Malaysia Airlines yesterday said that an expired battery in the underwater locator beacon of the “black box” flight data recorder on missing Flight MH370 would have made no difference in the search for the plane.
Lawyers acting for some of the families of those on board said earlier that the fact the battery had not been replaced — revealed in a weekend report on the anniversary of Flight MH370’s disappearance — could be key in any legal action against the airline.
Flight MH370 vanished shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, bound for Beijing, early on March 8 last year, becoming one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.
Photo: EPA
A 584-page interim report into the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER, released on Sunday, said the beacon battery for the flight data recorder had expired in December 2012 and was not replaced. The beacon is designed to send a signal if a crash occurs in water.
Malaysia Airlines yesterday said in a statement that a similar beacon was also installed with the solid state cockpit voice recorder (SSCVR) and its battery life was still good.
“The SSCVR battery would have been transmitting for 30 days upon activation when immersed in water,” the statement said.
US law firm Kreindler & Kreindler LP, which is representing about 20 families, had said the expired battery was “potentially very significant” in determining compensation if it had hurt the search for the missing plane.
The oversight was blamed on a failure to properly update a computer system in Malaysia Airlines’ engineering department, Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation said in Sunday’s report.
“This airline, which allowed its crew and plane to fly with expired batteries on critical equipment, continues to reject offering any kind of meaningful settlement to the families without them first proving the losses they suffered, without any actual evidence of a crash,” Kreindler & Kreindler LP aviation attorney Justin Green said in an e-mail to reporters. “The airline... even more clearly now may be responsible for the unsuccessful search for this plane.”
In January, Malaysia Airlines officially declared the disappearance of Flight MH370 an accident, clearing the way for the airline to pay compensation to victims’ relatives while the search for the aircraft goes on.
Investigators believe the plane, carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew, was flown thousands of kilometers off course before eventually crashing into the Indian ocean west of Australia.
The search along a rugged 60,000km2 area of sea floor about 1,600km west of the Australian city of Perth has found nothing so far.
The search in this area, which experts believe is the plane’s most likely resting place, could be wound up in May after Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said last week discussions were under way between Australia, China and Malaysia on whether to call it off soon.
However, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and the Chinese government said they remained committed to the search. Most of the passengers were from China.
The interim report offered no definitive cause for the plane’s disappearance, adding there was nothing suspicious in the financial, medical or personal histories of the pilots or crew.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion