A Look at Who Was Actually On Board the Missing Malaysian Flight
The plane had a honeymooning couple, vacationing families, and young workers.
March 12, 2014— -- A couple on a honeymoon, a family with young children, and a group of co-workers were among the 239 people on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 when it disappeared off the grid.
Norli Akmar Hamid and her husband Muhammad Razahan Zamani were going to Beijing for a honeymoon, their relatives told the Wall Street Journal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week.
Paul Weeks, the father of two young sons from Australia, reportedly took off his wedding ring and watch and gave them to his wife, Danica, before taking off on the fated flight for a new job in Mongolia, with strict instructions to give the jewelry to his sons if something should happen to him, Danica Weeks told Australia's 9News.
"If something should happen to me then the wedding ring should go to the first son that gets married and the watch to the second," Danica quoted her husband as saying. "I would love him to walk through that door, hold him one more time."
Tong Soon Lee, a 31-year-old who worked at the U.S. technology firm Freescale Semiconductor, was engaged to get married later this year, his relatives told a reporter for the Malay Mail Online at a hotel in Putrajaya, Malaysia.
The family of businessman Tan Ah Meng said that he and his wife, Chuang Hsiu Leng, were supposed to go to Beijing on Wednesday but postponed their trip and decided to take along their eldest son, Tan Wei Chew, 19, before he leaves for university in the United States, according to Singapore's Straits Times.
The three family members ended up taking the fated MH370 flight instead, leaving two younger siblings ages 14 and 12 behind. The children are waiting for word of their parents and brother, a relative told the Straits Times.
Another passenger, Stanley Wong Sai Sang, was also supposed to be on a different flight. He missed his earlier flight and was put on MH370, his wife told the Malay Mail Online. The date of the flight was actually Sang's birthday, she noted.
Also on board was a 62-year-old mother, Datin Biby Nazli Mohd Hassim, who was traveling with her two grown daughters, Dina and Maria, as well her sister Noorida. Earlier that day Noorida, 57, had celebrated her retirement with colleagues, the Mail Online reported.
Philip Wood, 50, is an IBM executive who had just come from Texas where he was visiting family on his way to Beijing. He was preparing for a move to Kuala Lumpur, his brother James Wood told the Associated Press. Wood was divorced and had two sons.
"There is a shock, a very surreal moment in your life," James Wood said. "Last Sunday, we were all having breakfast together. And now, you can't."