References/Malaysia Airlines
References: Malaysia Airlines
Main Article: Malaysia Airlines.
This Section references items for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and will include items for MH17, so the index has been subdivided by flight number.
Malaysia Airlines also hosted media statements from other sources, for example the Ministry of Transport (MoT) and the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), Malaysia. Archived versions of the Malaysia Airlines website may also be a source for documents from those sources.
Malaysia Airlines also provided Mandarin translations of some media statements from the DoT and DCA.
References
MH370 | MH17 | Other |
Malaysia Airlines References - Explanatory Notes
Background
Media Statements relating to flight MH370 were released by Malaysia Airlines (MAS) from 7:24 am Saturday, 8 March 2014.
The airline website then, as now, had the URL www.malaysiaairlines.com.
However, because of the tragedy of flight MH370, the airline changed the theme of the website to one which was more subdued. This 'dark site' had the URL www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/dark-site.html.
The Media Statements were linked from the footer section at the bottom of the main page as shown below:-
Source: Wayback Machine Snapshot of the Malaysia Airlines website on 19 December 2014.
The link MH370: Latest Media Statement & Information opened pages headed MH370 Flight Incident with this URL - www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/mh370.html.
That address or link is no longer valid and all media statements relating to flights MH370 and MH17 have been removed or are not accessible.
Following the restructure of Malaysia Airlines to create Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) the website focussed on marketing current flights only.
MH370: Latest Media Statement & Information - Content Description
Media Statements on the Malaysia Airlines (MAS) website were not limited to those from Malaysia Airlines. MAS also hosted media statements from the Ministry of Transport, the Department of Civil Aviation, and the Prime Minister. In some instances MAS included Mandarin translations which were not provided by the original source.
These can be located on the Internet Archive by searching with the URL www.malaysiaairlines.com/my/en/site/mh370.html.
For any snapshot there will be many pages containing media statements, as per the example below:-
Each of the linked pages could contain several media statements. Unfortunately, however, snapshots of the MAS website saved on the Internet Archive either did not save all of the sub-pages or links to the sub-pages for any snapshot may not work.
Malaysia Airlines and the MH370 Official Site
Although Malaysia Airlines media statements are important in the context of the story of MH370 they were not 'official' in the same way that media statements by Hishammuddin Hussein, Minister for Defence and Acting Minister for Transport are 'official'. MAS statements are not part of the record on the MH370 Official Site.
Consequently, the only source for these documents is the Internet Archive or Wayback Machine.
Internet Archive Snapshots
To summarise the information above:-
- Media Statements on the MAS website include some from other sources
- Several media statements may be included on a single page (called a sub-page)
- Snapshots at an particular date may include the most recent media statements on Page 1 but may not include older content, on Pages 2 or greater
- Page 1 content is always the most recent - the content is not indexed by page number
Therefore, to access all of the media statement content from the Malaysia Airlines website we need to refer to several different snapshots, some of which overlap in content.
Snapshots and Reference-IDs
A Reference-ID has been assigned to each Media Statement related to MH370 by Malaysia Airlines in the format MAS-MS#-NNN where MAS is the abbreviation for Malaysia Airline Systems; MS is an abbreviation for Media Statement and the # is the Statement Number; and the date of the Media Statement is represented by a three-digit Day Number.
Media Statements hosted on the Malaysia Airlines website are listed below a URL to a relevant snapshot, including those from sources other than MAS. The listings will contain duplicate entries but the Reference-ID will be unique.
If a Media Statement from a source other than MAS is listed, and if that same statement is not available from the original source or snapshot of the original source, or if the MAS version includes a Mandarin translation, then a Reference-ID will be assigned using the format MAS-XXX-NNN where MAS indicates that the document was hosted on the Malaysia Airlines website; the XXX will identify the original source and may include ZH[1] if a translation is included; and the date is represented by a three-digit Day Number.
Reference-ID
Each Reference-ID has up to four parts:
- An abbreviation for the reference source, for example MAS indicates Malaysia Airlines
- A code for the item type, for example a Media Statement is abbreviated to MS. Most of the Media Statements by Malaysia Airlines are also be numbered.
- The date, indicated by a Day Number
- A suffix ZH which indicates that a Mandarin translation has also been provided.
The Reference ID indicates the original source as Malaysia Airlines (MAS). A suffix ZH indicates that a Mandarin translation has also been provided.
In the left column, Day NNN links to the MH370 News page which has the full text.
MH17
The Malaysia Airlines website also included the Media Statements related to flight MH17.
If or when those documents are referenced in this website the Reference-ID will include the flight number MH17.
Otherwise, all MAS references without a flight number refer to MH370.
Notes