Malaysian carrier makes emergency landing in Thailand

KUALA LUMPUR - A Malaysia-bound Malindo Air flight diverted to Thailand and made an emergency landing on Monday after the cabin started to de-pressurize, the airline said, adding that none of the 129 people aboard was hurt.

The Malaysia-based carrier's flight OD206 from Delhi had been due to arrive in Kuala Lumpur early Monday but instead re-routed to Bangkok after the incident, which caused oxygen masks to deploy inside the plane.

"A slow decompression was detected by the pilot," said a Malindo spokesman, who suggested it may have been caused by oxygen leaking from the fuselage.

"In our case, oxygen masks were deployed as a precautionary measure according to SOP (standard operating procedure)."

The Boeing 737-900ER had 121 passengers and eight crew aboard.

The incident was still being investigated.

Malaysian aviation has endured a horrible year with flag carrier Malaysia Airlines losing two jets and 537 people.

Flight MH370 disappeared in March with 239 people aboard and is believed to have mysteriously diverted and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean, but no evidence to prove the theory has been found.

Flight MH17 came down over conflict-torn Ukraine in July, believed to have been shot down by a surface-to-air missile, killing all 298 people aboard.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Bodies, black boxes handed over from Ukraine crash site

DONETSK, Ukraine - The remains of some of the nearly 300 victims of the Malaysia Airlines plane downed over Ukraine were making their way to the Netherlands on Tuesday as a senior Ukrainian separatist leader handed over the plane's black boxes to Malaysian experts.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told a news conference on Monday that a train carrying around 200 body bags was on its way to rebel-held Donetsk and then to Kharkiv, which is in Ukrainian government hands, from where the bodies would be taken back to the Netherlands to be identified.

The train left the crash site after the Malaysian prime minister reached agreement with the separatists for recovered bodies to be handed over to authorities in the Netherlands, where the largest number of victims came from.

Early on Tuesday, senior separatist leader Aleksander Borodai handed over the black boxes in the city of Donetsk.

"Here they are, the black boxes," Borodai told a room packed with journalists at the headquarters of his self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic as an armed rebel placed the boxes on a desk.

Colonel Mohamed Sakri of the Malaysian National Security Council told the meeting the two black boxes were "in good condition".

The handover of the bodies and black boxes, and reports by international investigators of improved access to the wreckage of the airliner four days after it was shot down, occurred against calls for broader sanctions against Russia for its support for the rebellion, although Western leaders are struggling to agree on a united response.

Shaken by the deaths of 298 people from across the world, Western governments have threatened Russia with stiffer penalties for what they say is its backing of pro-Russian militia who, their evidence suggests, shot the plane down.

At the United Nations, the Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution demanding those responsible "be held to account and that all states cooperate fully with efforts to establish accountability".

It also demanded that armed groups allow "safe, secure, full and unrestricted access" to the crash site.

"We owe it to the victims and their families to determine what happened and who was responsible," said Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, who traveled to New York to negotiate the U.N. resolution. Australia lost 28 citizens in the crash.

The Kremlin said in a statement late on Monday that Vladimir Putin spoke to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on the phone, with both giving a "high assessment of the resolution passed by the U.N. Security Council on the investigation into the catastrophe."

Meanwhile, European Union foreign ministers were scheduled on Tuesday to discuss further penalties against Russia, but the most they are expected to do is to speed up implementation of sanctions against individuals, and possibly companies, agreed in principle last week before the plane was brought down.

But Western leaders struggled to come to a united response against Moscow. France came under pressure on Monday from Washington and London over plans to deliver a second helicopter carrier to Russia.

Diplomats say more serious sanctions against whole sectors of the Russian economy will depend largely on the line taken by the Dutch, because of the high number of Dutch victims.

"It is clear that Russia must use her influence on the separatists to improve the situation on the ground," the Dutch prime minister said.

"If in the coming days access to the disaster area remains inadequate, then all political, economic and financial options are on the table against those who are directly or indirectly responsible for that," said Rutte.

'WHAT ARE THEY TRYING TO HIDE?'

U.S. President Barack Obama said it was time for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia "to pivot away from the strategy that they've been taking and get serious about trying to resolve hostilities within Ukraine."

