KUALA LUMPUR, March 9 — Transport Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai today said “stern action” will be taken pending an analysis of the interim report on flight MH370 put together by the independent safety investigation team probing the plane’s disappearance.
He added his ministry will undertake an “immediate review and analysis” of the factual information gathered by the investigation team.
“This matter is of serious concern and we will take stern action once we have analysed the factual information particularly from the perspective of civil aviation related protocols and processes,” Liow said in a brief statement.
Liow, however, noted that the interim report - which was released yesterday on the one year anniversary of the plane’s disappearance - was only a factual finding and not an analysis on the cause of flight MH370’s disappearance.
“In no manner does the data point to how or why MH370 went missing,” he said.
Earlier today, it was reported that the interim findings indicated that the supervisor on duty at the Kuala Lumpur air traffic control centre had gone to sleep after finding out that the Malaysia Airlines plane had dropped off radar coverage in Vietnamese airspace.
Flight MH370 disappeared from radar coverage in the pre-dawn hours of March 8 last year while en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, 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.
