In the last 24 hours there has been increasing attention on the identities of the 239 passengers onboard, after it was revealed that four of the passengers on board were under scrutiny.
Interpol confirmed that two of these passengers - an Austrian and an Italian - were using stolen passports, which had been missing since 2012 and 2013 respectively.
In a strongly worded rebuke on Sunday, a statement from Interpol said that their database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents had never been checked for either of the passports.
“This is a situation we had hoped never to see. For years Interpol has asked why should countries wait for a tragedy to put prudent security measures in place at borders and boarding gates,” Interpol’s secretary-general Ronald Noble said.
“Whilst it is too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane, it is clearly of great concern that any passenger was able to board an international flight using a stolen passport listed in Interpol databases.”
The Financial Times are also reporting that booking documents they have seen show that the Austrian and Italian ordered their tickets together:
According to a booking document seen by the Financial Times, the two men travelling on stolen Italian and Austrian passports had ordered their tickets together and were scheduled to fly on to Amsterdam shortly after arriving in Beijing. They would not have needed Chinese visas for their journey.
An employee at the Thai travel agency that issued their tickets confirmed the itineraries. The men travelling on the stolen passports were then scheduled to catch final connections to Copenhagen and Frankfurt, respectively.
