The Malaysian controller insisted he had only taken over tower operations at 3am and wasn't sure about the details. A relative of a passenger on MH370 at a protest outside the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing. Credit:Getty Images The plane's communications equipment had ceased operating abruptly at 1.20am. Upon more requests for information, the controller told the Malaysia Airlines staff member that he would wake up his supervisor. "Aaaa … never mind, laa. I wake up my supervisor and ask him to check again, to go to the room and check what the last contact … all this thing, laa," the controller said.

Desmond Ross, an Australian commercial pilot and airline security expert, said Sunday's 580-page report from the seven-country investigation team raised more questions than it answered, including why there was confusion between Kuala Lumpur air traffic control and its counterparts in Vietnam. Air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh took 20 minutes to start asking why the plane had not entered its airspace when international protocols demand this should have happened within two minutes. For hours, officials struggled to comprehend how the plane suddenly dropped off radar scopes and ended all radio communication. At one point Malaysia Airlines insisted the plane was flying over Cambodia when in fact it was, according to available data, flying thousands of kilometres away on auto-pilot into the vast expanse of the southern Indian Ocean. Transcripts show a slow response from Malaysia's emergency services that would have been calamitous for any survivors had the plane ditched into the South China Sea as first thought. A distress phase was triggered by Malaysia's emergency services five hours and 13 minutes after the last communication from the plane.

The first search aircraft took off at 11.30am Malaysian time – 10 hours after the plane disappeared. Transcripts show Vietnamese air traffic controllers did not respond to at least one emergency message and appeared to have trouble understanding what was being asked of them by Malaysian officials. International rules introduced in 2010 require all pilots and air traffic controllers to pass a test in English. Mr Ross said a stand-out issue is why there was no co-ordination between Malaysia's military and the air traffic controllers as they tracked an unidentified aircraft. "How did they not know it was not a threat to Malaysian security?" Mr Ross said that, if the military and civilian air traffic controllers had talked to each other, an interceptor aircraft could have been dispatched to follow MH370 to establish what was going on.

Mr Ross said a full audit was needed of Malaysia Airlines' maintenance control after the investigation team found that one of the batteries on the plane's flight-data recorders had expired in December 2012 and no record was available to show it had been replaced. He said there should be an immediate review of the relationship between air traffic control systems and the Malaysian military, an introduction of regular search and rescue exercises and a review of the competency in English language of air traffic controllers. "From the top down, there should be an immediate review of the safety culture of Malaysia Airlines," said Mr Ross, who has worked as a security consultant at Kuala Lumpur airport. Sunday's report deepened the world's biggest aviation mystery, casting serious doubt over whether either of the two pilots or crew hijacked the plane and revealing there appeared to be no safety breaches with a cargo consignment of 221 kilograms of lithium batteries. Lithium batteries have caused fires on other flights. Malaysia Airlines admits investigators are no closer to finding out what happened to the plane than when it disappeared 12 months ago.

Malaysia's Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said an immediate review would be done into issues raised by the investigators. "We will definitely take heed of the facts contained in the document and the appropriate measures will be undertaken once the necessary reviews have been completed," he said.