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Co-pilot was due to be married

A pilot on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was due to be married to long-time girlfriend Nadira Ramli.

Co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid had known the 28-year-old love of his life for nine years after they met as students at Langkawi’s Flying School.

Their love of flying brought them together.

Ramli, who is also a pilot, is waiting in Kuala Lumpur as the world waits to find out what happened to the missing airliner.

"Nadira is positive about the incident and told her family not to listen to the TV. Despite what has happened, she still has a glimmer of hope," the relative told the Daily Express.

Nadira Ramli was due to marry co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Photo: Supplied
Nadira Ramli was due to marry co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Photo: Supplied

Ramli has been given one month of leave from her job at Malaysia Airlines' rival AirAsia, and is staying with Hamid's family at an undisclosed airport as they wait to hear for any news.


China rules out terror links

Intelligence checks on 153 Chinese passengers on a missing Malaysian airliner produced no red flags, China said Tuesday, as Malaysia marshalled ships and planes from 26 countries to search an area the size of Australia.

Eleven days after contact was lost with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew, there has been minimal progress in determining precisely what happened or where the plane ended up.

Lending fresh weight to the belief that the plane was deliberately diverted, the New York Times reported that the first turn it made off its flight path was programmed into the Boeing 777's computer navigation system, probably by someone in the cockpit.

Rather than manually operating the plane's controls, whoever altered Flight 370's path typed seven or eight keystrokes into a computer situated between the captain and the co-pilot, the newspaper said, quoting US officials.

The head of Malaysia Airlines, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, said he was unable to confirm the report.

"The aircraft was programmed to fly to Beijing ... (but) once you are in the aircraft, anything is possible," he told a daily press briefing.

Two thirds of those on board were Chinese, and Malaysia had asked authorities in Beijing to run an exhaustive background check on all their nationals as part of a probe into everyone aboard.

Particular attention was paid to a passenger from China's Muslim ethnic Uighur minority.

On Tuesday China's ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang said no evidence had been found that would link anyone to a possible hijacking or terrorist attack on the jet.