Families of 12 passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have sued the carrier and the government, days before the deadline for legal action expires. The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board, on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the international investigation team looking into the disappearance will issue a statement on the second anniversary of the event.
Reuters reported that family members of two Ukrainian passengers aboard the flight moved the Malaysian High Court against the airline. The families of a Russian, a Chinese and eight Malaysian passengers have also filed suits against the Malaysian government, the airline, the Civil Aviation Department director-general and the Malaysian air force, seeking unspecified damages for negligence, breach of contract and breach of statutory duty. On Friday, the Malaysian High Court also entertained a petition filed by the government and Malaysia Airlines Berhad, asking the court to quash a suit filed by two teenage children of two passengers.
So far, there has been scarce information regarding the missing aircraft or its passengers. It is believed that it crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, far off Australia’s west coast, about 3,700 miles (6,000 km) to the east of Mozambique, reported The Guardian. However, debris from the plane would have been carried by currents to the the east coast of Africa over the years. Australia is currently analysing a piece of metal that washed up on a beach in Mozambique last week, to determine whether it came from to the missing aircraft. The object was discovered in a sandbank in the Mozambique Channel, in the same region of the southern Indian Ocean where the sole confirmed piece of debris from the flight – a flaperon – was found last July.
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