MH370 - Putrajaya submits early report on flight MH370, but won’t publicise it, says CNN

APRIL 24, 2014

Putrajaya has sent its preliminary report on the disappearance of flight MH370, but has yet to release it publicly, CNN reported today, despite insisting that it has nothing to hide. – The Malaysian Insider pic, April 24, 2014.
Putrajaya has submitted its preliminary report on the disappearance of flight MH370, but has yet to release it publicly despite insisting that it has nothing to hide, CNN reported today.

“It just adds fuel to the fire – which is like a furnace now – of disbelief, particularly in China, as to what is going on,” Geoffrey Thomas, managing director of AirlineRatings.com, told CNN.

“If they say there's nothing to hide, then release this preliminary report, as virtually every other jurisdiction does with an accident.”

CNN said that the report was sent to the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations body for global aviation.

"In most cases, the report is published because it's not a controversial document," CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest said. "It's a statement of facts – what happened. And if there are any controversial or difficult facts, they can be redacted."

CNN quoted Malaysian officials as saying that they have not yet decided if or when they will make the report public.

Since flight mH370 disappeared on March 8, Putrajaya has come under intense scrutiny from various groups somehow affected by the incident.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein yesterday reiterated that authorities would not provide information unless it is "verified and corroborated" by investigators.

"As I've said from the beginning, we have nothing to hide," he said.

Hishammuddin’s remark triggered an angry response from relatives of passengers aboard flight MH370, with CNN reporting that they had demanded for authorities to release the data so external experts can analyse them.

"It's astounding to me that they haven't been willing to release that data," said Sarah Bajc, partner of American passenger Philip Wood. She appeared on CNN on Tuesday.

"What's so confidential about those data sets that a third-party set of people couldn't come in and make some new calculations on them?" Bajc said.

A recent poll by The Malaysian Insider, in collaboration with opinion research firm Merdeka Center, also showed that more than half of Malaysians polled last month believe that the ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) government has been hiding information about flight MH370's disappearance

Out of the 1,029 respondents polled, 54% said Putrajaya was not transparent in releasing information about flight MH370.

In response to the question on whether they thought Putrajaya had been truthful or had been hiding anything about MH370, 54% of respondents felt Malaysia had been hiding information, 26% said the government had been truthful while 20% were unsure.

The search for flight MH370 is the longest in modern passenger-airline history. The previous record was the 10-day search for a Boeing 737-400 operated by Indonesia’s PT Adam Skyconnection Airlines, which went missing off the coast of Sulawesi on January 1, 2007. – April 24, 2014.

Source: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com