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Missing Malaysian plane undergoes maintenance before flight, no safety issues found: carrier

(Xinhua)    13:16, March 11, 2014
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KUALA LUMPUR, March 11 -- The Malaysia Airlines aircraft that vanished Saturday morning on its way to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur underwent maintenance about two weeks ago, with no safety problems found, the carrier announced Tuesday morning.

"The Boeing 777-200 aircraft that operated MH370 underwent maintenance 10 days before this particular flight. The next check is due on June 19. The maintenance was conducted at the KLIA ( Kuala Lumpur International Airport) hangar and there were no issues on the health of the aircraft," Malaysia Airlines said in its latest statement.

The aircraft was delivered to Malaysia Airlines in 2002 and has since recorded 53,465.21 hours with a total of 7,275 cycles, according to the statement.

Contact with the flight, with 227 passengers and 12 crew on board, was lost along with radar signal at 1:20 a.m. local time on Saturday, less than an hour after it took off from the KLIA. The last known position of the plane before it disappeared off the radar is above the waters south of Vietnam.

The search and rescue teams have expanded the scope beyond the flight path, with the focus now on the West Peninsular of Malaysia at the Straits of Malacca, said the statement, adding apart from the search in the sea, search on land in between these areas is also conducted.

"The authorities are looking at a possibility of an attempt made by MH370 to turn back to Subang. All angels are being looked at. We are not ruling out any possibilities," it said.

The airline also said it is working closely with Chinese government officials on emergency management and matters related to families of passengers on the missing plane in Kuala Lumpur.

The first batch of family members of the passengers arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Beijing on Tuesday morning. According to the joint working group of the Chinese government who received the family members at the KLIA, they include nine Chinese and three Indians.

Dozens of aircraft and ships sent by about 10 countries have participated in the search and rescue mission for the missing flight. However, the multinational efforts so far have yielded little results.

(Editor:SunZhao、Gao Yinan)

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