Dubai: According to the Washington Post, family of some of the 239 people on board the vanished Boeing 777 said that they were getting ring tones and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.
One man said that the QQ account of his brother-in-law showed him as online, but frustratingly for those waiting desperately for any news, messages sent have gone unanswered and the calls have not been picked up.
However the phantom phone calls and online presence set off a whole new level of hysteria for relatives who have spent the past three-days cooped-up in a Beijing hotel waiting for some concrete information on the missing plane.
Repeatedly telling Malaysian Airlines officials about the QQ accounts and ringing telephone calls, they hoped that modern technology could simply triangulate the GPS signal of the phones and locate their relatives.
According to Singapore’s Strait Times, a Malaysia Airlines official, Hugh Dunleavy has confirmed to families that his company had tried to call the cellphones of crew members and they too had also rang out. The International Business Times reported that the sister of one of the Chinese passengers also rang his phone on live television.
“This morning, around 11.40, I called my older brother’s number twice, and I got the ringing tone,” said Bian Liangwei, sister of one of the passengers according to IBT.
At 2pm, Bian called again and heard it ringing once more.
“If I could get through, the police could locate the position, and there’s a chance he could still be alive.”
