MH370 Tragedy: Rolls-Royce & Boeing should be more involved

SHAH ALAM: Rolls-Royce and Boeing should be more involved in handling the case of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 instead of letting MAS alone to face the media and grieving family members, said Advanced Air Traffic System (AAT) Sdn Bhd.

Its chairman Datuk Zolkipli Abdul said Rolls-Royce as the engine maker and Boeing, the aircraft manufacturer are both liable to answer for the incident as the investigations have not ruled out their involvement with the incident yet.

"We have been seeing MAS handling the press conferences alone and answering on behalf of Boeing and Rolls-Royce all these while and it seems like they are trying to put the burden of proof on MAS alone.

"Even when we were told that the two agencies have cooperated with the United States aviation security investigation team, as the manufacturer for Boeing 777-200ER, Boeing should have the technical capacities to significantly contribute to MH370's search and rescue operation (SAR).

"It is not acceptable for Rolls-Royce being the engine maker of an engine that costs more than RM500 million to not have the technology to track the engine from the plane.

"We can use the same analogy as buying a luxury car, every engine will be installed with a tracker that allows the maker to track the engine in case of theft or loss.

"MAS spend a great deal of money to secure the best services from both Boeing and Rolls-Royce but when this incident happened, both of them seemed to have clammed up," he said at the Fun Walk event and doa recital for MH370 in conjunction with AAT 20th anniversary, today.

It is believed that MAS owns 15 Boeing 777-200ER plane and Boeing, through an official release from the United States government had expressed its dissatisfaction with the late exchange of information between them and the Malaysian government.

It was said that Boeing was only informed of the plane's dissapearance by MAS three hours after it went off the radar at 2:40am (Malaysian time) on March 8 and the delay in information exchanged was dubbed 'unusual'.

On speculations made by some quarters that the country's radar system was unequipped to efficiently detect the airplane on the day that it went missing, Zolkipli said that the current radar system called Marconi is capable of detecting any airplane coming from the West and East direction heading towards the West Coast, as well as airplanes coming from the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.

"However the radar's accuracy also depends on the airplane's transponder that was supposed to send complete information on the plane, especially identifying whether it is a commercial or military flight, and the speed that it is going. When the transponder is switched off, such information would not be available but the radar will still be able to detect the airplane in the form of 'bleeps'," he said.

On Friday, opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim took his crave for attention amid the incident to another level when he appeared in UK daily, The Telegraph's article, condemning the government's handling of the incident.

He was quoted as saying that the lack of leads in the investigation conducted by the Malaysian government is 'baffling'.

He also said that the Marconi's radar system was purchased by the government when he was the then Deputy defense minister. 

Source:   http://www.nst.com.my