Dutchman avoids both Malaysian flight tragedies

A Dutch cyclist has avoided being on both tragic Malaysian Airlines flights MH17 and MH370 after being originally scheduled to fly on the two doomed aircraft.

Maarten de Jonge, a cyclist with the Terengganu Cycling Team in Malaysia, was supposed to be on flight MH370, which is still missing, in March on his way to a race in Taiwan.

However, Mr de Jonge switched flights, as he was keen to avoid a stopover which would have been necessary on that route.

MH370 went missing on March 8 and sparked a massive international search after the plane disappeared less then an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing — 227 passengers and 12 crew members were on board, with the plane thought to have come to an end about 2,000km west of the Australian city of Perth.

In what seems to be a bizarre set of circumstances, Mr de Jonge confirmed through his website that he was also due to board MH17, which was believed to have been shot down by Russian separatist rebels near Hrabove in the disputed Donetsk region of Ukraine.

The flight, which took-off from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport headed for Kuala Lumpur, is rumoured to have been downed by a surface-to-air missile. The crash killed all 283 passengers and 15 crew on board, including Dublin woman Edel Mahady.

The death toll makes MH17 the sixth-worst disaster in aviation history.

Writing on his website, Mr de Jonge said: “How happy I am for myself and my family that I was on this flight and did not take it the last moment; my story is ultimately nothing compared to the misery in which so many people are paid.”

When asked if he was nervous of flying again, Mr de Jonge simply stated: “I have been lucky twice.”

Thanks toBreakingnews.ie for permission to use this story.