Husband gave wife his wedding ring and watch before boarding doomed Malaysian flight
A father-of-two left his wedding ring and watch to give to his children in case something happened to him before boarding the missing Malaysia Airlines flight as he flew out to start a dream job in Mongolia.
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Mechanical engineer Paul Weeks, 39, of Perth, Australia, was on the flight as he made his way to his first shift in a fly-in fly-out job.
His wife Danica has revealed how he left the objects with her to give to their two boys if something was to happen to him.
Mrs Weeks however said on Sunday that she was praying for a miracle as she waited for news of him.
She told 9News National in Perth: '(He said) "If something should happen to me then the wedding ring should go to the first son that gets married and then the watch to the second".'
The former soldier, who was born in New Zealand, moved his young family to Perth after their home in Christchurch was devastated by earthquakes.
The couple have a three-year-old son called Lincoln and an 11-month-old called Jack.
Mr Weeks was believed to have got a new job with Transwest Mongolia. Mrs Weeks said before he left he took 'lots of photos' of his family.
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She told WA Today: 'I can’t give up hope. I would love him to walk through that door, hold him one more time ... I see him everywhere in the house.'
Mr Weeks was one of 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board the Malaysia Airlines flight which went missing early Saturday morning as it made its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The manifest included 152 passengers from China, 38 from Malaysia, seven from Indonesia, six from Australia, five from India, three from the U.S., and others from Indonesia, France, New Zealand, Canada, Ukraine, Russia, Taiwan and the Netherlands.
More than three days after the Boeing 777 disappeared, no trace of the plane has been found in waters between Malaysia and Vietnam that have been scoured by more than 40 planes and ships from at least 10 nations.
The plane dropped off radar less than an hour into the flight without sending out a distress signal. Authorities have said it may have attempted to turn back to Kuala Lumpur, but they expressed surprise that it would do so without informing ground control.
Malaysia Airlines has said in a statement that search and rescue teams expanded their scope to the Malacca Strait between Malaysia's western coast and Indonesia's Sumatra island - the opposite side of Malaysia from the plane's last known location.
To reach the strait, a busy shipping lane, the plane would have had to cross over the country, presumably within the range of radar.
An earlier statement said the western coast of Malaysia was 'now the focus', but the airline subsequently said that phrase was an oversight. It did not elaborate. Civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the search remained 'on both sides' of the country