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| Sarah Nor, the mother of a passenger on MH370, weeps as she arrives for the final investigation report |
Investigators said Monday they still do not know why Malaysia's Flight MH370 vanished four years ago in aviation's greatest mystery, sparking anger and disappointment among relatives of those on board.
In a
long-awaited report the official investigation team pointed to failings by air
traffic controllers, said the course of the Malaysia Airlines plane was changed
manually, and refused to rule out that someone other than the pilots had
diverted the jet.
But after
years of fruitless searching for the Boeing 777 that disappeared in March 2014
with 239 people aboard, the report offered nothing concrete to grieving
relatives of passengers and crew hoping for some sort of closure.
"The
team is unable to determine the real cause for the disappearance of
MH370," concluded the largely technical 400-page report, noting that
investigators were hindered in their probe as neither the plane's wreckage nor
its black boxes had been found.
Investigators
said the plane was airworthy and the pilots were in a fit state to fly, and
dismissed the theory that the plane had been taken over remotely to foil a
hijacking.
Relatives
who were briefed at the transport ministry in the administrative capital
Putrajaya before the report's public release expressed anger that there was nothing
new in the document, with some storming out of the briefing as frustration
boiled over.
"It is
so disappointing," said Intan Maizura Othman, whose husband was a steward
on MH370, which had been flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing carrying mostly
mainland Chinese passengers when it vanished.
"I am
frustrated. There is nothing new in the report."
She said
the meeting between relatives and officials descended into a "shouting
match" as anger mounted.
G.
Subramaniam, who lost a son on the flight, added that "unsatisfactory
responses left many angry".
Largest
hunt in history
The
disappearance of MH370 triggered the largest hunt in aviation history. But no
sign of it was found in a 120,000-square kilometre (46,000-square mile) Indian
Ocean search zone and the Australian-led hunt was suspended in January last
year.
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Copies of
the MH370 safety investigations report are seen on the floor
during a media
briefing
|
US
exploration firm Ocean Infinity resumed the search in a different location at
the start of this year on a "no find, no fee" basis, using high-tech
drones to scour the seabed. But that search was also called off after failing
to find anything.
Only three
confirmed fragments of MH370 have been found, all of them on western Indian
Ocean shores, including a two-metre wing part known as a flaperon.
Malaysia's
new government, which took power in May, has said the hunt could be resumed but
only if new evidence comes to light.
Transport
Minister Anthony Loke insisted Monday that "the aspiration to locate MH370
has not been abandoned and we remain ever-hopeful that we will be able to find
the answers we seek when the credible evidence becomes available".
One area
that came in for criticism in the report by the 19-member team, which included
foreign investigators, was air traffic control.
It said
both Malaysian air traffic control and their Vietnamese counterparts failed to
act properly when the Boeing jet passed from Malaysian to Vietnamese airspace
and disappeared from radars.
Air traffic
controllers did not initiate emergency procedures in a timely fashion, delaying
the start of the search and rescue operation, it said.
However it
played down concerns about the pilot and first officer, saying neither appeared
to have suffered difficulties in their personal lives that could have affected
their ability to fly.
"We
did not find any change to their behaviour, everything was normal," Kok
Soo Chon, head of the investigation team, told a press conference.
The report
also said the plane was airworthy and did not have major technical issues, with
Kok saying it had been diverted from its intended flight path manually.
Intervention
by a third party could not be ruled out, the report said, but also added there
was no evidence to suggest the plane was flown by anyone other than the pilots.
Graphic on the debris so far discovered from Malaysia Airlines MH370 that went missing in 2014 with 239 people on board pic.twitter.com/7Y0IgMl6c8— AFP news agency (@AFP) July 30, 2018
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