No answers on Flight 370
that it could be an event committed by the pilot,” Kok told a media briefing.
But all passengers were also cleared by police and had no pilot training.
“We cannot rule out unlawful interference by a third party,” such as someone holding the pilots hostage, he said. But he added that no group has said it hijacked the plane and no ransom demands have been made, compounding the mystery. Kok said it is up to police to investigate.
He said the investigation showed lapses by air traffic control, including a failure to swiftly initiate an emergency response and monitor radar continuously, relying too much on information from Malaysia Airlines and not getting in touch with the military for help.
The plane carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished March 8, 2014, and is presumed to have crashed in the far southern Indian Ocean. The report said there is insufficient information to determine if the aircraft broke up in the air or during impact with the ocean.
Scattered pieces of debris that washed ashore on African beaches and Indian Ocean islands indicated a distant remote stretch of the ocean where the plane likely crashed. But a government search by Australia, Malaysia and China failed to pinpoint a location. And a second, private search by U.S. company Ocean Infinity that finished at the end of May also found no sign of the wreckage.
Family members of those on board the plane said after a briefing by the investigation team that they were frustrated because there were many gaps in the probe and questions left unanswered.
“There is nothing new, but it highlighted failings of some government agencies” that did not follow protocol and guidelines, said Grace Nathan, whose mother was on the plane.
She said the scope of the safety investigation was too limited, depended too much on information supplied to them by other parties and didn’t discuss the scope of the searches.
Sakinab Shah, sister of senior pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, said she felt “relieved and happy” that Zaharie was again cleared of blame.
Officials said Monday’s report is still not a final accounting because the plane hasn’t been found. Malaysia’s government has said it is open to resuming the search if credible evidence of the plane’s location emerges.
The “rogue pilot” theory still arises in public discussions despite Malaysian authorities saying there is no evidence linking Zaharie or his co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, to any wrongdoing.
He said police retrieved more than 2,700 coordinates from various file segments found in Zaharie’s home flight simulator. This included seven “manually programmed waypoint coordinates” that, when linked, could fly from the Kuala Lumpur airport to the southern Indian Ocean, but police could not determine if the coordinates were found in a single file or from different files, he said.
Police didn’t find any data that showed a similar route flown by Flight 370 and concluded there were “no unusual activities other than game-related flight simulations,” Kok said.