Captain and crew not suspects in MH370

Yesterday marked one year since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared from the skies without a trace.

Flight 370 went missing with 239 people on board, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, taking Malaysia to international status for all the wrong reasons.

With still nothing more than conspiracy theories floating around the mysterious disappearance, the world, along with the relatives of those on board, have no news on where the plane ended up.

CNN reported that investigators confirmed they found no indication of unusual behaviour among the pilots and cabin crew of Flight 370 before it took off a year ago.

“There were no behavioural signs of social isolation, change in habits or interest, self-neglect, drug or alcohol abuse of the captain, first officer and the cabin crew,” said an interim report released Sunday.

It also said MH370’s captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah did not have any personal or financial problems that should make him a suspect, and had proven to be good at dealing with crisis in the past.

Investigators looked into the backgrounds of different crew members, as well as CCTV footage of the flight crew at airports on at least three previous flights, but saw no signs of change in behaviour.

One piece of information that was revealed was that the battery of the underwater locator beacon on MH370’s flight data recorder expired more than a year before the plane’s disappearance.

The report, which looked to maintenance records, said there was no evidence to suggest the battery had been replaced before its expiry in December 2012, meaning “it is not guaranteed that it will work or that it would meet the 30-day minimum requirement.”

CNN reported that investigators interviewed maintenance staff and found that the computerised replacement schedule had not been updated correctly when the flight data recorder, and its locator beacon were replaced in February 2008.

This mistake, however, wasn’t identified until after that disappearance of the flight.

A map of the flight path and search range for MH370. Source: Extreme Tech

Investigators have also so far failed to explain why the plane veered so far off its scheduled route in the early hours of March 8 2014, with radar and satellite data indicating the Boeing 777 most likely went down in the southern Indian Ocean.

A group of specialised ships still search for traces of the jet in the remote area of ocean, with these efforts expected to wrap up in May, regardless of findings.

“Assuming no significant delays with vessels, equipment or from the weather, the current underwater search area should be largely completed by the end of May,” the deputy prime minister, Warren Truss, said in a statement.

Malaysia’s transport minister Liow Tiong Lai recently told some foreign reporters he was cautiously optimistic that the Boeing 777 is in the area of the southern Indian Ocean, where the search is ongoing, according to Skift.

“By the end of May, if we still can’t find the plane, then we will have to go back to the drawing board,” Liow said.

In the latest report he received Friday, he said the search team had identified 10 hard objects that still need to be analysed.

These sorts of findings, which often include trash and cargo containers from passing ships, have been common during the search, and so far no trace of wreckage has been located.

Judith Zielke, the chief coordinator of the joint agency coordination centre, still showed signs of hope that the wreckage of the plane would eventually be recovered, according to The Guardian.

“There is a lot of territory we haven’t covered as yet. We are talking about an area that’s more than 2500 kilometres away from Perth and we are also talking about waters up to 6000 metres deep,” she told ABC TV on Sunday.

PM Tony Abbott, however, wouldn’t say when Australia would pull the pin on the search, saying that while it can’t go on forever, “as long as there are reasonable leads the search will go on.”

But despite the tragedy, made worse by the shocking attack on MH17, didn’t seem to drain the country of tourists, with tourism actually growing at its fastest pace since 2008.

Figures showing data from January to October last year showed just shy of 23 million visitors, a leap of nearly 10% from a year earlier.

Australia has taken the lead in a joint effort with Malaysia and Indonesia to launch a new system of aircraft tracking, ensuring planes will be found more efficiently should they vanish.

The new system would track plane coordinates every 15 minutes, as opposed to the standard rate of every 30-40 minutes, with these intervals bumping up to five minutes or less if there is a deviation in the plane’s movements.

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