At a Beijing hotel, Malaysian embassy officials were processing visa applications for families wanting to take up an airline offer to travel to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to the rescue operations.
Scores of relatives made their way into the room, some in groups of five or six, clutching handkerchiefs and wiping away tears from their faces.
Others said they would not go. “There is more we can do here in China,” one woman told AFP. “They haven’t even found the plane yet.”
A team of Chinese officials from government ministries headed for Malaysia on Monday, tasked with investigating the incident and helping family members already there.
As the search entered a third full day, other families of missing passengers gathered at a hotel in Malaysia’s administrative capital, Putrajaya, sharing breakfast as they stared intently at television news bulletins.
The search effort has zeroed in on waters off the remote Vietnamese island of Tho Chu, near where two large oil slicks suspected to be caused by aircraft fuel as well as the suspected debris were spotted on the weekend.
“All night we mobilised our most modern equipment for the search but we found no sign of the objects,” Vice Admiral Ngo Van Phat told AFP of the hunt centred on Vietnam’s southwestern tip.
Tests on the oil slick that could indicate whether it came from the missing plane could be completed by later Monday, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency director general Amdan Kurish told AFP.
Malaysian authorities said they were also combing waters closer to their shores, further south of Tho Chu.
A total of 40 ships and 34 aircraft from an array of Southeast Asian countries, China and the United States have been involved in the search, with two Australian surveillance aircraft joining.
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