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DISASTER MANAGEMENT
Searchers face tough choices in hunt for MH370
by Staff Writers
Sydney (AFP) April 24, 2014


Angry scenes as Chinese MH370 relatives meet airline staff
Beijing (AFP) April 24, 2014 - A meeting between relatives of Chinese passengers aboard missing flight MH370 and Malaysia Airlines staff descended into chaos Thursday, with police stepping in to separate both sides amid angry scenes in a Beijing hotel.

Up until three weeks ago, Malaysian government and military officials held regular briefings with the relatives to update them on the search for the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that went missing on March 8.

Anger mounted this week as relatives demanded the resumption of meetings with high-level government staff.

Tensions boiled over at Thursday's briefing, with some relatives saying they were on a "hunger strike" in protest after airline officials told them they were unable to get the Malaysian embassy to send a representative to answer their questions.

Malaysia Airlines senior vice president Jaffar Derus Ahmad repeatedly called on the relatives to eat dinner at a lobby restaurant, but angry scenes erupted when a man appeared to faint.

"This is what you have caused," one man shouted as more than two dozen relatives sought to angrily confront the airline staff, hitting on a table and shouting "Protest! Protest!"

About a dozen police and security staff stepped in to rescue the besieged airline staff.

Nothing has been seen of the plane or its 239 passengers and crew since it vanished off radar screens during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

About two-thirds of those on board were Chinese and their loved ones have complained bitterly about what they see as Malaysia's secretive and incompetent handling of the search.

"I have been asking, indeed begging Malaysia and Malaysian Airlines to bring my son back. I miss my son," relative Wen Wancheng told the airline staff, his face contorted with anguish.

"I am not trying to create trouble or difficulty for your staff. We haven't been trying to vent anger or hate your staff," added the 63-year-old tearfully, as he was comforted by other relatives.

Last month, emotional relatives of the Chinese passengers scuffled with guards outside Malaysia's embassy and abused the ambassador, demanding answers about the plane's mysterious disappearance in the Indian Ocean.

Searchers for missing Flight MH370 face tough choices on how to proceed after almost seven fruitless weeks, with only a fraction of a deep-sea zone still left to be scanned.

After 11 dives seeking wreckage from the Malaysia Airlines jet which mysteriously disappeared on March 8, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has come up empty-handed.

"Bluefin-21 has now completed more than 90 percent of the focused underwater search area," the Joint Agency Coordination Centre managing the search said early Thursday.

"No contacts of interest have been found to date."

Australia is leading the search for the missing Boeing 777, which is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean after veering dramatically off course from its Kuala Lumpur to Beijing route.

JACC refused to speculate on what the next steps would be if the Bluefin-21 ended its 3D sonar scanning some 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) below the surface without result, but said the search would continue.

"We are currently consulting very closely with our international partners on the best way to effect this for the future," it said.

For now, it will not give up on the 400 square kilometre (154 square mile) search zone which has offered the best hopes so far of finding the aircraft, based on seabed signals consistent with those emitted by black box data recorders.

"At the moment, we are focused on pursuing the best lead we have in relation to missing Flight MH370," the agency said.

"It is important this lead is pursued to its completion so we can either confirm or discount the focused underwater area as the final resting place of MH370. This is clearly of great importance to the families of those on board."

Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said that while the search would not abandoned, it could face a "re-think". Defence Minister David Johnston has suggested a more powerful sonar scanner could be deployed.

Malaysia's Transport and Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has also insisted the search for the passenger jet, which was carrying 239 people, would not stall but could move on to different technology.

"I can confirm that in fact we are increasing the assets that are available for deep-sea search... that involves commercial ventures," he told reporters on Wednesday.

"And in the next few days, we will be talking to other entities to look at the possibility of increasing the assets for the next phase," adding that these would not be deployed in the next few days.

"What is more important is that the search continues and this is an assurance we will give to the families of the passengers," he added.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has also reportedly suggested that the search zone could be broadened, if calculations about the plane's position when it likely ran out of fuel and crashed are revised.

"The area for focus of the search... has already been moved twice, and there's always a possibility that further work will move it again," the bureau's chief commissioner Martin Dolan told CNN.

As the painstaking aerial and surface searches over the vast and remote ocean continued, the discovery on Wednesday of potential debris on a Western Australian beach was ruled out as a lead.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the unidentified material found on the far south coast of Western Australia was not associated with MH370.

The JACC said up to 11 military aircraft and 11 ships would assist in the search on Thursday, with most concentrating on a visual search of 49,567 square kilometres (19,138 square miles) some 1,584 kilometres (984 miles) northwest of Perth.

The visual search has for days been frustrated by weather related to ex-tropical Cyclone Jack, and authorities said it could again be suspended with sea swells expected of three to four metres.

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