Special envoy sent to help in plane search

Full Coverage

On Tuesday afternoon, Malaysian Ambassador to China Iskandar Sarudin was escorted by 10 police officers to meet the family members at the Lido Hotel.

However, the ambassador was unable to answer questions the families raised, including whether there had been any negotiation between government officials and the plane's captain before the aircraft lost contact with ground stations.

One family member screamed at the ambassador, "The anguish you underwent is incomparable to the pain we've been through in the past 18 days. I will stand there (outside the embassy) for 100 years if it works to get my family back."

Technical details

Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya told the media on Tuesday that another high-level delegation will travel to Beijing on Wednesday following the strong reaction from the Chinese families.

Malaysia's acting transportation minister Hishamuddin Hussein disclosed more technical details to the media on Tuesday to back Najib's crash announcement.

But Liu Weimin, director of the Civil Aviation Management Institution of China's Aviation Law Research Center, said this would not convince anyone without solid evidence.

Malaysia should provide more evidence to prove what happened, otherwise the aircraft and passengers could only be declared as missing, according to legal procedures, Liu said.

Zhou Jisheng, former deputy chief designer of the ARJ21, the Chinese-made regional jet, said, "Malaysia's statement that the aircraft ended up in the southern Indian Ocean is believable, but the evidence given is abnormal".

"They must have much more direct evidence to make this statement," he said.

Search halted

Australia's Defense Minister David Johnston said at a news conference on Tuesday that nothing significant had been found and that search efforts were unlikely to restart for another 24 hours at least because of adverse weather conditions.

The 17th Chinese navy escort fleet, including three ships and two helicopters, has sailed from Zhoushan in Zhejiang province to the search area before going on to the Gulf of Aden for an anti-pirates mission.

Five Chinese warships are searching the southern Indian Ocean and the icebreaker Xue Long is en route to the area and is expected to arrive on Friday.

David Gallo, an undersea black-box search expert who co-led the hunt for the downed Air France plane off the coast of Brazil in 2011, said the Malaysian case is extremely unusual because there has been no confirmed evidence of the plane.

However, he added: "We have excellent undersea search technology. I am confident that if we find some debris on the sea surface, the remains of the plane can be found."

Peng Yining and Wang Wen in Beijing and Michael Barris in New York contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn and jinhaixing@chinadaily.com.cn.

Related:

Passenger was on her first trip overseas

Inmarsat calls for global tracking of commercial jets

Technique used to analyze plane's faint pings

Australia prepares to receive families shattered by loss