Malaysia civil aviation chief resigns over MH370 lapses

Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the report had found that air traffic control did not comply with standard operating procedures. (Photo: Reuters)

Kuala Lumpur (VNA) - Chief of Malaysia’s civil aviation authority Azharuddin Abdul Rahman resigned on July 31 after an investigation report on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 showed lapses by the air traffic control centre in Kuala Lumpur.

In a statement announcing his resignation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the report highlighted failures by air traffic control to comply with standard operating procedures, but he had not blamed the aviation authority for the loss of the aircraft.

“Therefore, it is with regret and after much thought and contemplation that I have decided to resign as the Chairman of Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia effective 14 days from the date of the resignation notice which I have served today,” he said in the statement.

In the 495-page report, released the previous day, investigators said the controls of aircraft were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off course but they were unable to determine who was responsible.

The report, however, highlighted mistakes made by the Kuala Lumpur air traffic control. It said air traffic controllers failed to initiate standard emergency phases, and there was no record that they took any action to alert the air force or kept a continuous watch on the radar display.

Addressing a news conference, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said an internal committee would be formed to come up with recommendations and possible action that could be taken against the air traffic controllers on duty at the time.

The Boeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, with 239 people on board.

Shortly after the incident, the largest search in the history of aviation was conducted around 120,000sq.km in the Indian Ocean. Led by Australia, the campaign, which cost 159 million USD, was halted in January 2017 after almost three years.

Earlier this year, US technology company Ocean Infinity resumed the search for the plane, using unmanned equipment.

The company carried out a three-month search in a massive swathe of seabed measuring 112,000sq.km, four times larger than the area experts believe the flight had crashed. It was the latest move in attempts to find out what had happened in the mysterious incident.-VNA