Air crash investigator calls for independent report on MH370

One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for an independent investigation into the loss of MH370.

Veteran air crash investigator Larry Vance.

One of the world’s most respected air crash investigators has called for the international aviation watchdog to commission a fresh and independent investi­gation into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying the Malaysian government’s inquiry failed to properly assess the evidence.

Canadian Larry Vance, who led some of the biggest inter­national air accident investi­gations over three decades, also said a “comprehensive criminal investigation” was required into the loss of the aircraft, in which 239 people perished in an event a Malaysian government report this week acknowledged involved human intervention.

“An organisation such as the International Civil Aviation ­Organisation should do a thorough inquiry into the circumstances of this occurrence and the investigation that followed,” Mr Vance told The Australian.

“If there is no such inquiry, then aviation safety has taken a step backwards.”

The Malaysian investigation found the aircraft, bound for Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, was ­deliberately flown off course just as it disappeared from secondary radar with its transponder turned off on March 8, 2014.

Primary radar and automatic satellite “handshakes” determined it flew back over the Thai-Malaysian border and up the Strait of Malacca, before another turn on a long track south to end in the southern Indian Ocean.

The Malaysian report said investigators could not conclude why the aircraft disappeared, but effectively excluded mechanical failure and accidents such as suggestions a cargo of tropical fruit and lithium batteries combined to cause a fire. Mr Vance described these ­aspects as “positive”, saying the report “helps put to rest many of the speculative and far-out-there theories that have circulated about what might have happened”.

“The report also makes it clear that this was the result of human intervention, and not some sort of mechanical event or an intervention from outside the aeroplane.”

Mr Vance disagreed with the statement of chief Malaysian investigator Kok Soo Chon when he in effect excluded the two ­pilots, particularly the captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, from the widely held suspicion that one of them hijacked the plane.

Instead, Mr Kok said, it was possible an unknown “third party” had intervened.

Mr Vance and other aviation experts have rejected the “third party” possibility as fanciful, and claim Mr Kok emphasised it to cast doubt on the dominant view that a pilot from the Malaysian government-owned airline had taken 238 other people to their deaths.

Mr Vance said the Malaysian report failed to properly assess the implications of parts of the aircraft found washed up and recovered on the other side of the Indian Ocean, which he said conclusively proved a pilot flew MH370 to the end and ditched it.