Headlines
MH370 probe reveals sleeping ATC controller
Kuala Lumpur, March 9
A report of the probe
into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that went
missing last year revealed that the assigned air traffic controller
(ATC) on the day of the incident was asleep when a call was made some
four hours after the aircraft went missing.
This information is
in the nearly 600-page report compiled by a 19-man team investigating
the mystery of the missing plane, the Malaysian Star reported on Monday.
Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.
The plane is believed to have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean.
The
team suggested that the supervising controller at the Kuala Lumpur Air
Traffic Control Centre (KLATCC) was asleep when a call was made four
hours after MH370 disappeared.
In the transcript released on
Sunday, a presumably senior Malaysia Airlines staffer at MAS Operations
asked the KLATCC controller if there was a positive handover by MH370 to
Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control.
The controller had started
the four-minute-long conversation with MAS at 5.20 a.m., where the MAS
officer repeatedly pressed the controller for details, especially
whether there was any positive handover between KLATCC and Ho Chi Minh
City air traffic control.
The controller replied he only took over tower operations after 3 a.m., and was not sure about the details.
The MAS worker’s continual request for information led the controller to say that he would wake up his supervisor.
Investigators
also found that the battery of the flight data recorder’s underwater
locator beacon expired in December 2012, well over a year before the
plane vanished.
“The Engineering Maintenance System (EMS), a
computer system used to track and call out maintenance, was not updated
correctly when the Flight Data Recorder was replaced on February 29,
2008,†investigators said.
An update would normally involve the
removal of the old unit followed by the installation of the new unit.
However in this instance, while the removal of the old unit was recorded
in the EMS, the installation was not.
“Since the EMS was not
updated, it did not trigger the removal of the flight data recorder for
replacement of the underwater locator beacon battery when it was due,â€
they said, adding that the battery of the cockpit voice recorder’s
underwater locator beacon was replaced.
In April 2014, Chinese and Australian search vessels picked up some pings over the search area, but the signals then faded away.
The pings were later deemed unlikely to be from the flight data recorder.
Investigators
also confirmed that 221 kg of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries carried in
the aircraft did not pass through security checks.
The
batteries, from Motorola Solutions Penang, were assembled and packed in
Bayan Lepas on March 7 before being transported by truck to the Kuala
Lumpur International Airport.
The shipment “did not go through
security screening†in Penang but was physically inspected by MASKargo
personnel and was cleared by Customs before being sealed and allowed to
leave the Penang Cargo Complex.
Nonetheless, the battery shipment
had adhered to packaging guidelines under the International Civil
Aviation Organisation Technical Instructions for Safe Transport of
Dangerous Goods by Air, and the 55th Edition of the IATA Dangerous Goods
Regulations (DGR)
The batteries were part of a 2,453-kg consignment also containing walkie-talkie accessories and chargers.