PCG not taking part in search for missing Malaysian plane
This photo provided by Laurent Errera taken Dec. 26, 2011, shows the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER that disappeared from air traffic control screens Saturday, taking off from Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport in France.
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine Coast Guard is not deploying any of its search-and-rescue vessels to take part in the massive multinational search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner in the southern coast of Vietnam.
Commander Armand Balilo, the PCG spokesperson, issued this clarification on Sunday as he disputed some reports that the PCG would participate in the effort to locate MA flight 370, which reportedly disappeared from radar on Saturday morning while flying near Vietnam’s Tho Chu island.
“That area is too far from the command’s base of operations,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Balilo, also chief of the Coast Guard’s public affairs office, however, said they have been “closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with the Vietnamese Coast Guard.”
The fate of the Malaysian passenger jet en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing remains unknown to date.
According to CNN, “the closest thing to clues in the search for the missing plane are oil slicks in the Gulf of Thailand, about 90 miles off Tho Chu island, the same area where the flight disappeared early Saturday morning.”
A Vietnamese reconnaissance plane had reported the oil slicks were between six and nine miles long.
Originally posted at 02:29 pm | Sunday, March 9, 2014
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