A safety report on the disappearance of the flight MH370 found out that the plane was manually turned around while in air, and it was not under the autopilot, with an unlawful interference by a third party not being ruled out. However, it dismissed theories indicating that the pilot and first officer brought the plane down in a suicide mission, as well as mechanical failure.
The report did not provide any concrete conclusions about the reasons the plane disappeared, nor any indication where the wreckage might be.
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Speaking at a press conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia, Dr. Kok Soo Chon, the investigator of the MH370, did not blame anyone for the incident but informed that a number protocols were broken by the air traffic control in Malaysia and Vietnam. This led to the plane disappearing for 20 minutes before anyone was alerted.
It also concluded that the plane’s emergency locator transmitters (ELT), malfunctioned, as they did not give the normal distress signals that would help locate the plane.
However, the report mentions that the manoeuvre to turn the plane around, was handled manually, either by the pilot or a third party, rather than because of autopilot.
The role of the pilot was also dismissed, with Dr. Kok noting that the investigators did not find anything suspicious. Namely, both the pilot and the first officer were examined, with their background, training and mental health being satisfactory.
The safety investigators said they find most fault with the air traffic controllers, initially in Kuala Lumpur and then Ho Chi Minh City, who were meant to be watching the plane but they did not followed protocol.
The flight MH370, which was travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, disappeared in March 2014 with 239 people onboard. It had just left Malaysian airspace, when it changed course, flying for over six hours with its satellite and navigation systems turned off, before falling into the Indian Ocean.
There have been many attempts to locate the plane over the past four years, which has become one of the largest underwater search operations in history. However, they have not provided any results, except from three wing fragments that washed up on the shore.