SEPANG, April 12 — Malaysia will send representatives from three ministerial committees on Flight MH370 to Perth to discuss with Australian authorities on the next course of action in the search for the missing plane, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said today.
He said representatives from each committee will leave “soon” to coordinate search and recovery (SAR) operations with the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) overseeing the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, but added it was yet to be finalised who will be going.
“The committee has held meetings three or four times, and I have told (JACC chief) Angus Houston that there is a high probability that they will go to Perth to discuss the SAR (Search and Recovery) with the JACC,” he said at a press conference after a working visit to KLIA2.
Hishammuddin said this is on top of Malaysia's request to have two officials from the Department of Civil Aviation to be part of the JACC.
The Malaysian government recently set up ministerial committees chaired by the deputy ministers of the foreign, transport and defence ministries, to coordinate work related to the families of the passengers and crew on the missing plane, technical aspects of the SAR and deployment of assets in every phase of the operation.
Hishammuddin, who is also defence minister, shrugged off criticism that the ministerial committees should have been established from the start of the crisis, arguing that international aviation and satellite experts were on hand from the very beginning.
“The expert groups were set up from the start... the ministerial committees set up is to coordinate what we are doing. Simple as that,” he said.
The senior minister noted that they are still waiting on the JACC to verify that the latest pings ― discovered by the towed pinger locator operating out of the Ocean Shield ― had in fact come from the plane's black box.
“I believe what the JACC is doing is to verify that these five signals that were identified (were from the black box). Then we are looking at the next phase of the search, which is actually going down underwater.
“The autonomous underwater vehicle is one way forward after looking (using the) ping locators, but it is something we will not announce as yet until we are sure the signals are coming from the black box,” he said.
Hishammuddin, meanwhile, did not confirm or deny a report earlier today claiming that the co-pilot of the missing Boeing 777-200, Fariq Abdul Hamid, had made a mid-flight phone call just before the plane vanished from radar screens.
“You have to ask NST's comment,” he said, referring to the front-page report published by local English daily New Straits Times.
The report cited unnamed investigators as claiming that Fariq had attempted to make a mid-flight call from his mobile phone, but it ended abruptly possibly “because the aircraft was fast moving away from the (telecommunications) tower”.
Hishammuddin stressed that the media should only rely on official announcements as they are only made after any information related to the plane's disappearance is corroborated and verified to be true.
He acknowledged that the process would lead to a delay in updating the public on any developments related to flight MH370, but noted that the onus is on Malaysia to make sure the information is sound.
“Sometimes it takes a bit longer, but by having corroborated and verified the information, then we are on safe ground.
“Whatever Malaysia has done in the past will be put to the test in the international inquiries and tribunals that hve been set up (to look into the plane's disappearance)... basically there's nothing for us to hide, so anything that is contradictory that doesn't involve me or Malaysia, then I think you have to ask the person who made the statement,” he said.
Search efforts are intensifying over a smaller area of some 58,000 square kilometres after it went missing on March 8, as teams continue to look for any sign on the elusive plane.
The circumstances surrounding flight MH370's disappearance remains a mystery. Police have launched a probe on the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, his co-pilot Fariq and 10 other crew members, but nothing conclusive has be established as yet.