He said Putin and Russia had a direct responsibility to compel separatists to cooperate with the investigation, and that the burden was on Moscow to insist that separatists stop tampering with the probe, he said.

"What are they trying to hide?" Obama said at the White House.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry laid out on Sunday what he called overwhelming evidence of Russian complicity in the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane, and expressed disgust at how the bodies of the victims had been treated at the crash site.

But Russia's Defence Ministry challenged accusations that pro-Russian separatists were responsible for shooting down the airliner and said Ukrainian warplanes had flown close to it.

The ministry also rejected accusations that Russia had supplied the rebels with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems - the weapon said by Kiev and the West to have downed the airliner - "or any other weapons".

Putin said in a televised address that the downing of the airliner must not be used for political ends and urged separatists to allow international experts access to the crash site.

RECOVERY EFFORTS

European security monitors said gunmen stopped them inspecting the site when they arrived on Friday, and Ukrainian officials said separatists had tampered with vital evidence, allegations echoed by Obama.

But the spokesman for the European security monitors said they had unfettered access on Monday, and three members of a Dutch disaster victims identification team arrived at a railway station near the crash site and inspected the storage of the bodies in refrigerated rail cars.

Peter van Vliet, whose team went through the wagons dressed in surgical masks and rubber gloves, said he was impressed by the work the recovery crews had done, given the heat and the scale of the crash site. "I think they did a hell of a job in a hell of a place," he said.

As they went about their work, fighting flared in Donetsk, some 60 km (40 miles) from the site, in a reminder of the dangers the experts face operating in a war zone.

The government in Kiev denied sending the regular army into the centre of Donetsk, which pro-Russian separatists captured in April, but said small "self-organised" pro-Ukrainian groups were fighting the rebels in the city.

Four people were killed in clashes, health officials said.

The rebels' military commander Igor Strelkov said on his Facebook page up to 12 of his men died in Monday's fighting.

Donetsk is at the heart of a rebel uprising against rule by Kiev, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has vowed to retake the city as part of what Kiev calls its "anti-terrorist operation" against the separatists.

Television images of the rebel-controlled crash site, where the remains of victims had lain decomposing in fields among their personal belongings, have turned initial shock and sorrow after Thursday's disaster into anger.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said an Australian investigation team was in Kiev but had been unable to travel to the site. He said there had been some improvement with the Ukrainian government offering access.

"But there's still a hell of a long way to go before anyone could be satisfied with the way that site is being treated," Abbott said. "It's more like a garden cleanup than a forensic investigation. This is completely unacceptable."

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Pinoys on downed MH17 plane were 'chance passengers'

MANILA – The Filipinos who boarded the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 were apparently ''chance passengers'', one of their relatives said.

Malen Pabellon, sister-in-law of MH17 fatality Irene Pabellon-Gunawan, said her sister-in-law and family were actually chance passengers of the Malaysian plane, which crashed on Ukraine's volatile eastern region last July 17 after being shot down.

Malen said Irene's husband, Indonesian Budy Janto Gunawan, insisted that he, Irene, and their two children, Sheryll Shania and Darryl Dwight, fly together.

''Nasa airport na ang kanilang bagahe pero nag-iintay pa sila [ng available flight]. Chance passengers sila. Ayaw pumayag ng mister na hindi sila sama-sama kasi kulang sa upuan,'' Malen told ABS-CBN's Umagang Kay Ganda.

The Gunawan family was en route to Manila via Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when their plane was shot down while it was above eastern Ukraine. They were among the 298 people on board the plane who perished in the tragedy.

World leaders have called for a transparent investigation to determine which party was responsible for the downing of the plane.

The US and Ukrainian governments believe the Russian-backed separatists were responsible for shooting down the plane using arms supplied by the Russian government.

Russia has denied any involvement in the incident.

Some members of the Pabellon family are set to fly to the Netherlands. They have been told that at least one of them may have to fly to Ukraine to personally identify the bodies of their loved ones.

