Air Niugini’s Boeing 737-800 aircraft P2-PXE landed short of the runway and on a lagoon on September 28 in Chuuk, Micronesia. (Source: Twitter) Jakarta (VNA) – There are four Vietnamese citizens among passengers aboard a plane of Papua New Guinea’s Air Niugini that missed the runway on September 28, according to the Vietnamese Embassy in Indonesia. The Department of Consular Affairs under the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry has coordinated with Vietnamese Embassies in Indonesia and the Philippines as well as domestic and foreign competent agencies to support and complete necessary procedures to soon bring the citizens home. Air Niugini’s Boeing 737-800 aircraft P2-PXE landed short of the runway and on a lagoon on September 28 in Chuuk, Micronesia. Early reports indicate very poor visibility at the time due to bad weather, and the aircraft came to rest in the water 145 metres from the runway, Air Niugini, the national carrier of Papua New Guinea said in a … [Read more...] about Four Vietnamese aboard Papua New Guinea’s plane overshooting runway
Missing plane
Indonesia: Plane with nine aboard goes missing
Illustrative image (Source: worldbulletin.net) Jakarta (VNA) – A small plane carrying nine people, including one child, on board went missing on August 11, during a short flight over a mountainous region in Papua province, eastern Indonesia, authorities said. According to Bintang regency police chief Michael Mumbunan, villagers in Okatem reported that they heard a loud roar from the plane followed by a big explosion. Search and rescue teams have been deployed but it will take them up to three hours to reach the suspected crash site by foot, he added. The plane belongs to Dimonim Air, a private company operating charter flights in and around Papua province. Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands but has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered several fatal crashes in recent years. Papua is a particularly difficult area to reach. Five people died after a small plane crashed near Wamena in Papua province in July last year. … [Read more...] about Indonesia: Plane with nine aboard goes missing
Missing Malaysia flight MH370: Aviation chief quits over failings
Malaysia's civil aviation chief has quit after a report into the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 found failures by air traffic control. The official report into missing flight MH370 says the plane may have been "manipulated" off course -- Photo: EPA Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the official report, released on Monday, highlighted lapses by controllers in relation to emergency procedures. The passenger jet had been missing, the report said, for about 20 minutes before authorities sent an alert. The aircraft mysteriously disappeared in 2014 with 239 people on board. It was flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur and is believed to have plunged into the southern Indian Ocean. An official search ended in May, although Malaysia's new government has said it might resume the search if more credible evidence emerges. What did the report say? It said that while there was evidence of "unlawful interference by a third party", meaning that the plane may have been manipulated off … [Read more...] about Missing Malaysia flight MH370: Aviation chief quits over failings
Report raises possibility of third party intervention in missing flight MH370
Overview of the press conference (Photo: The Guardian) Hanoi (VNA) – Malaysian authorities released a report on July 30 on the disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which includes the possibility of "intervention by a third party." In a press conference providing the information of the flight’s pilots, Chief Investigator Kok Soo Chon said that there was no evidence of abnormal behaviour or stress in the two pilots that could have led them to hijack the plane. "We are not of the opinion that it could be an event committed by the pilots," Kok said. He added that the captain of the flight, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, married with three children, is an experienced pilot with 18,000 hours of flying. "We cannot rule out unlawful interference by a third party," such as someone holding the pilots hostage, he said. However he added that no group has claimed to have hijacked the plane and no ransom demands have been made, compounding the mystery. The plane carrying 239 … [Read more...] about Report raises possibility of third party intervention in missing flight MH370
Time now the enemy in battle to find missing GIs in jungles of Vietnam
Seventeen years earlier, Johnson’s father died in a helicopter crash on a similar mission to find some of the 1,600 U.S. servicemen and women killed in the Vietnam War whose bodies have still not been located. “The last time (my mother) had a family member here, he didn’t come back, so she was kind of nervous,” said 26-year-old Johnson, a radio frequency transmission systems technician stationed in Japan with the U.S. Air Force. In an unlikely twist of fate, Johnson was assigned to help recover the remains of a Marine pilot whose plane crashed during a night mission in central Quang Ngai province in 1966. She spent weeks scouring the forest for bone shards or tooth fragments, learning a few words of Vietnamese, the same work her father, U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Tommy Murphy, did before he died in 2001. He was among seven Americans and nine Vietnamese killed when their helicopter slammed into the side of a mountain in bad weather. Johnson said her trip was … [Read more...] about Time now the enemy in battle to find missing GIs in jungles of Vietnam