Posted on 10/09/2014 9:20:20 PM PDT by DTA
One of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash was found wearing an oxygen mask, raising the possibility that some passengers may have been conscious as the aircraft went down in eastern Ukraine.
Nearly 300 people died when the passenger jet crashed in July while flying over insurgent-held territory in eastern Ukraine.
"You know that somebody was discovered wearing an oxygen mask and had time to put it on," Dutch foreign minister Frans Timmermans said on a late night Dutch chat show.
The foreign minister suggested the passengers may have been conscious as the plane went down.
The passenger concerned is understood to be an Australian, but that has not been officially confirmed.
Dutch prosecutors have confirmed to the ABC that one passenger was found with a mask, with the strap around their neck.
"How and when the mask ended up around the victim's neck is unknown," the prosecutors stressed.
Twenty-seven of the passengers were carrying Australian passports, while another 11 were Australian residents travelling on foreign passports.
"The Dutch Forensics Institute examined the mask looking for fingerprints, saliva and DNA, but the probe has not revealed any result," Dutch prosecutors said in a letter to victims' families published online.
None of the other victims of the fatal crash that killed all 298 on board was wearing an oxygen mask, they added.
Prosecutors said the victim's family was informed at the time, but relatives of other victims were not.
Mr Timmermans said he now regretted his comments.
"The last thing I wanted to do was increase their pain," Mr Timmermans said in a press release.
"I should not have said it."
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 went down on July 17 while flying over insurgent-held territory in conflict-wracked eastern Ukraine.
The findings of an initial report by a Dutch-led team of air crash investigators appear to back up claims that the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile.
Kiev and the West have accused Moscow-backed separatists of shooting it down with a surface-to-air BUK missile supplied by Russia. Moscow denies the charge and has pointed the finger back at Kiev.
Forensics experts suspended their search for bodies due to clashes between Kiev and the pro-Russian rebels near the crash site north-east of Donetsk, but said they hoped to return once the fighting died down.
Efforts to retrieve victims' personal belongings and handing them back to relatives were also continuing.
Pages in Russian have been set up on both Facebook and the VKontakte social networking sites urging people to report the discovery of belongings or body parts from the crash.
Still waiting for them to release the recording from the black box.
When did this crash happen? About 10 years ago?
~~~HEAVY sarcasm~~~
So much has happened this summer that it’s hard to remember that dreadful crash in the Ukraine.
any proof at all that it was the victim who put on the oxygen mask?
Not likely it will ever happen, unless someone decide to cash on $30M offer.
They drop automatically on depressurization.
Not hard to believe a few pax got them on before total breakup.
thats because kiev directed them over the site. and the one atc contrllor who talked was quickly “shut up” i still think they had something to do with it? USA? maybe maybe not? this day and time with this admin,i would not put ANYTHING past them! if nothing else but to turn the world against russia. imo
Mike
The best description is here. SAMs are designed to exploded 20+ yards from an aircraft and spray shrapnel. The airbags would have dropped within five seconds and the passengers would have remained conscious for up to thirty seconds.
Oops, better luck next time, comrade. This is an American conservative website.
Pro-Russian separatists handed over the plane's "black box" flight recorders to Malaysian investigators, who in turn passed them on to Dutch authorities.The head of the Malaysian delegation said the recorders were "in good condition".
The devices were sent to Farnborough in the UK for analysis.
The recorders - actually coloured a deep orange to aid discovery - store key technical information about the flight as well as conversations in the cockpit.
According to the Dutch Safety Board, the flight data recorder showed that "all engine parameters were normal for cruise flight" until the recording "stopped abruptly at 13.20:03 hrs".
No spoken warnings were found on the cockpit voice recorder.
The Dutch investigators said there was no evidence that the flight recorders had been tampered with.
MH17 Malaysia plane crash in Ukraine: What we know. BBC News, September 9, 2014.
You mean the Spanish controller who Spain says doesn’t exist, and whose Facebook page disappeared? Call George Noory.
yes that one...i knew he was from different country but could not remember which...thx for reminder
Mike
Rather interesting that he hasn’t come forward. Do you think he’s under arrest somewhere?
i detect sarcasm in your comment, i see a lot of your post on all and any Russian/Ukrainian threads but i can’t remember if you are a Putin sympathizer or Putin hater, so that being said im not sure how to answer your question. But irregardless of who you think was behind the downing of the plane, I just DO NOT know what to believe any more!
Freguards-
Mike
Mike, you have ended up believing one of many Russian conspiracy theories they created and spread to the world. This one is “Carlos the non-existant air traffic controller”. It is thoroughly debunked of course.
Examiner magazine made an article about 10 of these lies here - http://www.examiner.com/list/russia-s-top-10-lies-about-downed-malaysia-airliner - “Carlos” one is number 8.
Recordings made IN KIEV Air Traffic Control are confiscated by Ukraine internal security service and never submitted to investigation.
What you wrote relates to FLIGHT RECORDER from MH17 and it is not the same thing.
That’s some mask that will stay on in the tumble and violence of the craft hitting the ground.
That's a question I had. Why didn't all the air masks deploy as soon a cabin pressure dropped.
Why didn’t all the air masks deploy as soon a cabin pressure dropped.
They most likely all dropped at the same time, nothing in the article says they didn’t.
They are saying that this one passenger actually grabbed it and put it around his neck.
"Crash"? It was of course more than a crash. It was a shoot down.
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