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being added to the travelling population, the chances of detection gets much reduced when screening measures are not complied with. The MH370 incident highlights just how often breaches in controls are occurring and where precisely the routine and regular lapses are in verification systems. These vulnerabilities in the system are most likely, now at least, to have been identified and exploited by traffickers and terror groups. It has emerged that the two passengers, who impersonated the bona fide passport holders and boarded MH370, had allegedly bought their tickets at the same time in Thailand. The passports they used were also allegedly stolen in Thailand, in the previous two years. With this in mind, the disappearance of MH370 has raised difficult questions about security protocol at airports in Malaysia. The Immigration Department and the Department of Civil Aviation in Malaysia, are yet to come up with proper answers as to how two men with questionable documents could have gotten on-board the flight without being detected. It clearly raises concern about passport checks and immigration controls. The Preliminary Report by the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents, Ministry of Transport, Malaysia, dated April 9 2014, did not make mention of the passenger and passport investigations. The focus of these issues also point to the counter personnel who had allowed the holders of two stolen passports through, after failing to identify and match their
@MH370 News, is an unofficial account tweeting news from a great range of media sources in the US, UK, Australia, Malaysia, and India. @AMSA, Australian Maritime Safety Authority is coordinating the search for the MH370 in the Indian Ocean. @H2OComms, is a feed set up to report news on the MH370 from Malaysia’s minister of defence and acting minister of transport Hishammuddin Hussein.
nationalities, as well as other details. It is obvious that the Airline and airport staff missed a number of ‘red flags’ prior to the take-off of MH370. Does 9/11 come to mind? The 9/11 Commission Report found that 19 hijackers got through security checkpoint systems assisted by false statements on visa applications, not recognising manipulated passports; not expanding no-fly lists to include names from terrorist watchlists; and not searching airline passengers identified by the computer-based CAPPS screening system.The two MH370 flight tickets that were bought with stolen passports were bought in Pattaya, Thailand. Furthermore, they were one-way tickets, they were paid in cash and they were numbered consecutively. The travel agent did not check booking numbers and did not check the passport serial numbers, nor did China Southern Airlines, which was the ticket issuer under a codeshare arrangement with Malaysian Airlines. The security lapses continued once the false passport holders arrived in Malaysia. The two stolen passports, reported to their Embassies, provided the serial numbers to be entered into an international database and made available to all airlines and border control agencies – this data is relatively easy to be checked. It should have been picked up at multiple points – by the travel agent, by China Southern Airlines or by the Malaysian border control authorities. Why there were so many lapses may be a red flag in itself. Just weeks before MH370 disappeared, the Director of
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