Reluctant to fly to Ukraine and preferring that the bodies be brought to the Netherlands instead, the Pabellons said they are aware of the situation in Ukraine's eastern portion.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Emirates calls for airlines summit on 'outrageous' MH17 attack

PARIS - The head of one of the world's largest airlines has called for an international meeting of carriers to agree a response to the downing of a Malaysian airliner, including a potential rethink of the threats posed by regional conflicts.

Tim Clark, president of Dubai's Emirates, the world's largest international airline by number of passengers, also said domestic regulators worldwide may decide to be more involved in giving their carriers guidance on where it is safe to fly.

"The international airline community needs to respond as an entity, saying this is absolutely not acceptable and outrageous, and that it won't tolerate being targeted in internecine regional conflicts that have nothing to do with airlines," Clark told Reuters in a telephone interview.

He said the International Air Transport Association could call an international conference to see what changes need to made in the way the industry tackles regional instability.

The head of the Geneva-based group, which represents about 200 global airlines, said last week they depended on governments and air traffic agencies to advise which airspace is available.

But Clark - who described himself as "incandescent with rage" when he heard of the attack on the airliner and its almost 300 passengers - said IATA and a United Nations body, the International Civil Aviation Organization, could take action.

"If you go East to West or vice-versa between Europe and Asia, you are likely to run into areas of conflict," Clark said.

"We have traditionally been able to manage this. Tripoli and Kabul were attacked, Karachi was attacked and we have protocols and contingencies and procedures to deal with this," he said.

"That was up until three days ago. Now I think there will have to be new protocols and it will be up to ICAO and IATA and the aviation community to sort out what the protocols have to be."

He dismissed suggestions that airliners should be equipped with anti-missile devices, an idea previously aired when an Airbus A300 cargo plane was struck by a shoulder-launched missile after taking off from Baghdad in 2003.

"Some people say planes should be armed with counter devices. That will go absolutely nowhere. If we can't operate aircraft in a free and unencumbered manner without the threat of being taken down, then we shouldn't be operating at all."

MORE ADVISORIES

A spokesman for IATA was not immediately available for comment but industry sources said it was consulting airlines.

Founded in Havana in 1945, IATA began as a quasi-official body and helped to shape the modern aviation industry.

It has evolved into an industry lobbying group while maintaining a role in setting standards - including the urgent search for better tracking systems after the disappearance of another Malaysia Airlines jet, MH370, in March this year.

The U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization oversees aviation as one of the many diplomatic organizations born out of World War II, but has few direct policing powers and does not have the right to open or close national airspace.

"They can't (close airspace), but they can issue advisories and they may be a little more active," Clark said.

Additionally, he said, national regulators "may start getting involved a little more than they have. They have perhaps left airlines to their own devices".

He said he was not aware of any warnings from outside the industry about the escalating threat in Ukraine, which would change the way airlines think about ground-based conflicts and the risk of flying over some of the world's flashpoints.

"Yes, the airline industry was aware there was shooting at a low level and assumed these were low-grade surface-to-air weapons," he said.

"This was wrong as we now know. Nobody in their wildest dreams thought anybody could have done (such a) calculating act of mass murder."

Clark, who is viewed as one of the airline industry's most influential leaders, said the Ukraine disaster should not be allowed to eclipse or diminish efforts to find MH370, an identical Boeing 777 which disappeared with 239 people on board.

The disasters, and with them more than 500 deaths, have plunged the industry into intense introspection that is expected to lead to changes in the way passenger aircraft and the threats surrounding them are monitored and assessed.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

US believes Russia gave rebels missiles that downed MH17 - report

WASHINGTON - The United States believes Moscow provided Ukrainian rebels with the missile launchers that downed Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, and moved them back into Russia after it was hit, US newspapers reported late Saturday.

A US official speaking on condition of anonymity told the Washington Post intelligence services were "starting to get indications... a little more than a week ago" that three Russian launchers had been moved into Ukraine.

The Post said Vitaly Nayda, Ukraine's counterintelligence chief, had photographs and related evidence that three Buk M-1 antiaircraft missile systems moved from rebel-held territory into Russia early Friday, less than 12 hours after the plane was downed.

"We do believe they were trying to move back into Russia at least three Buk [missile launch] systems," the US official told the Post.

