Malaysia thanks Vietnam for MH370 search efforts Vietnamese naval officers discuss before a search effort by aircraft at Phu Quoc International Airport in Kien Giang March 9, 2014. Tuoi Tre The Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) has expressed its thanks for Vietnam’s search efforts for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam said Thursday. The appreciation was extended in a response document the DCA has sent to CAAV in regard of the doomed Boeing 777, which vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 people on board, CAAV chief Lai Xuan Thanh told Tuoi Tre. The points of time when air traffic controllers lost contact of MH370, when it vanished off radar and when Vietnamese and Malaysian air traffic controllers exchanged information over the missing plane are detailed in the document, Thanh added. DCA thanked Vietnam for exerting efforts to organize and participate in search missions for the missing jetliner. The document mentions nothing about the allegation that Vietnamese air traffic controllers were tardy in contacting their Malaysian counterparts when the plane vanished from radar screens. On April 2, DCA director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman was quoted by newswire The Malay Mail Online as accusing Vietnamese air traffic controllers of “breaching protocol by enquiring about the missing Flight MH370 only 17 minutes after the plane vanished from radar on March 8.” At 1:19 am on March 8, Kuala Lumpur air traffic control ordered the Beijing-bound MH370 to change frequency to their Ho Chi Minh City counterparts, but the Vietnamese side only responded at 1:38 am that they were not contacted by the Boeing 777, Azharuddin told reporters at a MH370 press conference in the Malaysian capital city on May 2. “If Ho Chi Minh City wasn’t contacted by the aircraft, the protocol is five minutes,” The Malay Mail Online quoted the DCA chief. CAAV chief Thanh also responded a day later that Vietnam could not be blamed for defying aviation protocol in contacting flight MH370. “Air traffic controllers from both sides lost signal of the flight on radar and it was likely that the pilot had changed direction right at the moment it was ordered to change frequency to the Ho Chi Minh FIR,” he told Tuoi Tre on April 3. Tuoitrenews