Nothing was said about the debris spotted from that Hong Kong plane? WTH?
This is so bizarre.
Maybe authorities are not saying anything this time until it is fully checked out -- too many false hopes.
Nothing was said about the debris spotted from that Hong Kong plane? WTH?
This is so bizarre.
Heh! You'd think that Mr. Ali might wonder why the passport was for someone named Luigi. :floorlaugh:
He's asked by reports what the men travelling on stolen passports do look like - he replies that they look like Italian footballer Mario Balotelli.
Asked if they are black, he replies: "Yes," but says he does "not want to dwell" on the question.
In a just concluded press conference, authorities said they are investigating possibility that two dubious passengers are part of a stolen passport syndicate.
Department of Civil Aviation Director-General Azharuddin Abdul Rahman confirmed the men DID NOT look Asian. Asked what they looked like, he replied: "Do you know Balotelli (the famous Italian footballer). They look like Balotelli."
In the press conference, it was suggested that the passengers with stolen passports looked like "Balotelli" (Italian soccer player)
well that's a whole other thing - I thought they had said he had Asian features
http://www.theguardian.com/world/bl...-370-search-continues-live-updates?CMP=twt_gu
A Thai travel agent who booked the men with stolen passports onto the missing plane, has told the FT that the tickets were arranged with an Iranian contact on behalf of clients looking for cheap tickets to Europe.
Benjaporn Krutnait, owner of the Grand Horizon travel agency in Pattaya, Thailand, said the Iranian, a long-term business contact who she knew only as Mr Ali, first asked her to book cheap tickets to Europe for the two men on March 1. Ms Benjaporn initially reserved one of the men on a Qatar Airways flight and the other on Etihad.
But the tickets expired when Ms Benjaporn did not hear back from Mr Ali. When he contacted her again on Thursday, she rebooked the men on the Malaysia Airlines flight through Beijing because it was the cheapest available. Ms Benjaporn booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines via a code share arrangement.
A friend of Mr Ali paid Ms Benjaporn cash for the tickets, she said, adding that it was quite common for people to book tickets in Pattaya through middle men such as Mr Ali, who then take a commission.
they haven't confirmed that and in one report I read they actually denied saying they were Asian in appearance....
I wonder why they are not telling us what ethnicity these guys had, as they have them on cctv....
think they are withholding a fair bit on info until they are more sure of things....
If these guys are in fact Iranian, then there could be all kinds of accusations and assumptions made.
Electronic booking records show that one-way flight tickets with those names [Christian Kozel and Luigi Maraldi] -.. The ticket purchases reportedly took place almost simultaneously, and the tickets were numbered consecutively, according to the BBC.
A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline confirmed Sunday that passengers named Maraldi and Kozel had also bought one-way tickets on a KLM flight that departed from Beijing for Amsterdam on Saturday. Maraldi was to fly on to Copenhagen, Denmark, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany.
She said the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, but she had no information on where they bought them.
As holders of EU passports with onward flights to Europe, the passengers would not have needed visas for China.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/0...thought-to-be-from-missing-malaysia-airlines/
Of course we know. It was Al-Qaeda.
Would it be possible for the plane to drop below the radar and then take off for North Korea without being detected?
INTERPOL confirms at least two stolen passports used by passengers on missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 were registered in its databases
http://www.interpol.int/News-and-media/News/2014/N2014-038
snippets
No checks of the stolen Austrian and Italian passports were made by any country between the time they were entered into INTERPOLs database and the departure of flight MH 370. At this time, INTERPOL is therefore unable to determine on how many other occasions these passports were used to board flights or cross borders.
Last year passengers were able to board planes more than a billion times without having their passports screened against INTERPOL's databases.
If Malaysia Airlines and all airlines worldwide were able to check the passport details of prospective passengers against INTERPOL's database, then we would not have to speculate whether stolen passports were used by terrorists to board MH 370. We would know that stolen passports were not used by any of the passengers to board that flight, said Secretary General Noble.
For the sake of innocent passengers who go through invasive security measures prior to boarding flights in order to get to their destination safely, I sincerely hope that governments and airlines worldwide will learn from the tragedy of missing flight MH 370 and begin to screen all passengers passports prior to allowing them to board flights. Doing so will indeed take us a step closer to ensuring safer travel, concluded the head of INTERPOL.