Black boxes to be analysed at home

Ministries to collaborate on flight recorder lab

LANGKAWI: Malaysia will be capable of analysing black boxes at home come next year with the setting up of a laboratory, says Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi.

The establishment of the laboratory was one of the memorandums of understanding (MoUs) inked by the Defence Ministry (Mindef ) and the Transport Ministry during the Langkawi International Maritime and Aerospace (Lima) exhibition 2017 yesterday.

The MoU was between Mindef’s Science and Technology Research Institute for Defence (Stride) and the Transport Ministry’s Air Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB).

“This will create the capability for us to analyse a black box on our own. Currently, we have to send it overseas to do so.”

“We expect to get an international acknowledgement by next year for us to analyse black boxes on our own.

“There is a need for this after all the aviation incidents,” Ab Aziz told a press conference after the MoU signing.

Defence Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said he viewed the MoU as the result of both the Defence and Transport ministries’ awareness of the need to learn from the flight tragedies that had occured.

“Not many countries have gone through the kind of tragedies we face in MH370 and MH17.

“It would be a waste if we didn’t leverage this experience and benefit from it in order to share what we know with stakeholders out there,” Hishammuddin said.

He also gave his assurance that Mindef and the Malaysian Armed Forces will give their fullest co-operation to prove their determination in their search for MH370 as well as seeking justice for the MH17 tragedy.

On March 8 2014, flight MH370’s ill-fated Boeing 777 was bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur when it went missing shortly after taking off, taking with it 239 passengers.

Its journey is believed to have ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board.