The Malaysian Annex 13 investigation teams’ final report into the disappearance of missing flight MH370 continues to draw fire with a prominent member of the independent group of experts saying it raises more questions than it answers.
The report, which adhered strictly to questions of safety and did not address the search or security issues, was not expected to come up with a definitive answer to the 2014 disappearance of the Boeing 777 with 239 passengers and crew on board.
READ Malaysia exonerates MH370 pilots and walks away.
But it immediately stirred controversy by suggesting a third party could have could have unlawfully interfered with the plane after take-off to shut down communications and make a series of turns across the Malaysian Peninsula.
The report confirmed that the plane was flown manually when it made the maneuvers, something pilots and other experts have been saying consistently. But the most likely candidate has been seen as one of the pilots, probably Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
Investigators failed to provide any evidence of a third party other than to say none of its checks showed anything amiss with Captain Zaharie and his first officer, Fariq Abdul Hamid.
READ MH370 report does not rule out “unlawful interference”.
The Malaysians were keen to avoid a dissenting report from one of the other countries party to the investigation and in the main report said only that they could not rule out that the plane was flown by one of the pilots or by an unknown third party.
Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon took that further during a press conference.
“We have examined the pilot, the first officer. We were quite satisfied with the background, with the training, with the mental health, mental state,’’ he said. “We are not of the opinion that it could have been an event committed by the pilot.”
At the same time, Kok said, investigators could not deny the event or that systems were manually turned off “within intent or otherwise”.
“So we feel that there’s also one possibility that could account for all this,’’ he said. “We are not ruling out any possibility we are just saying that no matter what we do we cannot exclude the possibility of a third person or third party or unlawful interference.’’
Independent group member Victor Iannello questioned on his MH370 blog who the third party would be given, as Kok conceded, all the passengers and crew had also been cleared by background investigations.
“How can Malaysian investigators ignore that the captain had the best opportunity and capability to divert the plane?” Iannello said.
“How does the compressed timeline of the diversion fit any other possibility if the diversion was intentional?
“It is understandable that the Safety Report did not apportion blame to the captain. However, it is not understandable that the report deflected blame to an unnamed third party.”
Iannello also raised questions about radar data, pilot simulator data, the investigation of the flaperon and a connection made by the first officer’s phone.
He said the report provided more details about radar data but failed to provide the raw military data — which included speed and latitude — that would allow an independent review.
On the flight simulator, Iannello found it odd that the Royal Malaysian Police concluded there were no unusual activities other than game-related simulations given the “extraordinary coincidence” that a simulated flight that included a departure from Kuala Lumpur International Airport and ended in the Southern Indian Ocean was recovered after the disappearance.
He said the report did not mention that certain values common to seven waypoint coordinates indicated they were from the same simulation.
Statements from Australian investigators indicated the chronological order of the data sets matched a flight departing KLIA, flying over the Malacca Strait, continuing past the Andaman Islands, turning to the south, and exhausting fuel in the Southern Indian Ocean.
“There are other strange facts surrounding the simulator data,’’ he said. “For instance, Malaysia does not explain why only fragments of the data files were recovered, as the reconstruction of the entire contents of the data files should have been possible using the data in the Shadow Volume.”
On the flaperon, Iannello noted French scientists conducting tests on the flight surface had hypothesized that the flaperon hit the water while still attached to the aircraft and at the time of impact it was deflected. The Malaysian investigation found the flaperon was in the neutral position and an adjacent flap was stowed.
“The French were careful to advise that this is only an hypothesis because of the limited data made available to them by Boeing, and because of the complicated dynamics of the impact mechanics,’’ Ianello said.
“Nonetheless, if it can be proven that the aircraft was in a controlled descent at the time it impacted the ocean, the distance from the 7th arc could be greater than 120 nautical miles, as there could have been a long glide after fuel exhaustion.
“A controlled descent after fuel exhaustion would also leave open the possibility of pilot navigational inputs after 19:41, and possible paths would include crossing the 7th arc over a large range of latitudes.
“These unknowns would make it very difficult to define a new search area of a manageable size. For this reason, it is critical that mechanism that led to separation of the flaperon be determined with a higher level of certainty.”
Whether a new search happens will depends on whether the new Malaysian government is happy to whitewash the tragedy — which is the impression many family members of victims have taken away from this report — or has some determination to get to the truth.
Upset family members have told media there would no healing until the mystery was solved and urged the Malaysians not to abandon the search.
“I think it’s important for the families and important for the public at large that we don’t consign this whole MH370 experience to history,” Narenderan Kilapandal Santhanam, who lost this wife, told the ABC.
The families’ angst was not helped by confusion over whether Monday’s document was the final report, although Kok confirmed it would be the last report of the current team.
“It would be too presumptuous of us to say this is the final report because the wreckage has not been found, if no victims had been found,’’ Kok said.
Kok said there must be a closure, however unsatisfactory to many people.
“The answer can only be conclusive if the wreckage is found,’’ he said.
“This report is released at this point of time because we do not know whether there will be a search in another time or whether there will be another team who will be assigned this task again.
“But as far as our team is concerned we have done our job, we were ready to release it and the government said yes.’’
In a statement released later that day, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke reiterated that the aspirations to locate MH370 had 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”.
However, Iannello said it was unlikely another search would occur unless a case could be made that there was a reasonable probability of success.
“Unfortunately, the Safety Report raises more questions than it answers, and it will be difficult to use the information in the report to define a search area of a manageable size,’’ he said. “The answers to some questions will not be known until the flight data recorder is recovered.
“However, the answers to other questions are known to Malaysian authorities today. Any remaining chance to find MH370 squarely rests on the willingness of the new Malaysian administration to cooperatively work with official and independent investigators.”
