MH370 probe reveals sleeping ATC controller

Kuala Lumpur, March 9: A report of the probe into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 that went missing last year revealed that the assigned air traffic controller (ATC) on the day of the incident was asleep when a call was made some four hours after the aircraft went missing. This information is in the nearly 600-page report compiled by a 19-man team investigating the mystery of the missing plane, the Malaysian Star reported on Monday. Flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board.

The plane is believed to have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean. The team suggested that the supervising controller at the Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control Centre (KLATCC) was asleep when a call was made four hours after MH370 disappeared.

In the transcript released on Sunday, a presumably senior Malaysia Airlines staffer at MAS Operations asked the KLATCC controller if there was a positive handover by MH370 to Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control. In April 2014, Chinese and Australian search vessels picked up some pings over the search area, but the sigls then faded away. The pings were later deemed unlikely to be from the flight data recorder. Investigators also confirmed that 221 kg of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries carried in the aircraft did not pass through security checks. (IANS)