Families of Flight MH370 victims offer reward for debris

Antananarivo, December 5

Anyone who finds a piece of debris from a Malaysia Airlines plane that is believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean in 2014 could receive a financial reward, relatives of those who were on the plane said on Monday in Madagascar.

A group of relatives who travelled to the island nation off the southeast coast of Africa made the offer in hopes that residents will scour some coastal areas of Madagascar, where possible parts of Flight MH370 washed ashore.

Meanwhile, a Malaysian official investigating the disappearance of the Boeing 777 was in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, to pick up debris that has already been found and will be analysed to see if it came from the aircraft.

“The more debris we find, the easier it will be to find where the crash happened,” said Ghislain Wattrelos, a Frenchman who lost his wife and two of his three children when the plane deviated from its flight path from Malaysia to Beijing and vanished on March 8, 2014.

Malaysia, Australia and China are close to completing a deep-sea sonar search, so far unsuccessful, of 120,000 square kilometres off Australia’s southwest coast in the Indian Ocean.

They say they will suspend operations if there is no new evidence that could help pinpoint the crash site. Relatives of the missing believe the search should continue.

Wattrelos, as well as two people who lost their mothers on the flight Grace Nathan of Malaysia and Jiang Hui of China spoke at a news conference in Antananarivo.

They did not specify how much money might be given to someone who finds a confirmed piece of Flight MH370, saying it depends on the significance of the debris and the limited resources of the families.

“Everything is funded by us,” said Wattrelos, a business executive.

That includes the cost of flights, accommodation and other expenses that the relatives are spending on a weeklong trip to Madagascar, which will include travel to coastal areas where plane debris may have washed up after drifting across the ocean. — AP