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Updated at 9.15am
A REPORT INTO missing flight MH370 has found the battery on its underwater locator beacon had expired a year before, but found no red flags relating to the crew or aircraft to shed light on the cause of the disappearance.
An international team of investigators probed a range of issues including the Malaysia Airlines captain and co-pilot’s personal, psychological, and financial profiles, and the backgrounds of the 10 cabin crew.
Their lengthy report, released on the first anniversary of the disappearance of the jet which is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean after diverting from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route, mentioned no findings that cast suspicion on them.
“There were no behavioural signs of social isolation, change in habits or interest, self-neglect, drug or alcohol abuse of the Captain, First Officer and the Cabin Crew,” it said.
The report said, however, that civilian radar had tracked the plane for a short time after it diverted on March 8 of last year. Previous Malaysian statements had indicated that only its military radar had monitored the plane.
The report also found that the battery powering the underwater locator beacon on the plane’s flight data recorder was due to expire in December 2012. However, the battery on the plane’s cockpit voice recorder was replaced and functioning.
It noted that while batteries can still operate past their official expiry, they may lose effectiveness, calling it an “oversight.”
The report said airline blamed a problem in computer systems that track equipment updates, and that it had subsequently carried out a fleet-wide inspection to make sure records were accurate.
- ‘Little to analyse’ -
Representatives from neither Malaysia’s civil aviation authority nor the national carrier were immediately available for comment.
“My major worry is that (search vessels) may have gone over the aircraft but not heard the pings because of this,” said Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based aviation consultant, said of the expired battery and the so-far-fruitless search for the jet.
Otherwise, he said the report mostly restated what is already known about MH370.
“There is nothing much to go on with the new report,” he said, adding “there is little to analyse.”
The investigative team was set up in the weeks after the plane’s disappearance under International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) requirements and was required to submit its findings within one year of the disappearance.
The report ticked through a number of the plane’s major mechanical systems and noted in each case that according to available data and maintenance records, nothing alarming was seen.
It remains unknown what caused the Boeing 777 to veer from its Kuala Lumpur-Beijing route with 239 passengers and crew aboard.
Suspicion had fallen on the cockpit crew of pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah and his co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid. Other theories have included a mechanical problem or hijack.
The report was focused on air-safety issues related to MH370. The investigators did not probe the 227 passengers or the possibility of a hijack.
The report stressed that the investigation was ongoing and that “new information that may become available may alter this information.”
“The investigation team expects that further factual information will be available from the wreckage and flight recorders if the aircraft is found,” it said.
A year-long, Australian-led search effort in the southern Indian Ocean where the plane is believed to have crashed has yielded nothing as yet.
Next of kin have been sharply critical of Malaysia’s initial handling of the crisis and remain deeply unhappy with the lack of answers one year on.
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This is the most bizarre story, its just so strange that their isn’t any real clues to the whereabouts of the wreckage. I feel so sorry for the relatives of the victims.
Agreed, it seems strange at first, but when you look at the vastness of the Indian Ocean, the fact that nobody really knows which part of it to search, the logistics of this type of search, and the fact that even if the batteries of the Dukane locator beacon were working the effective detection range is relatively miniscule (2-3km) compared to the enormous search area, perhaps its not that surprising. Its not the first time a large airliner has vanished without trace either. Maybe some day some floating debris will wash up somewhere, but even this is unlikely to tell us much more than we already know.
If the plane landed on the water intact and immediately sank drowning all the passengers there would be debris and bodies when the plane broke up under water due to pressure ,if the plane broke up on impact there would be debris and bodies , if the plane broke up at altitude there would be debris and bodies , a year on and not a sign nothing washed up where along coastlines anywhere .?
It must be hellish for the families.
Anywhere
If crew and pax were dead from a pressurisation failure and aircraft flew on a heading until fuel ran out was there a ram air turbine on this aircraft and could the computers have made a controlled landing on water?
If the plane landed on the water intact and slowly filled with water and sank there would be no pressure difference to make it breakup.
This is indeed very interesting. Either someone knows what happened and the plane is hidden away somewhere or nobody knows anything and the plane is lost forever.
No sh!t Sherlock, I think you have it solved
How long did it take u to come up with that
There are things going on in the universe that scientists have no clue about.. There are well documented ‘UFO’ sightings that can’t be explained by anybody.. Let’s just say that maybe somewhere out there another life form can travel millions of light years by using some sort of worm holes or something and this plane happened to fly into it and ended up in a parallel world or something..
Jasus you make Frank sound sensible…
Well are you not intelligent enough to even consider that we’re not alone in the universe?
Needle in a haystack finding that plane,surely the fbi, nasa or other agencies know where it is,maybe they don’t want to show just how advanced there technology is for fear of causing another cold war type race
Not bowing to conspiracy but if anyone knows where it is it’s Putin.
I agree, someone knows where this plane is but don’t want anyone else to know they have the technology available.
