France reopens MH370 investigation as Malaysian report faces condemnation

France reopens MH370 investigation as Malaysian report faces condemnation

Just a week after Malaysian investigators released their final report on the disappearance of MH370, France has announced it will open a new investigation.

Le Parisien reports the Gendarmerie of Air Transport will open an investigation to re-examine technical data from the global satellite network, Inmarsat which tracked pings from the plane to the Southern Indian Ocean, where the flight is believed to have crashed.

The airline authority wants to “verify the authenticity” of the technical data.

Meanwhile, relatives of those on board MH370 have issued a statement urging the Malaysian government to release all data for review by independent experts after Malaysia’s final report sparked accusations of a coverup.

“We believe that after 4.5 years since MH370 disappeared, there is no reason to continue to withhold data when its probative value far outweighs any prejudicial effect,” Voice370 said in a statement.

The Malaysian report came to no final conclusions of what may have happened to the plane but said there was no evidence the implicate the two pilots deliberately brought it down as previously thought.

MH370 safety investigator-in-charge Kok Soo Chon shows the MH370 safety investigation report booklet to the media after a news conference in Putrajaya, Malaysia July 30, 2018. REUTERS/Sadiq Asyraf

The report instead raised the possibility of an intervention “by a third party”.

Le Parisian reports the French investigators want to start from the beginning, condemning the Malaysian report as “imprecise and ambiguous”.

Gendarmerie of Air Transport claims it is allowed to carry out the investigation because there were four French passengers on board the doomed flight.

MH370 went missing on 8 March 2014 with 239 people on board, while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The flight is thought to have changed course shortly after leaving Malaysian airspace, flying for more than six hours with its navigation systems turned off before plunging into the Indian Ocean.

The plane’s disappearance has since turned into one of the largest underwater search operations in history, turning up no results besides three wing fragments.

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