Relatives of passengers aboard the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 that disappeared nearly a year ago arrived in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur today to seek answers from the Malaysian government and the airline itself.
A group of mainly Chinese relatives arrived at the airport wearing red t-shirts that read “Pray for MH370”, in a trip arranged after the government declared flight MH370 an accident, clearing the way for the airline to pay compensation to victims’ relatives while the search for the plane goes on.
The Boeing 777 aircraft disappeared on March 8 last year, carrying 239 passengers and crew shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing.
Months of searches have failed to turn up any trace.
Relatives and the next-of-kin unfurled banners and placards – one reading “Today it’s us, tomorrow it could be you.”
Kelly Wen, the wife of a passenger on board MH370, said the group had three main purposes in conducting the trip.
“First of all we want to talk to Malaysia Airlines; hopefully Malaysia Airlines will help us resolve some of our demands for more information,” she told gathered media.
“Secondly, we’re also here to discuss the announcement on January 29 by Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, which said that MH370 was an “accident”. We hope they will give us a reasonable explanation for what they mean by this,” she said.
“Lastly, all families are facing financial problems now the flight has been missing for nearly a year, so we want to discuss with any help Malaysia Airlines might be able to hopefully provide us, in whatever way they can,” she added.
The January 29 announcement was supposed to allow families of the passengers to obtain assistance through compensation, and had been cleared in accordance with standards of annexes 12 and 13 in the International Civil Aviation, according to the director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.
Wen Wancheng’s son was also on the flight. He said that the Malaysian government had no evidence to say what had happened to the plane.
“First of all, there are no facts or legal basis for Malaysia to announce that Malaysia Airlines MH370 was an accident, and that all passengers were killed, on January 29. It doesn’t have any legal standing,” he told Reuters.
“It’s been nearly a year since the flight went missing, and the families are suffering financial problems because we’ve been travelling to various places – including to here, and to the family assistance centre in Beijing, and we’ve spent a lot of money,” he said.
“The families are facing financial issues as much as emotional ones. We want Malaysia Airlines and Boeing to provide immediate payments to help us with these the issues. All of the relatives of the passengers have been trying to find out what happened to them,” he added.
Most of the passengers on the plane were from China.
The DCA plans to release an interim report on the investigation into the missing jetliner on March 7, a day before the first anniversary of the disappearance.
(Reuters)