Malaysia Airlines CEO Christoph Mueller resigns

Mueller will finish in September, long before end of three-year contract, due to ‘changing personal circumstances’

Malaysia Airlines said on Tuesday its chief executive officer, Christoph Mueller, will leave his job in September, far ahead of the end of his three-year contract, due to “changing personal circumstances”.

MH370: debris found in Mauritius to be examined by investigators, Australia confirms

Mueller, a turnaround veteran, formally began his job last May to oversee a $1.56bn overhaul that included cutting 6,000 jobs and axing unprofitable routes.

“I am proud of what we have achieved as a team in such a short time unfortunately, personal circumstances will make it difficult for me to complete my full term,” Mueller said in a statement, without elaborating.

Mueller said he is confident the airline is on the right track to succeed in its next phase of growth under a new CEO.

The airline said it has begun searching for a new chief executive from a pool of internal and external candidates. It said Mueller would stay until September to ensure a smooth transition, and would remain a non-executive director.

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The national airline suffered years of financial losses before two disasters in 2014 — the disappearance of Flight 370 and the loss of another plane shot down over Ukraine. The airline was taken private by state investment agency Khazanah Nasional and Mueller was hired to oversee its overhaul.

Khazanah said in a separate statement that Mueller has put in place a strong management team and has helped lay the foundation for a sustained turnaround that has produced encouraging signs of progress.

In an interview with two weeks ago, Mueller described the airline as a “ship that has many leaks” but said things are back on the right track. He said the carrier recorded a profit in February, its first positive monthly result in years, and is on track to return to the black by 2018.

SOUTH AFRICA: South African teen Found Part Of MH370

A South African teenager vacationing in Mozambique may have found part of a wing from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which his family dismissed as "rubbish" and his mother nearly threw away, he said Friday.

On Dec. 30, Liam Lotter was strolling on a beach in southern Mozambique, near the resort town of Xai Xai, when he spotted a gray piece of debris washed up on the sand, he recalled. It had rivet holes along the edge and the number 676EB stamped on it, convincing him he had found a piece of an aircraft. So he dragged the piece back to his family's vacation home.

"It was so waterlogged at that time, it was quite heavy. I struggled to pick it up," he said. The curved piece of debris is about 3.3 feet long, and about half that length wide, his father Casper Lotter said.

His parents dismissed it as a "piece of rubbish" that was probably debris from a boat, with his uncle making fun of him for dragging it around, but the 18-year-old insisted on bringing it back to South Africa to research the fragment.

"He was adamant he wanted to bring it home because it had a number on it," said Casper Lotter, adding that his son is not an aviation enthusiast but was simply drawn to the piece of debris.

"It just grabbed him for some weird reason," the father said.

Back home in Wartburg in KwaZulu-Natal province, the piece was stored with the family's angling gear and almost forgotten as Lotter focused on his final year in high school. His mother even tried to throw it out, he said.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jet vanished with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

It was only when Lotter read about another piece of possible debris from the missing airliner also found in Mozambique, about 186 miles from where he had made his discovery, that he resumed his probe.

"I was very shocked - Mozambique, similar color, similar area," the teen said of the piece discovered by an American man. "He described it similarly to what I'm looking at right now."

Last week, Lotter's mother Candace contacted Australian aviation authorities and they said the number on the part indicates it may belong to a Boeing 777, according to Casper Lotter. Australian authorities contacted South African counterparts to have the part examined by experts.

The honeycomb structure indicates it is either the leading edge of a wing, or a horizontal stabilizer.

"We have arranged for collection of the part, which will be sent to Australia as they are the ones appointed by Malaysia to identify parts found," Kabelo Ledwaba, spokesman South African Civil Aviation Authority, wrote in a text message to the AP.

Last month, Blaine Gibson, a Seattle lawyer and part-time adventurer, found what could be a piece of tail section from the missing Malaysian airlines flight. The piece Gibson found had "NO STEP" written on it.

The 58-year-old's search for the missing jet has taken him to beaches in the Maldives, Mauritius, Cambodia, Burma, also known as Myanmar, and the French island of Reunion, he said. Gibson also travelled to Malaysia to attend a commemorative ceremony held on Sunday by the families of passengers on board the airliner.

The South African teenager hopes his find will help the grieving families, and inspire others who may have found fragments of the missing plane to hand them over to authorities.

