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MAS to pay financial aid, gov't may chip in
Published:  Apr 20, 2014 12:15 PM
Updated: 10:23 AM

It is now Day 44 in the mysterious disappearance of MAS flight MH370 that diverted from its Beijing route and vanished without a single trace in the vicinity of the South Indian Ocean on March 8.

Follow us as we bring the latest updates and coverage for the search of Flight MH370:

3.30pm: Deputy Foreign Minister and Next-of-Kin Committee chairperson Hamzah Zainuddin hold a press conference in Kuala Lumpur after meeting relatives of MH370 passengers.

Below are some of the salient points from the press conference:

  • Family members will be proposing a scheme on financial assistance soon, which Hamzah promises to consider at a meeting tomorrow morning.

 

  • MAS is slated to pay all of the financial assistance, although the government will chip in, if necessary.
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  • Hamzah will travel to Beijing soon to ensure that China will keep searching for MH370 until it is found, to ensure that bilateral ties remain strong, and to seek the Chinese government’s assistance in resolving any misunderstanding between the families there and Malaysian officers.
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  • A technical team from MAS will brief the family members in Beijing from now on. Previously they have asked many technical questions and expressed dissatisfaction in the answers received, including accusing Malaysian officers of lying.
  • Malaysia is still deliberating the issues surrounding the issuance of death certificates for those on-board the missing aircraft.
  • 12pm: The Bluefin-21 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has scoured half of the underwater search area so far, but it has yet to find any sign of MH370.

     

    The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) says the drone completed its seventh mission this morning, and is now on its eighth mission, searching the rest of the area.

     

    “The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of a 10-kilometre radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection, which occurred on April 8,” JACC said in a statement this morning.

     

    Meanwhile, the surface search is still going on, with 11 aircraft and 12 ships covering an area of about 48,507 square kilometres, across two areas.

    TO RECAP:

    The US Navy’s Bluefin-21 Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is currently using its side-scan sonar to find the source of a series of pings detected almost two weeks ago.

     

    The Australian vessel ADV Ocean Shield detected the pings on four separate occasions in the same area, and the sound is found to be consistent with that of a pair of black box pingers.

     

    Although it is likely that pings came from MH370’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder - which are each fitted with a pinger - the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) has repeatedly stressed that visual verification is still necessary to confirm that the missing aircraft has been found.

     

    At the moment, the four ping detections are the only leads to the whereabouts of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft.

     

    Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the search is at a ‘crucial juncture’ yesterday and today, because that is when MH370’s most-likely final resting place would be searched.

     

    If nothing is found, Hishammuddin said, a review of the operation would be necessary, although he stressed that the search will still go, on albeit with different approaches.

    [More to follow]

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