KUALA LUMPUR, March 16 — The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) is the rightful authority to speak on missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the airline’s former CEO Tan Sri Dr Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman has said.
With Malaysia criticised for being disorganised in its handling of the plane that went missing a week ago with 239 people aboard, Aziz said “there must be a coordinating team to help agencies and authorities liaise with each other”.
“However, one person ought to coordinate and provide answers,” the 80-year-old former MAS managing director told local daily New Straits Times in an interview published today.
When commenting on whether there were too many people were dealing with the media over this incident, Abdul Aziz said: “It appears the acting transport minister was fielding questions with the DCA director-general (DG) handling the technical aspects.
“In any case, it is usually the DCA DG who should be in full command, according to the law,” he said.
Aziz, who helmed MAS during the 1977 crash of the airline’s Boeing 737-200 plane in Tanjung Kupang, Johor, shared his experience in handling the country’s worst aviation disaster.
In the tragedy which later claimed all 100 lives on board, Aziz said the “first thing” that MAS did was establish that the plane was “hijacked” before quickly gathering a team and reporting it to the DCA and Ministry of Transport, while also setting up an operations centre.
“Otherwise, things could have gone haywire. There must be a leader in such a situation where the information gathered is analysed before being made public,” he said.
Finding the missing MH370 flight puzzling, Aziz also noted that “no information” had came from the plane’s cockpit which looked “as if there were people manipulating the flight”.
But when asked if it was possible that the plane was hijacked if all other scenarios were dismissed, Aziz appeared reluctant to draw up such a conclusion.
“We cannot rule out such a scenario but we have to be realistic. If this is true, where would they go? Where would they have forced the aircraft to land?” he asked.
He also said the plane “must have landed somewhere”, but said it would be “highly improbable and very dangerous” for the pilot to land the large Boeing 777-200ER on runways that are shorter than 2km.
Earlier in the interview, Aziz acknowledged that force could be used to “threaten” the pilot to disengage communication and tracking devices, but stressed that training was required for pilots to attempt the shutting down of devices.
“Different aircraft have different devices. It will take someone with expertise to handle such complex devices to do so. Even pilots going into the B777 cockpit would not know what to do, unless they have been trained.”
Aziz said he felt the authorities have “done everything possible” to track the plane, praising the DCA, MAS, Malaysian armed forces and government as having “done a good job so far”.
Noting that the missing MH370 flight is “extraordinary and unprecedented”, he also said that the team has “done all they can” and “we cannot expect anything better and extraordinary in such an environment”.
