Countries ‘need to share information’

Nations involved in the search for the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that disappeared on Saturday must do a better job of sharing information and coordinating rescue efforts, Chinese experts said.

"Currently, there are no international conventions governing information-sharing and cooperation among countries in the search and rescue of ill-fated aircraft," Wang Ya'nan, an aviation expert in Beijing, told China Daily on Wednesday.

"The country that owns the airliner involved in an accident must take the responsibility of providing timely and accurate information to other nations and properly coordinating search efforts."

Other nations should also integrate their operations to make the hunt more efficient, he said.

Wang's remarks came amid criticism of Malaysian authorities' conflicting reports on whether military radar detected the jetliner in the northern Strait of Malacca.

General Rodzali Daud, head of the Royal Malaysian Air Force, denied on Wednesday a local media report that quoted him as saying that Flight MH370 was last detected by air force radar near the island of Pulau Perak, a short distance west of the mainland Thai-Malaysian border. The island is about 500 km west of the Boeing 777's last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand.

Daud also confirmed his statement made at a previous news conference that the air force has not ruled out the possibility of an air turn-back on a reciprocal heading before the jetliner vanished from radar.

The contradicting accounts of the two points of the jetliner's last radar reading have created a time gap of nearly 70 minutes, sparking confusion on when the plane actually disappeared.

Wang said, "Considering that the cruise speed of the aircraft could be around 900 km per hour, the inconsistency in Malaysian authorities' information will hinder the search operation."

He added that it is possible that military radar caught the jetliner's last position because such radar has stronger detection capability and a wider scanning range.

"But the key point is that Malaysians must release all the information they have in a timely manner, or other countries' searches will be a waste of time," he said.

Dozens of ships and planes from about 10 countries have been scouring the waters around the jetliner's last confirmed location, but no solid evidence to its fate has been found.

Wang Yu, president of the Naval Armaments Academy of the People's Liberation Army, said the international cooperation on maritime search and rescue must be expanded, and a multilateral coordination system should be set up to deal with emergencies on the sea.

Such a mechanism, already in place in Europe, can mobilize resources of all member nations to conduct search and rescues.

The Chinese newspaper Global Times said in an editorial on Wednesday that no one knows whether the chaotic information was caused by an intentional cover-up by the Malaysian military or poor coordination between the nation's civilian authorities and armed forces.

"We have seen many oversights in Malaysia's handling of this accident," the editorial said. "As the nation that has the largest number of passengers on board the aircraft, China is supposed to get access to more accurate information."

The newspaper suggested that Malaysia release the data to China to facilitate the search.

Qu Xing, president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that creating a mechanism to share post-disaster information is necessary.

"All Asian countries must learn from this search operation and cooperation," he said.

David Learmount, operations and safety editor of industry magazine Flightglobal, sharply criticized Malaysian authorities' handling of the case.

"It's bad enough for a wide-body jet to go missing with 239 people on board, but then for the responsible country's government and aviation agencies to handle the associated information with total incompetence is unforgivable," Learmount told AFP.

"There are so many information sources that do not appear to have been used effectively in this case," he said.

Zhao Shengnan and He Liu contributed to this story.