KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia—The most comprehensive official report into Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 revealed no new leads into what caused the jet’s disappearance, compounding public frustrations over the fruitless search for wreckage in the southern Indian Ocean.
The 584-page report comes on the anniversary of the disappearance of the Boeing 777, which vanished from radar after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board. It was the third progress report released by international teams of experts, but didn’t break new ground about the background of the crew, the condition of the jet or the sequence of events.
The report did offer fresh details of the confusion and communication problems that emerged among air controllers and officials after the plane vanished. It also said the battery powering the plane’s flight-data recorder had expired in December 2012, more than a year before the jet disappeared, and no record was available to show that it had been replaced. The battery for the other “black box” recorder, intended to capture cockpit conversations and sounds, had been replaced as scheduled.
The expired battery reduced the likelihood of search crews, using a flotilla of ships and aircraft, finding the black boxes. The slip-up also raises questions about how rigorously the carrier complied with maintenance requirements over the years, some outside experts said.
The pilots, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53 years old, and first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, had valid licenses and showed no abnormal behavior before the flight, the report said. Both pilots and cabin crew had normal financial profiles and didn’t have any major disciplinary problems against them.
The aircraft, delivered to the Malaysian flag carrier in May 2002, didn’t have any mechanical or computer troubles, and its communication systems were operating normally until radio and transponder signals abruptly stopped.
Such interim reports frequently contain more-specific theories or safety warnings, even if no final conclusions are reached. In the case of Flight 370, the team of 19 independent investigators from seven countries—including the U.S., France, China and the U.K.—is expected to continue the probe.
The group’s factual summary doesn’t explicitly support earlier conclusions of Malaysian authorities that someone disabled the jet’s primary satellite-messaging system and caused the plane’s transponders to stop working during an earlier portion of the flight.
The Malaysian government said the objective of the report, which was required by the International Civil Aviation Organization one year after the disappearance, wasn’t to assign blame.
Contact was lost with Flight 370 less than an hour into its flight over the South China Sea, en route to Beijing. The report confirmed that the last verbal communication from the aircraft was from Capt. Zaharie as the plane was about to exit Malaysian airspace and be transferred to Vietnam’s air traffic control. Military radar from Malaysia and Indonesia tracked the plane deviating from its course until it vanished over the Strait of Malacca. The only sign of the jet during its final hours came from periodic signals to and from a satellite, as the aircraft headed over the southern Indian Ocean.
The report provides new details about the confusion and missed signals as controllers and airline personnel struggled to comprehend how an aircraft suddenly dropped off radar scopes and ended all radio communication.
According to the timeline in the document, airline personnel waited roughly 40 minutes after the last radar contact to start sending repeat text messages to the cockpit using satellite connections, asking the pilots to contact the company. Except for two brief periods, which the report didn’t explain, the basic link between the satellite and the plane remained operational throughout the flight—although all data and voice messages stopped.
The report shows a Malaysian controller repeatedly asking his Vietnamese counterpart whether search-and-rescue procedures had been activated five hours after the last radio transmission from Flight 370. The question isn’t understood, and the Vietnamese controller responds with the word “estimated.”
“Negative…SAR, search and rescue, search and rescue,” the Malaysian controller says. “You activated your search and rescue?”
“Ya, that’s right, that’s right,” the Vietnamese side finally responds. But an all-out search didn’t begin for several more hours.
Families of the Flight 370 passengers held a series of remembrance events during the weekend and expressed skepticism over the report and frustration that nothing had been found that would enable them to fully know the fate of their loved ones. “We are surprised there is nothing in the report,” said accountant Yap Chee Leong, whose brother, Yap Chee Meng, was on his way to Beijing for work.
“We hope the government is telling us the truth but I don’t think they are.”
About 100 friends and relatives of the passengers and crew, including some from China, gathered Sunday in a Kuala Lumpur shopping mall. Many wore T-shirts saying, “Never give up. Search on.”
White balloons were sent aloft with prayers and family members shared stories of their loved ones from a stage. Some in the crowd wept.
The new report deals only briefly with the intricacies of choosing locations for the underwater search for wreckage. The report also avoids some of the theories previously raised by Australian investigators—including the notion that someone on board switched on the autopilot system to take the plane to a remote corner of the Indian Ocean.
Several hours after it disappeared, the jet continued to transmit digital information to a satellite—leaving a trail of data that investigators mined to help identify a likely crash site far off the southwestern coast of Australia.
Prime Minister Najib Razak affirmed that Malaysia was committed to finding the aircraft.
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said in Beijing that the search would continue. China had the most passengers on board and has kept up diplomatic pressure to extend the search.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search for Flight 370 wouln’t end if the scouring of the current 60,000-square-kilometer search area comes up empty, the Associated Press reported.
The search “can’t go on forever, but as long as there are reasonable leads, the search will go on,” Mr. Abbott was quoted as saying.
The main nations involved in the search—Malaysia, Australia and China—are due to take stock of the underwater operations when the current search zone is completed in May.
The plane was carrying enough fuel to fly for seven hours and 31 minutes—including reserves to divert for an emergency landing— compared with the planned flight time of five hours and 34 minutes, the report said. No significant weather trouble was recorded along the plane’s flight path.
Post a Comment