KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — A transcript of a telephone conversation between Kuala Lumpur’s air traffic control centre (ATCC) and Malaysia Airlines’ operations room suggests that the ATCC supervisor on duty had gone to sleep after it was established that flight MH370 had dropped out of radar coverage on March 8 last year.
The transcript, published in the Malaysian Transport Ministry’s first-year report on the facts surrounding MH370 yesterday, quoted the controller on duty during the 5.20am call as saying that he would need to wake up his supervisor to access details requested by the national carrier to confirm the plane’s whereabouts at that point of time.
Malaysia Airlines’ operations room had asked for specific details on the exact time that the Kuala Lumpur ATCC had its last positive radio contact with the plane prior to the intended handover to the Ho Chi Minh ATCC as it entered Vietnamese airspace over the IGARI region.
“Aaaa... never mind la I wake up my supervisor and ask him to check again to go to the room and check what the last contact all this thing lah,” the controller was quoted as saying on the transcript for air-ground communications on the Kuala Lumpur ATCC’s 132.6 Mhz frequency.
A separate transcript for the KL ATCC Sector 3+5 Planner direct line coordination communication line also showed that Ho Chi Minh ATCC had only confirmed with their Kuala Lumpur counterparts that flight MH370 had dropped off their radars in a radio conversation at around 1.41am after the Vietnamese spent over 20 minutes trying to contact the plane.
When asked why they did not inform Kuala Lumpur ATCC within five minutes after failing to get radio contact with the plane, Vietnamese air traffic control said they decided to make the call seven minutes after they lost the Boeing 777 jetliner on their radars after it passed the BITOD checkpoint.
The Sector 3+5 Planner transcript also showed a near two-hour lull in communications on flight MH370 from 3.31am to 5.09am when the Singapore ATCC hailed Kuala Lumpur on behalf of the Hong Kong ATCC for updates on the status of the plane’s location.
The transcripts were part of a 558-page report released by the ministry yesterday, on the one year anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner and the 239 passengers and crew on board.
The report covered the progress of investigations as at March 7 this year by a 19-member independent investigation team set up by the ministry.
A statement that accompanied the interim report indicated that the team is now conducting analysis on several factors.
This covers the airworthiness and maintenance and aircraft systems, ATC operations between 1.19am and 6.32am on March 8, cargo consignment, crew profile, diversion from filed flight plan route, organisational and management information of the Department of Civil Aviation and Malaysia Airlines, and satellite communications.
“In the months ahead, the investigation team will need to analyse to draw conclusions and safety recommendations based on the factual information that have been gathered,” read the statement.
“In addition to the analysis and the conclusion phase of the investigation, steps taken will also include further validation of the factual information on emergence of new evidence.
“The investigation team expects that further factual information will be available from the wreckage and flight recorders if the aircraft is found,” the statement added.
Flight MH370 disappeared from radar coverage in the pre-dawn hours of March 8 last year, launching what eventually became the largest international search operation that is now centred in a remote area of the southern Indian Ocean.
Search teams are expected to complete scouring the 60,000 square kilometre search area by May.
