KUALA LUMPUR, April 9 — Former transport minister Anthony Loke has urged his successor and the Civil Aviation Authority to hold a transparent and thorough probe into the incident involving a Malaysian Airlines plane, which was said to have dived en route to Tawau.
Loke said an open investigation is crucial to prevent the loss of public confidence.
“The incident must be thoroughly probed by the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia (CAAM). I am confident that the CAAM has already begun the process,” Loke wrote on his official Facebook page.
“To have the people’s confidence, the findings must be made public and transparent,” he added.
“I urge the Transport Minister to give his public commitment to launch an independent investigation and any findings be made public in the nearest time.”
MAS confirmed that one of its planes en route to Tawau was forced to turn back to Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) 30 minutes into its flight on April 3, citing “technical issues”.
News portal Free Malaysia Today (FMT) quoted MAS as saying that flight MH2664 had been hit by both technical issues and bad weather, and the pilot made the decision with passenger safety in mind, landing the plane safely at KLIA at 5.03pm that day.
News about the incident was made public after one of the passengers shared her experience on social media.
She claimed that half an hour into the flight, the plane took a “sharp dive” from 31,000 feet to 24,000 feet in a matter of seconds, based on her checks of the Flightradar24 tracking application.
The passenger claimed the flight circled above Melaka a few times and eventually returned to KLIA where she switched flights and arrived safely in Tawau at about 9.50pm.
