Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight Mystery Continues

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8th March 2014. It carried around 239 people – 227 passengers (including 2 children) and 12 crew members.

List of nationalities in the missing flight were:

1.    China / Taiwan – 152, 1 infant / 1
2.    Malaysia – 38
3.    Indonesia – 7
4.    Australia – 6
5.    France – 3
6.    United States of America – 3 pax plus 1 infant
7.    New Zealand – 2
8.    Ukraine – 2
9.    Canada – 2
10.  Russia – 1
11.  Italy – 1
12.  India – 5
13.  Netherlands – 1
14.  Austria – 1

As per media reports,  the aircraft was suspected to be crashed into the sea near Vietnam’s Tho Chu island although the Malaysia Transport Minister denied those reports claiming there is no sign of plane wreckage.

The countries Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore started a joint search and rescue operations for a missing Malaysia Airlines flight on Saturday.

CEO of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya stated that it will continue to run other flights as normal. Malaysia Airlines is Malaysia’s national carrier and one of the largest in Asia, flying about 37,000 passengers daily to 80 worldwide destinations.

The Malaysia Airlines flight disappeared at 02:40 local Malaysian time on Saturday (18:40 GMT on Friday) had left Kuala Lumpur at 12.21 a.m. (16:21 GMT on Friday) and had been expected to land in the Chinese capital at 6.30 am (22:30 GMT) the same day, a 2,300-mile (3,700 kilometres) trip. But the airline lost contact with the aircraft about 2 hours after it took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of Saturday morning.

The flight was piloted by 53-year-old Malaysian Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, who has a total of 18,365 flying hours who had joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981. First officer, Fariq Ab.Hamid, also a Malaysian, is aged 27 and has a total flying hours of 2,763 hours. He joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007.