MH 370- Putrajaya concedes some control on search for MH370 amid criticism, says paper Amid allegations of incompetence and lack of direction, Putrajaya has begun to concede some control of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 to other nations. The Wall Street Journal reported that several nations, such as India, Thailand, Japan and Indonesia had claimed they had ships and aircraft sitting idle, while waiting for instructions from Kuala Lumpur which has been overseeing the international search operation. Instructions on how to proceed were not very clear, WSJ quoted a senior South Korean military official in Seoul, which offered a P-3C and a C-130 transport plane to the search fleet, as saying. Although the search is still being coordinated by Malaysia, countries such as Australia, Indonesia, China and Kazakhstan will take the lead in areas closest to their borders. Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said yesterday the northern and southern corridors had been divided into seven quadrants each. Each quadrant is 160,000 square nautical miles and the two main corridors represent investigators’ best estimate of where the aircraft might have ended up. WSJ reported that the delay in Putrajaya adopting a more decentralised approach could be an indication that the task may be too big for Malaysia to manage. Some aviation experts, however, welcomed the latest development, saying Putrajaya is beginning to do what they should have been doing all along. Singapore Management University Professor Bridget Welsh told WSJ that Malaysia needed to streamline its crisis management. Nobody wants to find the missing MH370 more than the Malaysians, she told the WSJ. David Jardine-Smith said the criticism which Malaysia had received was unfair. The secretary of Londons International Maritime Rescue Federation said: Knowing how complicated and difficult it is and how very complex this case is, I see nothing wrong with it (Malaysias handling of the search operation) at all. Relatives of the missing passengers and crew, who include 50 Malaysians and 153 Chinese nationals, have repeatedly expressed their frustration at the slow pace of the search and the lack of information provided. I can only say that I am still waiting for news, a woman in Beijing who identified herself as Shen, whose husband of three years Tang Xudong was on the flight, told WSJ. However, she declined to say to the WSJ if she still has hope that her husband was alive. – March 19, 2014.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 02:51:04 +0000
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