Wednesday, March 26, 2014
BEIJING (AP) — The PowerPoint presentation wasn't enough. The analysis by British investigators that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was lost at sea wasn't enough. The relatives of Chinese passengers gathered in a hotel banquet hall today were still skeptical — and hostile.
"It's all lies. Not a shred of truth!" said a man who identified himself as Mr. Zhang from the Chinese city of Harbin. He said afterward that he had wanted to pummel everyone giving the presentation — a delegation of Malaysian government and airline officials.
The officials came to Beijing a day after China demanded more details on how the missing plane was pronounced lost, and after Chinese authorities allowed the relatives to vent frustrations in a rare public march Tuesday to Malaysia's embassy in Beijing to denounce that country's handling of the disappearance.
Before an audience of several hundred relatives and their supporters, the Malaysian delegation read a report by investigators from Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch concluding the plane went down in the southern Indian Ocean based on faint signals — or pings — from the plane to a British satellite.