with this,” said a man surnamed Zhang, whose daughter was on board, coming back from a business trip.