Freescale, Huawei, ZTE employees among Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 passengers

Employees of several Asia Pacific-based communications service providers and vendors were aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 at the time of its disappearance, including Huawei, competitor ZTE, U.S. company Freescale Semiconductor, and reportedly, China Telecom.

Two executives from Huawei, an employee of ZTE, and 20 employees of Freescale were on board the flight, their respective companies confirmed on Saturday.

Zhang Hualian, China Telecom Global

Zhang (Source: PTC)

Updated: According to Sunil Tagare of BuySellBandwidth, Hualian "Happy" Zhang, vice president of network planning for China Telecom Global, was also aboard, listed on the manifest as passenger number 207.

China Telecom has not officially confirmed that Zhang was aboard the flight. Tagare said he obtained the information from contacts at China Telecom.

Zhang was reportedly returning from Kuala Lumpur after signing the construction and maintenance agreement for Sea-Me-We-5, the planned submarine cable which will stretch 20,000 km from Singapore to Europe.

"I had known Happy for quite some time," Tagare wrote in a blog post Sunday. "She was responsible for the largest expansion of China Telecom in the submarine cable industry with investments in more than half a dozen new cables."

A Wall Street Journal article identified the ZTE employee as Li Yanlin, an engineer who is part of the company's telecom gear installation and maintenance team. Huawei declined to identify its two employees.

Freescale Semiconductor reported that 20 of its employees were aboard the flight. "At present, we are solely focused on our employees and their families," Gregg Lowe, president and CEO of Freescale, said in a prepared statement released Saturday. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this tragic event."

For more:
- The Wall Street Journal has this report
- see the Freescale release
- and this blog
- Reuters has this report

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