Amsterdammer on Malaysia Airlines flight
A Dutch woman, Surti Dahlia (50) is one of the 239 passengers on the Boeing 777 that went off the radar early on Saturday morning. The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 departed from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and was bound for Beijing, China when it disappeared over the South China Sea.
The 50-year old woman from Amsterdam was headed to Malaysia for a vacation with a friend, the AD reports. The woman's friends are reacting to the news with shock. They say she had high expectations of the holiday with a man that she had gotten to know on the internet. "We friends didn't actually think it was very wise of her. She didn't know him that well. But she was an independent and adult woman" a friend tells the AD. Dahlia was born in Indonesia, was unmarried and had no children. A spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Saturday that someone with a Dutch nationality was on board the missing aircraft. No details about the person's gender, age or residence were given at the time. According to the spokesperson, the family must decide if they want to travel to Kuala Lumpur. There is a dutch embassy in the Malaysian capital, who has been keeping tract of the situation. "The embassy has informed the ministry about the Dutch person on board the aircraft. Our thoughts go out to all the people concerned", it says on the embassy's Facebook page. It is still a mystery what exactly happened to the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. The flight was on its way to Beijing when radio contact went dead halfway. Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore are working together on the search activities in the South China Sea. On Sunday, a Vietnamese aircraft spotted an object in the water, which looked like it could be one of the doors of the missing plane. This is the same area where oil slicks were spotted on Saturday. A controversy surrounds the ever-mysterious missing flight. Two passengers, an Austrian and an Italian, were flying with stolen passports, which went unchecked by any country against the database that was set up after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the USA. Despite an in-depth search, with three countries involved, there has been little progress of finding the lost aircraft that was carrying 239 passengers on board. There is speculation that it broke up at 35,000ft. Officials said the airliner may have decided to turn back before it was lost to the radar screens. Malaysia Airlines is one of the most popular and trusted airlines in South East Asia as well as around the world, and it stands as one of the safest airlines in the world. The Boeing 777 is also considered as a very trustworthy aircraft. All in all, the incident continues to be a mysterious one. A friend of Surty, Cheyenne Rigaglia, is not giving up, as she tells RTV Noord-Holland that she hopes she survives somewhere on an island.
