MH370 Anger over Malaysia’s announcement that MH370 fell with no survivors has moved across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand where a passenger’s wife was alerted via text message.

Sara Weeks, the sister of Paul Weeks, in an interview with local media said the situation has been handled “appallingly, incredibly insensitively”.

Paul’s wife Danica received a text message from Malaysia Airlines, while Sara got the news at 3.30am via a phone call from her mother who did not want Sara to hear it on the news.

“Everyone is angry about it.

“The Malaysian government, the airline, it’s just all been incredibly poor.

“Who’s to say they can’t locate the airline the day it happened?” she is quoted as saying.

She also said that information was withheld from families and took very long to get through.

This follows acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein’s appeal for calm from families.

He also commended Australian families, whom he said had been responding to the tragedy in a “rational” manner.

He was responding to Tuesday’s protest by Chinese families at the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing.

The families have accused Malaysia as being “executioners” by concluding all 239 on board perished without physical evidence.

When ambassador Iskandar Sarudin met with them, The Wall Street Journal reported that the families told him to kneel before them. He did not.

There is also disbelief among families in Indonesia, who reportedly said they will not go to Australia until wreckage is found in the Indian Ocean where Malaysia says the plane went down.

Conclusion made upon advice of investigators

Malaysia made the conclusion upon advise of British investigators using satellite data which placed the plane at the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometres from land, when its fuel was due to run out.

The family of Indonesian passenger Firman Chandra Siregar, 24, has engaged a US law firm to get information from MAS and plane manufacturer Boeing in what is reported to be a prelude to a lawsuit.

In India, the husband of passenger Chandrika Sharma told local media: “I received a text message. Let’s leave it at that.”

A passenger’s mother in Malaysia also had to resort to calling a reporter to ask what had happened as she did not understand Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak’s announcement, which was in English.

The Wall Street Journal quoted sources as saying that Malaysian government officials, too, were “aghast” that MAS opted to use text messaging to notify family members.

However, MAS chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya ( right ) said that MAS was given 30 minutes to break the news to family before Najib’s 10pm announcement.

He said that its priority was to gather all families in one place and break the news in person, failing which ita call centres also tried to make contact.

Text message was a “last resort” to avoid families from hearing the news from media.

MAS also told KiniTV that its team was at Lido Hotel, Beijing to brief families who have put up there for the past weeks and watch the PM’s announcement with them.

However they were turned away by Chinese authorities both that night and the following day for “security” reasons.

Malaysia, which previously took time to corroborate and verify data before releasing it, reportedly called the emergency press conference to avoid accusations of being opaque.