I’m assuming the majority of passengers and crew on board had smartphones. In this day and age everyone’s movements are logged and tracked on smartphones so why haven’t they tried tracking the movements of the plane that way?????
I’m usually very sceptical but having studied this case very closely over the previous 12 months I’m leaning more and more towards a conspiracy theory…….
I’d study the case a little more closely then, Alan. Cell phones don’t work on aircraft above 5000ft. Even at that height the signal is intermitten and atrocious because the aircraft is travelling at such a speed (350mph) it can’t lock properly on one cell tower before it is out of range and trying to fix on the next tower in range. You won’t find too many ground stations in the middle of the South Indian ocean! Cell towers only exist on land.
Mick are you American what’s a cell phone? If you were up to date my friend you would realise smartphones nowadays use satellites and ‘cell towers’ to send and recieve information which is how phones can still be tracked even if the SIM card is removed . Last time I checked satellites work at over 5000ft and can also pick up fast moving objects, except for large aeroplanes in this case.
I find it really hard to believe in this day and age the American government can find a single terrorist hiding in a cave in a remote mountain in afghans sat or Kazakhstan yet we can’t find a large jumbo jet with 239 people on board…..
Sweet Jez, Alan, I’m not going to argue with you. You have already explained the error in your own statement. A smartphone is not a satellite phone. It firstly needs a connection to a ground cell tower to work (and by the way , whether in Ireland, USA or China, that’s way the telecommunications industry refers to them ‘cell’ – nothing to do with being American or not, and I’m Irish!). It’s the cell tower that communicates with satellites by relaying your phone signal through a series of towers and satellites that enable you to talk to someone on the other side of the world. A smartphone doesn’t have the range to work at height. A concrete bridge, underground car park or valley will even disrupt or drop a signal with the nearest cell town. You sim card is nothing more than a storage and identification chip card.
Some airlines are now offering wifi services where you can use a device via the aircraft’s SATCOM box in certain regions and during stages of a flight. Even with that, the aircraft’s SATCOM box has to be powered and function. The so-called handshakes logged by Inmarsat where successive failed attempts by the aircraft’s communication system repeatedly trying to reboot, log in and send data. A mobile phone doesn’t have that capability because its signal is far to weak without the boost of ground towers and satellites.
Wait you really think your smart phone actually send signals to satellites?
Oh wow :) darwin was right
Just for you Alan….
Just watched a report of this missing plane on ch5 . No one seems to have a clue as to what happened . The one scenario that kept popping up was there may have been a out of control fire in the cockpit and this could have shut down the vital instruments on board . Hope they find the plane and black boxes soon so the family’s can find closure for their loved ones
Nope. I’m convinced it’s pilot suicide.
Too many events that happened with accuracy. Perfect time to hide a plane. During an ATC handover. Fly perfectly along Thai border so radar would think it’s other jurisdiction. Hooking a left turn to look at the small island where the capt happened to be from. Flew to that island on its own?? Then disabled avionics under cockpit and flew to his death.
Pretty straightforward really.
Excuse my ignorance but, in case of a pilot suicide why would he want to take 238 passengers with him?
Look up the EgyptAir pilot suicide incident.
Why would anyone want to murder or commit suicide? ? Why would someone crash a plane into skyscrapers?
When a person decides they are going to do it there is a calm. They can see almost happy they are not in right mind.
Pilots themselves believe it was done on purpose.
Put it this way say I came from isle of man. Say I take off in pane from Amsterdam and meant to go to Russia. Now say I wait till I’m just outside ATC and civilian radar and fly inch perfect between zones I head for isle of man I fly around it banking to look fown before I fly perfectly threading the needle between ATC zones till I’m over the ocean and a system that just can not fail suddenly turns off. Oh and during all of this no radio contact.
Sorry but it was 100% murder / suicide
I can understand they don’t know where it crashed when all controls were lost in the vast area of the ocean, but what is bizarre that these clowns don’t even know what direction it went when still in much populated / monitored areas – at the early stage of the flight. Is area near Australia their best guess or actually from technical data reading?
Civilian radar tracks transponders. Military track echos. Keep in mind that you can tell from echo the type of plane a civilian airliner is not going to set alarm bells ringing. ATC in two different countries one has off and forgets about it the other pics it up. So yes I can see how you could easily confuse that system.
But then civilian airliners that Boeing can not turn off its tracking system unless you go down into avionics bay and pull the fuses. They how you going to track it?
Immersat handshakes the sat tracker which was not active but it still handshakes. Depending on time from ping to response on can calulate distance. But to actually triangulate the position you need a second reference from another sat. So all they have with one is a distance. Take into account the world is round that line turns into an arc.
From day 1 I’ve struggled to see how a plane can just vanish.. Which 1 year on, is still what the situation is. Maybe we will never know what happened, maybe somebody already does… I can’t imagine what the families of everyone on board MH370 must be feeling with still no answers.
Read above.
The above… Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me I’m afraid.
So they never had a hope in hell of finding it with expired ELT batteries
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