Investigators say they 'cannot exclude the possibility that there was unlawful interference by a third party' as they released a key report into the the mystery of doomed flight MH370.
The Malaysian government released its final report on the aircraft today, more than four years after the plane went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014.
Years of investigations have found no firm evidence as to what happened to the Malaysia Airlines plane, which was carrying 239 people.
This morning, families of passengers said the report had no new findings and officials said they were 'unable to determine the real reason for the disappearance'.
But it did however highlight mistakes and protocols and guidelines that were not followed, the families told reporters after a briefing on the report.
Lead investigator Kok Soo Chon said this morning that the probe had confirmed the plane had turned back under manual control and that 'we cannot exclude the possibility that there was unlawful interference by a third party.'
He said this morning: 'We can conclude that MH370 had turned back and the turn back was not because of anomalies in the mechanical system. The turn back was made not under autopilot but under manual control.'
However, the team was unable to say why exactly the plane had strayed off its path and disappeared.
Kok said: 'We cannot determine with any certainty the reason the plane diverted from its planned route. The team is unable to determine the real reason for the disappearance.'
Grace Nathan, a lawyer whose mother, Anne Daisy, was on the plane. said today: 'We hope that these mistakes will not be repeated and that measures are put in place to prevent them in the future.'
'The one point they stressed was that this report was not to assign blame, it was only a safety investigation,' she said, adding that the investigators were limited in their effort, as it was based on information supplied to them.
Voice 370, a group representing the relatives, has previously urged the Malaysian government for a review of the flight, including 'any possible falsification or elimination of records related to MH370 and its maintenance'.
The families said the report pointed to mistakes by the Malaysian air traffic control (ATC) centre. It showed there were only two attempted phone calls made to the aircraft from the ground, four to five hours apart.
The Malaysian Minister of Transport Anthony Loke had earlier said the report would be released on Monday after families of those on board were briefed.
'Every word recorded by the investigation team will be tabled in this report,' he said.
'It will be tabled fully, without any editing, additions or redactions.'
More than four years after the aircraft vanished on March 8, 2014, investigators have had little luck in finding the wreckage of the plane that vanished with 227 passengers on-board, plus the captain, co-pilot and 10 crew.
Captain Zaharie Shah, who was going through a marriage breakup, is believed to have downed the aircraft in an act of murder-suicide, by diverting from the flight path and plunging into the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Western Australia.
e four-year search for MH370 ended in May after the US-based technology firm Ocean Infinity failed to locate the plane while canvassing 125,000sq/km of the Indian Ocean. Malaysia had signed a 'no find, no fee' deal with Ocean Infinity to resume the hunt for the plane after the official search led by Australia, Malaysia and China was called off in early 2017.
Several theories have emerged about how the plane disappeared, with some suggesting the plane was hijacked and others believing someone on board may have deliberately turned off the plane's transponder before diverting it over the Indian Ocean.
'I FOUND IT ON GOOGLE EARTH'
An Australian engineer, Peter McMahon claimed he found what appeared to be a plane wreckage on Google Earth.
After years combing an online map of the Indian Ocean, the amateur crash investigator claimed to have found the wreckage 'riddled with bullet holes'.
WAS MH370 STOLEN?
Prior to the plane's disappearance, Captain Zaharie Shah had listed the small island of Diego Garcia - 4700km northwest of Australia - on his flight simulator. Theorists suggested that Capt Shah may have been practicing landing the plane on the island's airstrip, which is controlled by Britain but is home to a US naval base.
Suggestions have also been made that the plane may have been stolen by terrorists and hidden in North Pakistan, or even by North Korean dictator Kim Jong un. In a 2014 poll on the MH370 disappearance, five per cent of American respondents said they believed it had been affected by 'alien activities'.
DID THE PILOT COMMIT SUICIDE?
Some have claimed that one of the pilots may have deliberately crashed the aircraft in a well-planned suicide. According to this theory, captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately chose to plunge the plane into an area of the ocean up to 25,000 feet deep, where it would be almost impossible to find.
There have been suggestions Shah circled an area of the Indian Ocean just moments before the crash. Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is among those to support this theory, saying in the lead up to the third anniversary of the plane's disappearance he found it 'plausible'.
'I have always said the most plausible scenario was murder-suicide and if this guy wanted to create the world's greatest mystery why wouldn't he have piloted the thing to the very end and gone further south?' Mr Abbott said.
Source from MSN News
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