Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the report had found that air traffic control did not comply with standard operating procedures. (Photo: Reuters)Kuala Lumpur (VNA) - Chief of Malaysia’s civil aviation authority Azharuddin Abdul Rahmanresigned on July 31 after an investigation report on the missing MalaysiaAirlines flight MH370 showed lapses by the air traffic control centre in KualaLumpur.
In a statement announcing his resignation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said thereport highlighted failures by air traffic control to comply with standardoperating procedures, but he had not blamed the aviation authority for the lossof the aircraft.
“Therefore, it is with regret and after much thought and contemplation that Ihave decided to resign as the Chairman of Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysiaeffective 14 days from the date of the resignation notice which I have servedtoday,” he said in the statement.
In the 495-page report, released the previous day, investigators said thecontrols of aircraft were likely deliberately manipulated to take it off coursebut they were unable to determine who was responsible.
The report, however, highlighted mistakes made by the Kuala Lumpur air trafficcontrol. It said air traffic controllers failed to initiate standard emergencyphases, and there was no record that they took any action to alert the airforce or kept a continuous watch on the radar display.
Addressing a news conference, Malaysian Transport Minister Anthony Loke said aninternal committee would be formed to come up with recommendations and possibleaction that could be taken against the air traffic controllers on duty at thetime.
TheBoeing 777 vanished on March 8, 2014 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,to Beijing, China, with 239 people on board.
Shortly after the incident, thelargest search in the history of aviation was conducted around 120,000sq.km inthe Indian Ocean. Led by Australia, the campaign, which cost 159 million USD,was halted in January 2017 after almost three years.
Earlier this year, US technologycompany Ocean Infinity resumed the search for the plane, using unmannedequipment.
The company carried out athree-month search in a massive swathe of seabed measuring 112,000sq.km, fourtimes larger than the area experts believe the flight had crashed. It was thelatest move in attempts to find out what had happened in the mysteriousincident.-VNA
