2nd Boeing Untracked, Same MH370 Region

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was possibly flown a route another Boeing did last year without telling officials, through the Maldives in the Indian Ocean, an event you probably never heard about and officials dare not mention regarding today’s missing Boeing. 

Officials said Saturday that MH370 sent pings seven hours after communications were manually turned off. The plane had fuel for five hours 50 minutes, the exact flight time from Kuala Lumpur to where another Boeing flew untracked in Jan 2013, proving serious lack of coordination of agencies dispensing critical information to aviation authorities.

“MH370 was fueled for a five hours 50 minutes scheduled flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing,” the New Straight Times reported Sunday.

“We have an indication [Flight MC370] plane went down in the Indian Ocean,” a senior Pentagon official said Friday, justifying sending the USS Kidd destroyer with helicopters aboard to Malacca Strait where it meets the Andaman Sea. 

In statements about the missing MH370 Boeing, officials omit how key agencies deliberately withheld critical information regarding a Boeing that flew in the same region just over one year ago. Latest information means MH370 could have made it to that same area where the other Boeing was able to come and go without telling officials: the Maldives.

The Maldives, a 1,190 island nation in the Indian Ocean, is southwest of Sri Lanka and 400 km (250 mi) southwest of India – a five-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur. 

Sunday, India opted out of participating in the MH370 search, reportedly upon request by the Malayasia government, despite the government officially spearheading the SAR expansion into the Indian Ocean and another corridor toward central Asia and including 25 countries instead of the 11 that had been active in the search. 

Of the MH370 SAR’s two new corridors that Prime Minister Razak announced Sat., it’s unclear how the aircraft could go the northern route undetected. It would go through China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, with U.S. military bases, and Central Asia. The region also hosts extremist Islamist groups, unstable governments and remote, sparsely populated areas. Flying south, however, the plane would pass over the Indian Ocean, thousands of kilometers from nearest land mass - a route the other untracked Boeing crew and two passengers chose last year, with embassy-granted impunity.

Boeing 737 and Infamous Saken Brothers 

On Jan. 17, 2013 around 10:30pm, a chartered Boeing 737 landed in Port Moresby International Airport in Papua New Guinea (PNG) causing chaos, confusion, investigations leading to drugs, guns, bought politicos and former British soldiers, with U.S. officials’ involvement.

Last January’s event was called a “serious lack of coordination in line agencies in the dispensing critical information.” It was called worse than that after learning top drug smugglers chartered the Boeing 737 to meet American and Vanuatu officials in PNG, with former British soldier bodyguards.

On board the Boeing 737 were the only the crew, Vu Anh Quan Saken, his younger brother Charles Henry Quan, both Vanuatu Diplomatic Passport holders of Vietnamese ethnicity and known drug smugglers. five crews. (Vanuatu was formerly called the New Hebrides.)

The Saken Brothers boarded in Mali, West Africa, flew to the Maldives, and onward to PNG for a meeting there in Port Moresby. Shortly before the chartered Boeing flew to Port Moresby’s Jackson airport, PNG officials received “unusual correspondence from Vanuatu’s Ambassador to the EU in Brussels requesting clearance for the Sakens who would be meeting Vanuatu Foreign Minister Carlot. 

Police confirmed that after 10:30 the night of Jan. 17, PNG Customs alerted them that a suspicious Boeing 737 had landed.  PNG police red flags raised higher when the two now called the “Saken Brothers” disembarked with two large sacks and said they’d personally clean the plane. Aviation authorities rejected the request for the crew to sleep on board during its stopover. PNG law enforcement agencies soon learned the Saken Brothers’ questionable activities were not only in Vanuatu, but throughout the world. Interpol, based in Manila, and other agencies provided intel, including that the brothers were involved in drugs and arms trade, with expertise where rebellions and insurgencies are rife.

Police investigations and interviews revealed the Saken Brothers, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Calot and bodyguards were involved in nefarious activities.  The only charge, however, would be the planes’ illegal landing with no prior knowledge of respective authorities, including Customs Immigration and Civil Aviation Authorities.

Suspicious Boeing Flight Path

The Saken Brothers hired three former British military personnel as bodyguards for when in PNG. The guards arrived in PNG two days before the brothers and the rest of the main delegation. 

The brothers boarded the chartered Boeing 737 in Mali West Africa after the aircraft and crew flew out of the UK. They left Mali for Maldives, a Tax Haven country. The pilot and crew said they stopped over there to refuel for the next 11-hour flight into Port Moresby. Quan Saken, 53, would repeatedly say they were in PNG to meet Vanuatu’s Foreign Minister Calot.

Calot flew into Port Moresby via Brisbane on PX Flight No. 004 Jan. 16, 2013 on the same flight with both Vanuatu Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Rimbink Pato and Vanuatu’s Minister of State Enterprise Ben Micah. They were about to meet with the new U.S. Ambassador on Friday Jan. 17 when PNG customs police entered the Holiday Inn and picked them up to interview. 

The Saken Brothers argued that, because Vanuatu is under US jurisdictions regarding diplomatic and protocol arrangements through PNG, they’d flown in to meet with the new US Ambassador. The police and civil aviation team searched hotel rooms as authorities had been tipped of possible arms or cash stashes in the aircraft. They said nothing was found. The British body guards claimed being unaware of the Saken brothers’ alleged illegal criminal activities; said they went for security services; and once that was over, they’d return to the UK.

