SAD REPORT – AT 1:51 P.M. ET:  A major report has been issued about the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014 – one of commercial aviation's greatest mysteries.   From Fox: 

Missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was likely steered off course deliberately by someone and flew over the Southern Indian Ocean for over seven hours after communications were severed, according to a safety report into the disaster released Monday.

The report by a 19-member international team provided no firm conclusions about what happened, and the head of the MH370 safety investigation team said that more definitive answers could come if the plane's wreckage and black boxes are found.

The Boeing 777 carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing vanished March 8, 2014, and is presumed to have crashed in the far southern Indian Ocean. The report noted that it was difficult for the aircraft's course change to be attributed to mechanical or system failures.

"It is more likely that such maneuvers are due to the systems being manipulated," the report said.

The report released Monday added that there was insufficient information to determine if the aircraft broke up in the air, or during impact with the ocean.

Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon said during a media briefing there was no evidence of abnormal behavior or stress among the two pilots – Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah and co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid – that could lead them to hijack the plane. All the passengers were also cleared by police and had no pilot training, the investigator said.

“We are not of the opinion it could have been an event committed by the pilots,” Kok said, adding that investigators were not ruling out any possibility since the aircraft's change in course was manually done and the systems in the plane were also manually turned off, according to Reuters.

COMMENT:  Well, I dunno.  I'm not an expert.  But when they say the plane was likely steered off course deliberately, and they then clear the crew, what are you left with?  The report speculates that some third party might have been involved – suggesting remote control – but I wonder if that is simply a face-saving statement.  Politics enters into these reports when they're done by certain countries.  Nations are extremely reluctant to blame crew members of their own airlines for the intentional downing of an airliner. 

In 1999 an Egyptian plane went down in the Atlantic (EgyptAir Flight 990), and our National Transportation Safety Board put the blame squarely on a suicidal co-pilot, and provided documentation from a black box.  But Egypt refused to accept the verdict.

So what is now believed about the Malaysian jet is that it was downed intentionally.  Maybe someday the black boxes will be found.

July 30, 2018