U.S. law firm seeks records from Malaysian Airlines, Boeing

Tue, Mar 25 21:45 PM EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Malaysian Airlines and Boeing Co are facing a potential lawsuit over the Beijing-bound flight that disappeared more than two weeks ago with 239 people on board, according to a law firm representing passengers' families. A petition for discovery has been filed against Boeing Co, manufacturer of the aircraft, and Malaysian Airlines, operator of the plane, Chicago-based Ribbeck Law said in a statement on Tuesday. The Boeing 777 vanished while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia said on Monday that the missing jetliner had crashed into remote seas off Australia, citing satellite data analysis. Airline officials on Monday said all on board were presumed dead. The petition for discovery, filed in a Cook County, Illinois Circuit Court, is meant to secure evidence of possible design and manufacturing defects that may have contributed to the disaster, the law firm said. The court filing was not immediately available. The filing initiates a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the airline and Boeing by the passengers' families, the firm said. "We believe that both defendants named are responsible for the disaster of Flight MH 370," Monica Kelly, the lead Ribbeck lawyer in the case, said in the statement. The petition was filed on behalf of Januari Siregar, whose son was on the flight. Additional pleadings will be filed in the next few days against other potential defendants that designed or manufactured component parts of the aircraft that may have failed, Kelly said. Ribbeck is also asking that U.S. scientists be included in the search for wreckage and bodies, the firm said. A spokesman for Boeing declined comment. A spokesman for Malaysian Airlines could not immediately be reached for comment. Ribbeck is also representing 115 passengers in the crash of in San Francisco in July. The law firm's petition is asking the judge to order Boeing to provide the identity of manufacturers of various plane components, including electric components and wiring, batteries, emergency oxygen and fire alarm systems. It is also seeking the identity of the company or person who last inspected the fuselage and who provided maintenance. The petition also asks the judge to order Malaysian Airlines to produce information about crew training for catastrophic incidents, security practices, safety training and crew evaluations. (Reporting By Dena Aubin; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) ================== Dutch firm Fugro to lead search for MH370 off Australia Wed, Aug 06 13:23 PM EDT image By Lincoln Feast SYDNEY (Reuters) - Dutch engineering firm Fugro will lead the search of the Indian Ocean seafloor where missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is believed to have crashed, hoping to unlock the greatest mystery in modern aviation. Australia on Wednesday awarded Fugro the lead commercial contract for the search, after months of hunting by up to two dozen countries revealed no trace of the missing Boeing 777. The jetliner, carrying 239 passengers and crew, disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the aeroplane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometers before eventually crashing into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia. The next phase of the search is expected to start within a month and take up to a year, focusing on a 60,000 sq km (23,000 square miles) patch of ocean some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of Perth. Australian Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said Fugro was selected after "offering the best value-for-money technical solution" for the seafloor search. "I remain cautiously optimistic that we will locate the missing aircraft within the priority search area," he told reporters in Canberra. Fugro will use two vessels equipped with towed deep water vehicles carrying side scan sonar, multi beam echo sounders and video cameras to scour the seafloor, which is close to 5,000 m (16,400 ft) deep in places. The Dutch company is already conducting a detailed underwater mapping of the search area, along with a Chinese naval vessel. "We haven't completed the mapping, so we are still discovering detailed features that we had no knowledge of, underwater volcanoes and various other things," said Martin Dolan, the head of the Australian Transport Safety Board, which is heading the search. "We are finding some surprises as we go through." Malaysia will provide four vessels and gear to aid seafloor mapping and the search of the storm-lashed and isolated area. Truss said he would talk to his Malaysian counterpart later this month about sharing search costs. Australia has set aside up to A$90 million ($83.66 million) and estimates a 12-month search of the area will cost around A$52 million. The search is already the most expensive ever undertaken. China, which had 153 nationals on board MH370, has been heavily involved, providing ships, aircraft and satellite technology. One Chinese vessel will stay in the search area until mid-September, but Truss said China had shown no sign that it would cover any of the commercial search costs. Dozens of ships and planes scoured vast areas of ocean in the months after the plane disappeared but found only rubbish. The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard near its last location shown by satellite data analysis. But officials now say wreckage from the aircraft was not in the area they had identified, requiring the search to be expanded and moved further to the southwest. Malaysia Airlines has been battered this year by the tragic unprecedented loss of two of its airliners, after Flight MH17 was shot down over a conflict zone in eastern Ukraine. With a long maritime history and seafaring expertise, Dutch companies are leaders in the field of complex, large-scale undersea search and salvage operations. (1 US dollar=1.0749 Australian dollar) (Additional reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) ======================