Families of missing MH370 passengers to offer reward for information

Monday, 9 June 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Perth|Reuters: Five families of passengers onboard missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 plan to launch a campaign to raise money as a reward for information on the jetliner, local media reported. The families come from Australia, New Zealand, India, France and the United States. About two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese. Their aim is to raise a $2.8 million (A$ 3 million) via crowdfunding website, Indiegogo, as a reward for anyone who brings forward critical information surrounding the missing airliner, local media said.

The Boeing 777 plane, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing three months ago. Danca Weeks’s husband, New-Zealand-born Paul Weeks, was one of the passengers. Weeks and other passengers’ families have grown increasingly frustrated with the search and have complained that authorities have not provided enough information. “We’ve been cut off so many times at the gate that we’re just now having to take things into our own hands, think outside the box and just try and do something to find this plane,” she told the Australian Network Ten on Sunday (June 8). “We just think someone knows something. You know, there’s been so many, so much contradicting information coming from the investigation,” Weeks added. The relatives want to raise a further $1.8 million (A$ 2 million) to pay for private investigators. On May 29, Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said officials remained confident the jet is somewhere in the Southern Indian Ocean despite searchers saying wreckage was not on the seabed in the area they had identified. The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane’s black box recorders were heard near where analysis of satellite data put its last location, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia. The most extensive search in aviation history has so far failed to find any trace of the plane. The campaign “Reward MH370” will officially launch on Monday (June 9).