It was deemed suspicious that the Saken Brothers boarded the Boeing in Mali, in open conflict and rebellion. A Boeing 737’s large size makes it ideal to carry firearms and/or other illicit contrabands. Allegedly, Quan has travelled extensively into many of the world’s hotspots, and has been implicated in gun and drug running, “especially in the Golden Triangle and Central and South America,” Vanuatu Daily reported. 

It was also suspicious that their stopover to refuel was in the tax haven country Maldives. It was “highly probable” illegal proceeds might have been banked there to avoid detection once in PNG, according to Skane of the Vanuatu Daily Post. 

“No wonder they had to fly 11 hours to Port Moresby,” Skane remarked.

Quan, a multimillionaire in Vanuatu of Vietnamese heredity, was key financier of the trip and key funding facilitator of Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Sato Kilman’s political campaign and formation of government. Both brothers were heavily implicated in a continuing Vanuatu political power struggle, including the last national elections.

The recent purchase of a controversial high-seas yacht MV Phocea created more controversy, allegedly used to entertain key Vanuatu politicians, including the Minister of Foreign Affairs whom Quan claimed to be a long time childhood friend, according to police. Quan admitted owning the yacht and planning to give it to the Vanuatu Foreign Ministry “for promotional purposes,” and then hand it over to Foreign Minister Calot.

Political divide in Vanuatu is high. The Saken Brothers being naturalized Vanuatu citizens and the political quagmire they’re in is because of their close alignment to the Sato Kilman Government. The aircraft incident triggered numerous allegations against the Saken Brothers and Minister of Foreign Affairs Calot in an ongoing political power struggle in Vanuatu, notorious for guns and drugs trade.  

Vanuatu Government’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs subsequently appointed Charles Saken as Ambassador to the US, the second Saken family member appointed to a diplomatic post.  Quan is Vanuatu Ambassador to Brussels.

On Jan. 25, PNG police and customs officials confiscated the Saken Brothers’ passports after their jet arrived without clearance and it became known that Pacific Transnational Crime Coordination Centre and Interpol were well aware of the Sakens’ involvement in drugs and arms. The Saken’s super yacht Phocea was detained in Vanuatu in July, originally on suspicion of guns and drugs smuggling, but then seized due to forged documents.  

“The interesting thing about this, is embassies – Brussels and PNG – corresponded with each other arranging [that] flight’s clearance. However, no one told [Paupua New Gunea] airport to expect the plane,” Vanuatu-based journalist BJ Skane said in an email Saturday to Deborah Dupré.

“I wish to take this opportunity to thank BJ Skane for her investigative effort to keep us (readers) alert of the assertions (propaganda) of the government, particularly from the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding this Pascal Anh Quan Saken,” a Vanuatu Daily Post reader wrote to the paper’s editor just over one year ago.

Today, if latest MH370 transmisison data is true, the plane could have flown up to 2,000 more miles and reached as far as India and Pakistan or even Australia’s north-west coast. It dramatically expands the SAR area, as well as a “host of new questions and possibilities about what happened,” Malaysia’s Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Saturday. 

Hussein said Boeing and Rolls Royce experts were assisting the investigation and that the last transmission received from the engines was at 1.07am Saturday morning and suggested everything was normal. “Rolls Royce and Boeing teams are here in Kuala Lumpur and have worked with [Malaysia Airlines] investigation teams since Sunday. This issue has never been raised. Since today’s media reports [Malaysia Airlines] has asked Rolls Royce and Boeing specifically about the data. As far as Rolls Royce and Boeing are concerned those reports are inaccurate.”

Inaccuracies and coverups regarding the missing MC370 Boeing have outraged people globally. The 2013 Boeing scandal in the same region continued implicating and embroiling Vanuatu’s Sato and PNG’s top leadership. 

The 2013 investigations proved a lack of coordination and ineffectiveness of key agencies  - from the UK and Brussels through the Maldives to PNG and Vanuatu – in disseminating critical information to respective authorities, such as Civil Aviation Authority and Interpol, in allowing illegal entry and exit of a foreign aircraft.

“There is a serious lack of coordination in line agencies in the dispensing of critical information,” concluded BJ Skane for the Vanuatu Daily.

“A search is like a symphony,” said David Gallo, who managed SAR expeditions for Air France Flight 447 that crashed in 2009. “You need all the members on the team to play the right notes at the same time.”

Wherever today’s “missing” Malaysia Airlines Boeing is, one thing seems certain, as Before It’s News contributor Zack Royer highlights Sunday: US officials and possibly other officials know exactly where it is, just as some officials but not others knew where last year’s Boeing 737 was at all times.   

“Given today’s technology, the delay smacks of either dereliction of duty or reluctance to share information in a full and timely manner,” Chinese government’s Xinhua News Agency said Sunday about the missing MH350. “That would be intolerable.”

Sources: Vanuatu Daily Mail, BJ Skane, Reuters, CBS, The Guardian, Before It’s News, New Straight Times, Christian Science Monitor

Follow Deborah Dupré on Twitter @DeborahDupre

Related articles by this author

MH370 Plane Search Region Infernos Close Int’l Airports

Malaysia Plane Hijacked: Navy Nat’l Security Expert

You Won’t Believe What Spies On Malaysia Plane Were Doing

Malaysia 370 Sound Of Life: Heard But Invisible, Police Reports Say

Malaysia Airlines 370 In New Location, Military Intel Adds Puzzle Piece 

Malaysia Plane CoverUp: Passengers’ Cell Phones Ringing, GPS Information Kept Secret 

Malaysia Plane Hidden With Electronic Weapon? 20 Hi-Tech EW Defense Passengers 

Missing Malaysia Plane: 20 All-Electric Car-Linked Passengers On Board, Names Released