MH370 PRESS STATEMENT BY HISHAMMUDDIN HUSSEIN,
MINISTER OF DEFENCE AND ACTING MINISTER OF TRANSPORT
1 APRIL 2014
1. Briefing for families
Tomorrow a closed-door briefing meeting for the families will be held in Kuala Lumpur.
The Department of Civil Aviation and Malaysia Airlines will lead the briefing, which will be moderated by the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to China. Technical experts from Malaysia, China and Australia will participate in the briefing, and the Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia will attend.
2. Transcript
Today we are releasing the full transcript of communications between flight MH370 and Air Traffic Control Kuala Lumpur. The transcript has been shared with the families, and is attached as an Annex to this press release. There is no indication of anything abnormal in the transcript.
The transcript was initially held as part of the police investigation. Previously, Malaysia Airlines had stated initial investigations indicated that the voice which signed off was that of the co-pilot. The police are working to confirm this belief, and forensic examination of the actual recording is on-going.
The international investigations team and the Malaysian authorities remain of the opinion that, up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, MH370’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane.
-ENDS-
KUALA LUMPUR, April 1 — Malaysia today delivered on a pledge to publicly release communications recorded between the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370 and local air traffic controllers, extending a full transcript of the exchange to the public.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein maintained today that there was no indication of anything abnormal in the radio communications between the missing plane and the Air Traffic Control KL.
He said the transcript was initially held back as part of the police investigation, and is now released to the families of those on board the MAS plane and made public to the press.
Hishammuddin added that police were yet to confirm which pilot made the final transmission, despite Malaysia Airlines previously saying initial investigations showed that this to be co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid.
“The police are working to confirm this belief, and forensic examination of the actual recording is ongoing.
“The international investigations team and the Malaysian authorities remain of the opinion that, up until the point at which it left military primary radar coverage, MH370’s movements were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane,” Hishammuddin said in a statement today.
The minister yesterday pledged to check if the transcript could be released to the public after reports surfaced that the final words from the plane was “Good night, Malaysian 370” rather than the previously circulated “Alright, good night”.
It is unclear where the inaccurate speech originated from, but it was repeated by MAS chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya during a press conference on March 17.
The revelation yesterday was the latest is a series of inconsistencies emanating from investigations into the missing plane carrying 239 on board.
On March 15, Malaysia announced that MH370 was deliberately taken off course on the day it disappeared, and that investigations were now focused on the 12 crew members and 227 passengers on board.
While the two pilots have borne the brunt of public suspicion, investigators have not uncovered any evidence to suggest foul play on the part of either man or anyone else on board.
The search effort is now concentrated in a section of the Indian Ocean west of Perth in Western Australia where satellite images have spotted pieces of debris possibly from MH370, although recovery could still take years even if it is established that the plane went down at that location.
