On their way to Australia to personally meet tomorrow with officials involved in the mega search, the group wants to clarify with those from the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre and the Australian Transport Safety Board as well as the crew of the Dutch Fugro ship, if new debris discovered on the African coast were new leads that should be pursued despite a deadline to suspend the search by year end if no new evidence cropped up.
They also want to discuss with relevant authorities if the search could be continued in a more economical manner as it has so far cost a staggering AUD170 million, The Australian reported.
Among those in the group is Malaysian Grace Nathan, whose mother Anne Daisy, was on board the aircraft when it went off the radar on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
“Malaysia is not as gung-ho as Australia (about finding the aircraft). We want to know if Malaysia does relinquish control of the investigation, if there is another (nation) willing to agree to take over,” she said.
Grace added, “We are hoping that by meeting Fugro and the ATSB, it might help us to understand what comes next and what we can do, as the next of kin group, to help push for the search to go on.”
The families will also meet University of Western Australia professor of coastal oceanography Charitha Pattiaratchi and Alec Duncan, an expert in underwater acoustics, at Perth’s Curtin University, The Australian reported.
Grace meanwhile voiced her dissatisfaction with Malaysian authorities, who she claimed wanted to put the entire tragedy behind them rather than forge ahead to find the final resting place of the wreckage.
“Malaysian authorities don’t talk to us at all. Australian authorities have made the time to meet and talk to us,” Grace said.
“When we spoke to them (ATSB and JACC officials) in July, they told us they were hoping to continue the search.
“They were hoping, even if the contract with Fugro was not renewed, that someone else would take over … they wanted the search to continue.”
Unable to accept that her mother is gone for good, Grace said other grieving family members like her needed to know everything about the tragedy including the “who, what, where and why.”
“We want to know what (investigators) are doing to look for this credible information or if they are just going to wait for it to fall out of the sky?
“For example, there’s been a sudden increase in debris signs and we are wondering if that constitutes new leads. The only way to find something out is to go to the Australians.”
On July 22, transport ministers from Malaysia, China and Australia announced that if the aircraft could not be located in the present 120,000sq km search area, the search would be suspended unless “credible new evidence leading to the identification of a specific location of the aircraft” cropped up.