Malaysia Airlines MH370: Looking for a Needle in the Haystack, Uncoordinated Response Embarrasses Malaysians
Day six has rolled by for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Authorities around the world continued looking for a needle in the haystack. The uncoordinated response of the Malaysian government to the incident has been a cause of national embarrassment for its citizens.
Malaysia's air force on Thursday deployed aircraft in the South China Sea to investigate the supposed debris of "three suspected floating objects" captured by Chinese satellite images.
Vietnamese authorities however stressed the supposed crash site had been thoroughly searched in recent days and nothing of the sort were found floating on the waters.
China's State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said its satellite captured the images just a day after the plane Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared. They were found at coordinates 105.63 east longitude and 6.7 north latitude.
"There have been lots of reports of suspected debris," Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, Malaysia's civil aviation chief, said.
Read: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370: Conspiracy Theories Abound Missing Plane
U.S. authorities meantime would choose to remain hopeful, despite the SASTIND satellite data not yet corroborated by U.S. satellites. "These (images) are the first solid piece of evidence we have that are on the correct flight path," Peter Goelz, former managing director of the U.S. federal National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN.
Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER flight MH370 vanished off the radar at 1.30 am on Saturday after it took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12.41am local time (3:41 am AEDT). It was bound for Beijing. Its mysterious disappearance has gathered an international air and sea search involving 12 countries that has combed a search zone of 27,000 square nautical miles (93,000 square km).
Still, nary a sight nor sound has yet to be received from the missing airliner. Even Malaysians who are not kin of the families of the victims have grown frustrated.
"I'm upset that even with the effort of our country and a few other countries, that .... not a single piece of the flight has shown up or been made public by Malaysia Airlines," Syed Faris Hakem, 26, a Kuala Lumpur office worker, was quoted by Yahoo.
Read: Malaysian Airlines MH370: Families of Passengers Claim Their Mobile Phones Continue to Ring
"I personally think that they might be covering it up but not sure what's the reason behind it. This is all due to the lack of and contradicting information," he said.
"We have nothing to hide," Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysian Defence Minister, said. "There is only confusion if you want to see confusion."
Malaysian Insider, a local news website, said in a commentary that Malaysians are now embarrassed and angry over how their government officials are conducting the search and rescue operations.
"The mood among Malaysians now is moving from patience in the search for the 239 people aboard the missing flight MH370 to embarrassment and anger."