

The preliminary report into the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 recommends that the body that oversees global aviation examines safety benefits of introducing a standard for real time tracking of commercial air transport.

Malaysia’s transport ministry made the recommendation in a report dated April 9 but released today and points to the difficulty of finding both Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 and Air France flight AF447 in 2009 as evidence that such real-time tracking would help to better mount a search and rescue effort.

“There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known. This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner,” the ministry said.

Conversation between MH370 and ATC

The Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER disappeared on 8 March en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board. The search initially took place in the South China Sea and the Straits of Malacca, switching to the Indian Ocean three weeks later as a result of new satellite data.

Malaysia also released a map showing the aircraft’s flight path as well as a document detailing actions taken by authorities in the hours after the Boeing 777 disappeared from radar.

The aircraft went off Malaysian radar at 1:21 a.m. on March 8, but Vietnamese air traffic controllers only queried about it at 1:38 a.m. The report also said Malaysian authorities did not launch an official search and rescue operation until four hours later, at 5:30 a.m., after efforts to locate the aircraft failed.

Malaysia confirmed that its military radar did track an aircraft making a turn-back, in a westerly direction, across peninsular Malaysia on the morning of 8 March and said the aircraft was categorised as friendly by the radar operator and therefore no further action was taken at the time.

“The radar data was reviewed in a playback at approximately 08:30 on 8 March. This information was sent to the Air Force operations room at approximately 09:00,” said the Malaysian prime minister today. “Following further discussion up the chain of command, the military informed the acting transport and defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein at approximately 10:30 of the possible turn-back of the aircraft. The Minister then informed the Prime Minister, who immediately ordered that search and rescue operations be initiated in the Straits of Malacca, along with the South China Sea operations which started earlier in the day.”

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has already announced that it is to convene a special meeting of state and industry experts on the global tracking of airline flights.

The Council President of ICAO Dr Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu said ICAO will be using the 12-13 May gathering to try and increase current momentum on deliberations over the specific aircraft and satellite-based capabilities needed to permit global implementation of worldwide flight tracking.

“The loss of an aircraft and any loss of life are always of utmost concern to ICAO and to the entire air transport community,” said President Aliu. “The unprecedented and unusual circumstances of Flight MH370 have been particularly difficult for civil aviation officials to resolve to this point, and the lack of definitive answers has been much harder still for the victims’ families to come to terms with. They, above all, will benefit from a fuller explanation of this accident.”

The cargo manifest includes a receipt for a package containing lithium ion batteries, noting that the package “must be handled with care.”

No wreckage from the aircraft has been found, and an aerial search for surface debris ended Monday after six weeks. An unmanned sub is continuing to search underwater in an area of the southern Indian Ocean where sounds consistent with a aircraft’s black box were detected on April 5.