Some seven of the 12 crew say that the airline said it would only communicate with them through their lawyers. Jacquita Gonzales said: ‘We do not know what happened. But when I did not hear anything from my caregiver, whom I considered as my close friend, for two days, I made a call to him. That was when he told me that they had been asked to stop contacting the crew’s families.’

Appointed lawyers

The airline has now denied that it ‘abandoned’ the families. It has issued a statement saying that the decision for the law firms to handle communications was taken by the law firms, not the airline. Malaysia Airlines said that it ‘would like to reiterate that it will continue to offer the same assistance to all crew member families, but communications with families represented by foreign lawyers will be through their appointed lawyers as they have directed’. Source: NBC News