He said he would be pleased "just for them to know that we're finding evidence, finding out how it happened, where it happened, just to give them some closure."

Hunter Says He Discovered Missing MH370 Near Cape of Good Hope

Officers carrying pieces of debris washed ashore in Saint-Andre de la Reunion, eastern La Reunion island, which was later confirmed as being from MH370

A UFO hunter claims to have found the missing MH370 plane in an eight-month-old Google satellite image.
Scott Waring believes an outline of a Boeing 777 can be seen beneath the water off the coast of Cape Town in South Africa.
He makes the claim almost two years since Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 disappeared killing 239 people on board.

Waring, who is editor of UFO Sightings Daily and well-known for his wild conspiracy theories, appears to suggest that the plane survived the mystery crash in one piece.
The site of the debris find is about 1,200 miles from Cape Town, he says.

'I was looking around the Cape of Good Hope for an old UFO sighting I found three years ago, and was hoping to make an update when I came across a shadow in the water, which resembled an airliner,' Waring writes on his blog.
'I used to work on B-1 bombers back at Ellsworth SD, at an SAC during my USAF days. I know a plane when I see one. I certainly crawled onto them and in them enough.
'The Google Earth photo is dated 27/6/2015, and it crashed on 8/3/2014,' he continued. 'It's had 16 months of moving about.'

'The Cape of Good Hope is going to have powerful currents moving around it with deep crevices, and since the photo on Google is eight months old, it could have moved 30-60km away if its semi-floating only 4-9 feet under the water,' he added.

'I know there is less than one per cent of one per cent of a chance that this is MH370, but it's better than we had five minutes ago right?
A global search team is still looking for the plane but is expected to stop its operations in June.

Earlier today, officials announced that a piece of debris found off the southeast African coast that could be from a missing Malaysia Airlines flight is being sent to Australia for testing.

A white, meter-long chunk of metal was found off the coast of Mozambique earlier this week by a U.S. adventurer who has been carrying out an independent search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

The debris will be tested by officials in Australia, with help from Malaysian authorities and representatives of manufacturer Boeing.
'It is too early to speculate on the origin of the debris at this stage,' Australian Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester told parliament.

However, the piece was found in 'a location consistent with drift modelling commissioned by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau', he said.
Chester's comments added to a fresh sense of optimism after Malaysia's transport minister, Liow Tiong Lai, said on Wednesday there was a 'high possibility' the metal chunk belonged to a 777 jet, the same type of aircraft as MH370.

Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.
It is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean and an initial search of a 60,000 square km (23,000 square miles) area of sea floor has been extended to another 60,000 square km.

A piece of the plane's wing washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, on the other side of Madagascar, in July 2015.
Voice370, a group representing families of those on board the missing plane, said the discovery meant the search must focus on the coastlines of Mozambique and Madagascar.

Widow Sues Malaysia Airlines For Shock

Family of Chong Ling Tan claims the airline was negligent and did not ensure the safety of the flight on which he died.

The widow and sons of a man who is among the lost passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are suing the airline for "nervous shock".

Yen Li Chong and sons Justin Jia Tian Tan and Javier Jia He Tan, who live in Australia, have filed a legal action in the state of Victoria, for unspecified damages.

Her husband, Chong Ling Tan, was travelling in business class cabin of the jet when it disappeared on a Kuala Lumpur to Beijing flight on 8 March, 2014.

The Chong family are suing Malaysia Airlines under the 1999 Montreal Convention, which establishes airline liability for accidents.

"The defendant is liable for such nervous shock sustained by the first, second and third plaintiffs as a result of the death of the deceased," the writ revealed.

It alleges that the "aircraft would not have disappeared" if the carrier had ensured the safety of the flight, that reasonable or adequate precautions were taken, and that the flight was "monitored and tracked at all times".

The nervous shock suffered by the 49-year-old widow and sons, now aged 19 and 15, was a "direct and foreseeable consequence of the disappearance of the defendant's aircraft", it added.

The action is not the first case involving MH370, which mysteriously vanished with 239 people on board almost two years ago.

A Malaysian family in In October 2014, sued the carrier for negligence over the plane's disappearance, in what was believed to be the first lawsuit filed over the disaster.

In January last year, Malaysia declared all those on board to be presumed dead, allowing relatives to seek compensation and closing the uncertainty friends and families felt.

A two-metre-long flaperon wing part that washed up on a beach on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion in July was later confirmed as part of the aircraft.