British passenger sent text to her mother from diverted plane saying she feared for her life after travellers were told to put on life jackets and prepare for emergency water landing in latest Malaysian Airline flight terror
A British passenger 'thought she was going to die' when travellers onboard a Malaysia Airlines jet were told to prepare for an emergency water landing after an electricity generator failed.
Luisa Barbaro was on board the diverted flight MH066 which made an unscheduled landing in Hong Kong while it was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Incheon, in South Korea, in the early hours of today.
The 26-year-old was finishing a week-long holiday in Kuala Lumpur and was travelling to Seoul for a business trip when an onboard announcement said the plane was going to make an emergency landing in water.
Her mother Jenny Barbaro, 61 from Beckenham, London, told MailOnline: ‘She text me from the plane. She thought she was going to die. She said one of the engines sounded really weird.
‘I was extremely worried. I was at a dinner party and knew she had taken off and three hours into her flight I received a text message saying they were told to prepare for emergency landing.’
Luisa sent her mother a text which explained the situation from the plane.
Mrs Barbaro said: ‘I received the text and that was it. Then I had to wait for half an hour. It was terrible.
‘I was with friends when I got it and I just said to everyone “shut up, shut up, something must be wrong” and I read the text out and everyone went “oh my god”.
‘Apparently she was told off for texting but it makes me wonder why nobody on the other flight got in touch with their relatives by text.
‘Eventually she phoned me when she was on the ground and said they had made an emergency landing at Hong Kong. They were kept on the plane for four hours when they landed.'
She went on to say: ‘She was so scared. I stayed up all night texting her trying to keep her calm. She didn’t want to get on another plane. We were both in a terrible state.’
Luisa managed to get a ticket on a Korean airline flight to continue with her journey.
Mrs Barbaro said: ‘In view of what has happened to the other airliner, she thought the captain did a good job in landing them safely. She is now on a plane flying with Korean airlines but other people have been left in a holding area at Hong Kong airport.
‘None of the passengers got any food and they weren’t given any drinks. She was extremely nervous and didn’t want to get on the next plane.
‘It’s rather a strange coincidence that this plane has suffered some sort of technical fault.
‘It could be another piece in the jigsaw puzzle. It makes me wonder what the maintenance crews are doing – are they up to the job?
‘Fire engines came out to the plane when it landed and as far as I know it’s still at Hong Kong airport.’
In a statement today Malaysia Airlines said Flight MH066, which was carrying 271 people, had taken off from Kuala Lumpur at 11.37pm on Sunday and made the emergency landing in Hong Kong at 2.53am today.
Fire crews were put on standby for the arrival of the Airbus 330-300, a larger jet than the Boeing 777 which is missing - the Airbus can carry up to 440 passengers, while the Boeing has a 365 passenger capacity.
Despite the emergency landing, the airline said that electrical power continued to be supplied by an auxiliary power unit.
‘All 271 passenger from MH066 have been transferred on other carriers,’ said the airline.
A spokeswoman for the Hong Kong airport said the plane landed safely less than 30 minutes after it notified the airport. She said it was not classified as an emergency landing, although emergency services were put on standby.
The unscheduled landing came after yet another Malaysia Airlines jet ran into trouble after hitting a flock of birds while it was landing in the Nepali capital, Kathmand, on Friday.
The birds shattered the windshields and caused some damage to the wheel housing, but the aircraft was able to land safely.
The incidents in Hong Kong and Nepal occurred while an international search continued into its third week for flight MH370 which vanished on March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
Airline officials have been grilled following the disappearance of MH370 on whether safety checks had been carried out on that particular plane.
The US Federal Aviation Administration last year issued a warning about a potential weak spot in Boeing 777s which could lead to what it said was ‘the loss of structural integrity of the aircraft’.
The administration told airlines to look out for corrosion under the fuselage skin which could lead to the fuselage being compromised.
This, it said, could lead to a possible rapid decompression as well as the plane breaking up.
Malaysian Airlines officials, under pressure to answer whether safety checks had been carried out on its 777 aircraft, insisted that everything had been done in accordance with guidance from Boeing.
The brief scare comes just a day after it was revealed that missing Flight 370 dropped to as low as 12,000ft in what could have been a cabin emergency before it disappeared from the radar
As the exhaustive search continues in the Indian Ocean for the missing Boeing 777-200, an official revealed the doomed passenger jet made a sharp turn over the South China Sea which ‘seemed to be intentional’.
The plane's last confirmed position, picked up by Malaysian military radar, was at 2.15am Malaysia time about 200 nautical miles north-west of Malaysia's Penang island, roughly an hour after it diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Radar tracking shows the aircraft changed altitude after making the ‘intentional’ sharp left turn as it headed toward the Strait of Malacca, a source close to the investigation said.
The anonymous official, who is not authorised to speak to the media, told CNN that flying at 12,000 feet in the heavily trafficked air corridor would’ve kept the missing jet out of sight of other aircraft.
Mary Schiavo, an aviation analyst and former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation, told the international broadcaster the new information was ‘highly significant’.
She said: ‘It explains so many pieces that didn't fit together before.
‘Now, if we have a scenario where something happened, the plane made a dramatic turn and dropped from 35,000 feet to 12,000 feet, this scenario would fit what a pilot would do in the event of a catastrophic on-board event, such as a rapid decompression, a fire, an explosion.
‘That's what you would have to do, descend, get down and turn around and try to get back to an airport that could accommodate an ailing plane.’
It raises questions over what might have happened in the plane’s cockpit to cause such a drop in altitude.
However, it is not yet clear how long it took the plane to descend to 12,000 feet, which officials will now be desperate to uncover.
The new information comes after France said it was investigating a possible sighting of debris in the south Indian Ocean.
France's Foreign Ministry said yesterday that a satellite image taken 850 kilometres from the current search site in the Indian Ocean indicated floating debris in the water.
Satellite images previously issued by Australia and China have proved futile in the search so far with Chinese officials withdrawing their data last week after admitting to ‘mistakenly’ releasing it.
And search planes have so far failed to locate two objects that Australia said it had identified in the Indian Ocean, about 1,500 miles south east of Perth.
However, the new information from France has promoted authorities to widen the search area in the hunt for the doomed airliner.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's rescue coordination centre said the search area was expanded from 59,000 to 68,500 square kilometres (22,800-26,400 square miles) to include the new separate area uncovered by the French data.
It comes amid concerns of rain hampering the search, which has been buoyed by the addition of two Chinese Ilyushin IL-76 planes, increasing the number of aircraft involved from eight to 10.
There are also concerns about Tropical Cyclone Gillian bearing down on the Australian northwest coast which Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said ‘could stir up less favourable weather’.
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