Airliner search brings Vietnam request

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) yesterday requested to enter Cambodian airspace to search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

In an email sent to the State Secretariat for Civil Aviation Cambodia (SSCA), Lai Xuan Thanh, director general at the CAAV, requested permission to enter the Kingdom’s flight information region (FRI) in search of the missing Boeing 777.

One Vietnamese Air Force 19-seater DeHavilland Twin Otter (DHC-6) aircraft was asked to enter the area located to the west of Phu Quoc Island to conduct a search and rescue operation for MAS370 over a 30-kilometre stretch of sea.

Cambodia’s aviation authority approved the request soon after in a return email.

Keo Sivorn, director general at the SSCA, could not say if Vietnam believed the missing airplane was inside Cambodian waters.

MAS370 was carrying 239 passengers when it disappeared from radar early on Saturday morning en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

“The Vietnamese government is making sure to search and scan all possible areas before they announce an end to their search,” Sivorn said.

Sivorn, at 6pm last night, said Vietnam’s search within Cambodian waters had not found anything.

The email follows reports from Agence France-Presse suggesting Vietnam was scaling down its search and rescue operations while other search teams focused their eye on the West Peninsular of Malaysia and into the Andaman Sea above Indonesia.

The CAAV could not be reached.