Kiev has accused the pro-Moscow militias of using a Russian-supplied Buk system to down the jet after confusing it with a Ukrainian military transporter.

According to Nayda, two antiaircraft systems were spotted entering Russia at 2 am Friday, one with its full complement of four missiles but the other apparently missing a missile.

Two hours later, at 4 am, Nayda said a convoy of vehicles that included one of the launchers crossed into Russia.

The Buk systems, also known as the SA-11 Gadfly, are self-propelled tracked vehicles that carry surface to air missiles.

US President Barack Obama and major world leaders believe the Malaysia Airlines jet was blown out of the sky at 33,000 feet (10,000 metres) by a sophisticated surface-to-air missile fired from rebel-controlled territory.

The attack killed all 298 people on board.

Ukraine accuses Russia of helping the militias to hide and destroy key evidence that could prove their alleged involvement.

"The assumption is they're trying to remove evidence of what they did," an unnamed senior US official told The Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ also quoted the official as saying new US intelligence assessments indicate Moscow likely provided pro-Russia separatists with sophisticated antiaircraft systems in recent days, matching the evidence put forward by Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejects all charges of providing funding or military support to the pro-Russian insurgents, and blames Ukrainian authorities for the tragedy.

Rebel commanders have also denied being in possession of any functioning Buk systems.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Malaysia Airlines jet crash insurance may be complex, lengthy

NEW YORK - Insurance on the Malaysian airliner brought down over Ukraine is likely to pay out relatively quickly if the cause of the crash is determined, but observers say settling insurance for the loss of 298 lives and other liability could be complex and lengthy.

Malaysia Airlines said flight MH-17 disappeared at 1415 GMT as it flew over eastern Ukraine toward the Russian border, bound for Asia. Flight tracking data indicated it was cruising at 33,000 feet when it lost contact with air traffic controllers, apparently struck by a missile.

It should be fairly easy for investigators to determine whether the plane was hit by a missile or blew up for some other reason, said Robert Cohn, an aviation attorney and partner at Hogan Lovells in Washington, D.C.

"Then the interesting issue is who do you go after as the malefactors?" he said. "Are you going to sue a rebel?"

Ukraine accused "terrorists" - militants fighting to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia - of shooting down the Boeing 777 with a Soviet-era SA-11 ground-to-air missile as it flew from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Leaders of the pro-Russian Donetsk People's Republic rebels denied any involvement, although around the same time their military commander said his forces had downed a Ukrainian transport plane.

INSURANCE COVER

Which insurers are on the hook for losses, which are usually spread across a wide number of players, depends on whether the downing is considered to have been due to a hostile act.

AGCS, a division of Germany's Allianz SE, is the lead reinsurer covering the aircraft, which London-based insurance broker Aon Plc has valued at about $97.3 million. AGCS is also the lead liability reinsurer for Malaysian Airlines, the company said in a statement.

"(But) if reports that the plane was shot down are verified, the aircraft loss will be borne by the niche aviation war market, which has recently been pummeled by a series of losses," Barclays bank said in a research note.

Fighting at the Tripoli Airport in Libya this week saw $200 million to $400 million in damages to aircraft, the bank said.

Atrium Underwriting Group leads the war policy covering Malaysia Airlines, Barclays said. An Atrium spokesman declined to comment.

Reinsurance cover for airline fleets is usually split between several of the sector's leading companies, which include Munich Re, Swiss Re and Hannover Re .

Hannover Re said it shared some of the reinsurance coverage for the aircraft but declined to offer details.

"In view of the high number of casualties, it would not be appropriate to release numbers now," a Hannover Re spokesman said.

Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, declined to comment, as did second-largest Swiss Re.

Willis Group Holdings, reported by Bloomberg to have brokered the policy, confirmed that Malaysia Airlines was a client.

In some ways, the investigation will mirror the search for the Malaysia Airlines flight that went missing in March, when Malaysia had jurisdiction and other countries assisted.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which often investigates air accidents overseas and must be invited to join, said it was still determining its possible involvement in probing the Ukraine loss.

"We are communicating with other government agencies and evaluating what our role will be," the agency said in a statement.

