MH370: Sad reminders 6 months on
Print Edition
A father clutches his daughter’s teddy bears, a woman holds her husband’s car key, a newly-wed shows off a bedroom decorated for children yet to be born. Six months on, loved ones of passengers on a missing Malaysian airliner derive what comfort they can going forward from what’s left behind.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, with 239 mostly Chinese people on board, disappeared on March 8 about an hour into a journey from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in the world’s greatest aviation mystery.
More than two dozen countries have been involved in the air, sea and underwater search for the Boeing 777 but months of sorties have failed to turn up any trace — even after narrowing the search area to the southern Indian Ocean — long after batteries on the black box voice and data recorders had gone flat.
Satellite pictures revealed debris analyzed endlessly in the media, leads which were fruitless.
The lack of news meant many families for a while clung to the hope that the plane landed somewhere safely and their loved ones were still alive.
Then Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak somberly announced that, based on fresh analysis of satellite data, the jet had ended its journey in the remote southern Indian Ocean.
At the Beijing hotel where many of the relatives were staying, family members erupted in shouts and tears, in some cases dropping to the floor.
“It’s not possible, it’s not possible!” one woman screamed before collapsing.
In many cases, dashed hopes turned to anger, with overwrought relatives turning on Malaysian and Chinese authorities, shouting at briefings and throwing water bottles, blaming them for the slow progress in tracking down the plane.
One Chinese woman said she couldn’t go out without taking her missing sister’s handbag with her. Another agonized over the last phone call she had with her missing husband was an argument. His tea cup stays put on a desk, covered in dust.
The focus of investigations varied over the months after clearing all 227 passengers of possible involvement in hijacking, sabotage or having personal or psychological problems that could have been connected to the disappearance.
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