SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
A year after MH370 went missing on its way to Beijing, friends and family of the 239 people who were on board will gather in the Malaysian capital on Sunday to remember their loved ones and urge the authorities to continue their search for the aircraft and an answer to how it was able to disappear. The centrepiece will be a Day of Remembrance, organised by the families at the outdoor courtyard of one of Kuala Lumpur’s most popular malls. MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur in the early hours of March 8, 2014, but as the aircraft headed out into the South China Sea, communications were apparently turned off.
Now once again the report of missing flight has sparked a controversy. “Malaysia’s handling of Flight MH370′s disappearance faced new criticism on Monday after an interim investigation uncovered a dud beacon battery and more potential missed opportunities to track the plane a year ago” reported AFP. The international investigation team set up by Malaysia released its interim report on Sunday, the first anniversary of the disappearance. It contained no new clues on what caused the plane to vanish with 239 passengers and crew aboard. But analysts and next of kin raised questions over some findings, including the revelation that the beacon battery on the flight data recorder had expired more than a year before the flight. The battery discovery “raises issues over the integrity of maintenance” at the carrier, said Greg Waldron, Asia managing editor for Flightglobal magazine. The plane is believed to have crashed in the remote southern Indian Ocean, but nothing has been found despite an expensive and difficult search effort led by Australia. Responding to the report, Voice370, an international association of relatives, lambasted authorities for a response “full of chaotic confusion”, saying that “tremendous precious rescue time was lost” to intercept the plane. “(We) believe this has contributed much to the fact now that we know nothing about the whereabouts of our loved ones,” it said in an emailed statement to AFP. Theories on the cause of the disappearance have included a pilot going rogue, mechanical problems, or hijacking. There were number of theories presented for the missing plane yet experts were of the view that what happened to plane was deliberately.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
