[Peetwo]

MH370 NOK: From the heart -

Via the Oz today:

Don’t abandon search for our loved ones: MH370 families

MH370 victim Anne Daisy with daughter Grace Nathan.

• Amanda Hodge
  
• The Australian
  
• 12:00AM September 5, 2016
  

South East Asia correspondent
Jakarta
@hodgeamanda
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Relatives of the missing Flight MH370 Malaysia Airlines passengers will appeal to search and rescue teams not to end their search, and to Australian authorities to take over control of the investigation from Malaysia, when they arrive in Australia tomorrow.

Family members from Malaysia, China and Australia, frustrated at the lack of progress during the 2½-year search for answers into the plane’s disappearance, will meet officials from the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre and the Australian Transport Safety Board as well as the crew of the Dutch Fugro ship conducting the search in the remote southern Indian Ocean, during a self-funded trip to Canberra and Perth.

Grace Nathan, whose mother, Anne Daisy, was one of 239 people on board the March 7, 2014, Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight that disappeared about 45 minutes after takeoff, told The Australian the group hoped to clarify whether recent discoveries of debris on the African coast were new leads in a search otherwise destined to be suspended at year’s end.

They were also keen to discuss ways the most expensive search in aviation history, costing about $170 million, could be continued more cheaply.

“Malaysia is not as gung-ho as Australia (about finding the aircraft). We want to know if Malaysia does relinquish control of the investi­gation, if there is another (nation) willing to agree to take over,” Ms Nathan said. “The Australians have all these plans about a replica wing flap … they’re going to drop into the ocean to refine their drift models. They’re making an effort to keep searching.

“We are hoping that by meeting Fugro and the ATSB, it might help us to understand what comes next and what we can do, as the next of kin group, to help push for the search to go on.”

The relatives will also meet University of Western Australia professor of coastal oceanography Charitha Pattiaratchi and Alec Duncan, an expert in underwater acoustics, at Perth’s Curtin ­University.

On July 22, transport ministers from Malaysia, China and Australia announced that if the aircraft could not be located in the present 120,000sq km search area, the search would be suspended pending “credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft”.

Ms Nathan said while Australian investigators had met relatives after that meeting and told them they were keen to continue the search, it was clear the Malaysian government wanted to put the matter behind it.

“I know for a fact, because I’ve become friends with several Mal­ay­sian reporters, that state-owned news outlets are not supposed to report on it,” Ms Nathan, a British-educated lawyer, told The Australian. “They still come to our press conferences but they don’t report on them because they have been told to steer away from there because they (the government) want people to move on from the issue.”

A few months ago, a billboard on Kuala Lumpur’s national highway dedicated to the passengers and crew of MH370 was quietly removed.

Another memorial at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport has also disappeared.

“Malaysian authorities don’t talk to us at all. Australian authorities have made the time to meet and talk to us,” Ms Nathan said.

“When we spoke to them (ATSB and JACC officials) in July, they told us they were hoping to continue the search.

“They were hoping, even if the contract with Fugro was not renewed, that someone else would take over … they wanted the search to continue.”

Malaysian authorities, however, had gone out of their way to avoid dealing with grieving next of kin, once even cancelling a press conference because families of the victims showed up, Ms Nathan said.

Next of kin had been followed by police, and in late July they were moved by security from the venue of the MH370 Ministerial Tripartite Meeting to an empty building, she added.

For the families of the 239 ­people lost with the plane, however, lives are frozen in time, their houses now museums to one terrible moment.

In Ms Nathan’s home, her mother’s reading glasses remain on the side table where she left them before going to the airport.

In other homes, razors sit on bathroom sinks, clothes hang in wardrobes, phone messages ­remain undeleted on answer ­machines. Without answers or evidence, there is little chance of moving on.

“When people say things like ‘Oh, you have lost your Mum’, it hurts me because it’s not something I accept,” Ms Nathan said.

“There is this gap in your reality, between your conscious and your psychological minds.

“We need to know who, what, where and why — they throw this term ‘credible evidence’ around: we need to know what that means.

“We want to know what (investigators) are doing to look for this credible information or if they are just going to wait for it to fall out of the sky?

“For example, there’s been a sudden increase in debris signs and we are wondering if that constitutes new leads. The only way to find something out is to go to the Australians.”

So far, one piece of debris has been confirmed as being from the missing passenger jet and four more pieces are considered ­“almost certainly” to be from MH370.

In late July, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Darren Chester said it was “highly likely” a piece of aircraft wing found in Tanzania and now being analysed by the ATSB was from MH370.

In recent weeks, more debris has been discovered along the ­African coastline. One large piece found in Mozambique is said to have red markings similar to the Malaysia Airlines livery and a Boeing identification, leading to speculation it could be debris from the tail of MH370.

A JACC spokesman has confirmed that family members of MH370 passengers would meet JACC and ATSB officials, but would not comment on suggestions family members hoped to see Australia take control of the investigation.

“I would like to clarify that at the request of the Malaysian government, Australia is leading the underwater search for the missing aircraft. The investigation into the disappearance of the MH370 is, however, in accordance with Annex 13 of the International Civil Aviation Convention, the responsibility of Malaysia,” he said.

Hmmm...after PelAir and various other high profile incident/accident investigations since, I'd seriously think twice about Australia taking over any accident investigation. Besides it is probably much better to have a nation with very little skin in the game, perhaps the Canucks TSBC or the British AAIB would be better options..
MTF...P2