U.S. and European air regulators warned in April that airlines should avoid flying over the Crimean Peninsula and parts of Ukraine.

However, some airlines were routinely flying over the northern part of Ukraine, said Mark Duell, vice president of operations at FlightAware.com, a flight-tracking website.

Lufthansa AG, Air India and Malaysia Airlines are among the airlines that have flown there, according to FlightAware's data.

"It doesn't seem anyone's been avoiding Ukraine," Duell said. "I don't see airlines going over Crimea, but I don't see anyone avoiding the rest of Ukraine."

However some international airlines, including Australia's Qantas Airways and Korea's two major carriers, said on Friday that they had already shifted routes to avoid Ukrainian air space due to the conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels.

Cohn said he expected regulators to issue broader warnings about Ukraine airspace, and that airlines would be more cautious in the area even if regulators did not expand such warnings.

China's civil aviation authorities on Friday ordered Chinese aircraft flying over Ukraine to avoid the country's eastern airspace, state news agency Xinhua reported.

On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said U.S. airlines "have voluntarily agreed not to operate in the airspace near the Russian-Ukraine border".

"The FAA is monitoring the situation to determine whether further guidance is necessary," the agency said.

Several airlines, including Turkish Airlines, have since announced they would avoid Ukrainian airspace.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Inside Malaysia Airlines, tears and shock as tragedy strikes again

KUALA LUMPUR - It started with another late-night phone call, another rush to the airport, where familiar faces in a familiar setting tried to make sense of nearly 300 more lives lost in the second disaster to strike Malaysia Airlines in the space of just a few months.

For a company and a nation still struggling to come to terms with the unsolved disappearance of Flight MH370 on March 8, Thursday's apparent shooting down of another Boeing 777 over eastern Ukraine was a devastating blow.

"For something like this to happen, just four months after MH370, just when we were beginning to get on with life, it is just very difficult to take," one airline executive told Reuters at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport, sobbing as he spoke.

"You can't imagine how draining it is, how emotional it is. Everyone can't believe this is happening again, we are going through all of the emotions once again."

After the earlier tragedy, politicians and airline officials were slow to acknowledge the plane had gone missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and then gave confusing, sometimes contradictory statements.

On Thursday, the news began to filter in just after 11 p.m. local time that something had gone wrong with Flight MH17 scheduled from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Soon after, Malaysian Airline System Bhd executives were awakened and dispatched to the airport to help set up emergency operations, according to interviews with company officials.

"When we entered the room, we looked around and saw the same colleagues, the same familiar faces, that we saw during MH370," said one government official. "And almost everyone was sighing. Gosh, we could not believe that something like this was happening once again."

By 11:30 p.m., Malaysia Airlines (MAS) officials knew from television footage and then confirmation from Ukraine authorities that the plane had gone down. The airline announced on its official Twitter feed that it had lost contact with the aircraft - a change from the March disaster when it was roundly criticised for waiting six hours before acknowledging MH370 was missing.

Before midnight, the officials realized that the 298 passengers and crew were most likely dead.

"People knew the drill this time around - everyone was focused on what they had to do," the government official said. "MAS, the government, the different agencies, the politicians. Everyone had a role and they knew what it was."

PRE-DAWN CALL

This time, the decision was made early that there would be only one spokesperson - Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai, who was had only been appointed late last month.

Before dawn, Prime Minister Najib Razak spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama and issued a detailed statement spelling out what had happened and vowing swift justice for the perpetrators.

"We were better prepared for this, we got the statements out fast and verified everything quickly," a second government official said.

Oliver McGee, a former senior U.S. Transportation Department official, said it was unprecedented for a commercial airline to suffer two tragedies in such rapid succession with more than 530 people dead.

"Malaysia Airlines is now in the fog of the greatest crisis in international aviation safety and security history," McGee said. "I don't see how Malaysia is going to recover from this as a firm."

Defense Minister and former Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, the public face of the government during the MH370 crisis, tweeted early Friday morning that he was asking the military to confirm reports that the aircraft had been shot down.

"MH17: If indeed our plane was brought down, those responsible WILL be brought to justice!" he wrote.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com