Malaysia to publish final report on missing MH370 flight on July 30

Kuala Lumpur, July 20 (IANS): Malaysia’s Transport Minister Anthony Loke announced on Friday that the final report on the investigation into Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which went missing in March 2014 with 239 people on board, will be made public on July 30.

“Every word recorded by the investigation team will be tabled in this report,” Loke said, according to state-owned Bernama news agency.

“We are committed to the transparency of this report (…) It will be tabled fully, without any editing, additions, or redactions,” Loke added.

The publication of the final report comes following the unsuccessful conclusion of two search missions in the Indian Ocean after Voice 370, an organization of families of the victims of the missing plane, urged Kuala Lumpur to review documents related to the disappearance of the airplane.

The organization had also requested the government to conduct an “investigation into any possible falsification and/or elimination of records related to MH370, its maintenance”.

In May, US-based seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity finished combing 112,000 square km without finding the aircraft’s debris.

The area was located to the north of the 120,000 square km where the initial search operation was carried out by Malaysian, Australian and Chinese authorities, at a cost of more than $151 million and which was suspended in early 2017.

The Beijing-bound MH370 disappeared from the radar on March 8, 2014, around 40 minutes after it took off from Kuala Lumpur. Someone apparently switched off the communications system and re-routed the plane towards the Indian Ocean, according to an official report.

So far, 27 fragments of the aircraft have been recovered from beaches in Reunion, Mozambique, Mauritius, South Africa and Pemba Island, off Africa’s east coast.

The fragments were believed to have been swept across the Indian Ocean by currents, which is consistent with the official hypothesis of the incident.

Experts have confirmed that three wing fragments found in Reunion, Mauritius and Pemba belonged to MH370. Another seven pieces, including parts of interior of the cockpit, were “almost certainly” from the missing plane, and another eight were highly likely to be from it.