Malaysian investigators have written and released what they initially called a "final report" on the fate of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. Unfortunately, the report added no new information to what caused the aircraft to turn from its scheduled flight plan from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and then finally crash in a remote part of the Indian Ocean. It was met immediately with both protests and suspicion of cover-up.
Malaysian officials quickly backtracked and removed "final" from the report's description. At the same time, they refused to stand by the only possible reason for the crash of MH370 and the deaths of all 239 aboard. The Safety Investigation Report of the March 8, 2014, flight leaves just one obvious explanation of what happened.
But investigators pulled back and refused to endorse their own conclusion.
The report spends 362 pages of well-known technical data about the aircraft, cargo, passengers and crew. This includes breathtakingly precise details of matters such as the first three hours of MH370's final flight. Air-to-air, radar, ground and long-distance telephone communications, timed to the one-hundredth of a second, detail how the scenes in half a dozen control towers and operations centres -- including two at Bangkok -- went from mundane to high stress as everyone came to realise one of their big aircraft was missing.
The 363 pages provide nothing new, and give no hint to the solution of the mystery of MH370. Neither do the next 16 pages of the report's second part, labelled "Analysis". These sections at least attempt to address possible theories of what happened to the aircraft. Again, however there is nothing new. There is no information imparted that was not previously known, and most of it years ago at that.
Finally, in a section covering barely half a page, there is the "Summary". And this is where the report writers finally got down to a semblance of business -- but only a semblance. Many have already called this summary a smear against the pilots. But it is, at Page 379 of the 449-page report, the one place where investigators lay out their case.
It is a Sherlock Holmes solution. As Holmes said to Dr Watson in The Sign of the Four, "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" After debunking dozens of possible direct or indirect cause of the fatal end of Flight MH370, a single sentence reveals what investigators believe happened.
It briefly describes once again the aircraft's bizarre and unscheduled left turn across Malaysia towards Penang, followed by a right turn into the Indian Ocean. It says there is no possible way that any system failure on the aircraft could cause this. Then it says:
"It is more likely that such manoeuvres are due to the systems' being manipulated." In other words, the pilots or, more likely a pilot did it. However improbably, as Holmes said, it must be the truth.
The report, however, doesn't say that. Airlines, cosy pilots' clubs and the families of the pilots are skittish about blaming any errors on pilots. Other known cases of pilot suicide or attempted suicide in flight have been met with reactions ranging from outrage to attacks on investigators' credibility. Carriers have gone into total denial even when faced with irrefutable evidence. In addition, the deaths of hundreds of people potentially caused by a pilot could leave the airline's owners -- in this case the nation of Malaysia -- open to lawsuits so numerous and so high in value that bankruptcy would be an actual threat.
The cause of the MH370 disaster is routinely described as the greatest mystery in aviation history. It is a shame that Malaysian government investigators, with literally a world of help, refuse to state the cause forthrightly.
