MH370: Government To Release Preliminary Report Next Week - Najib

KUALA LUMPUR, April 25 (Bernama) -- The preliminary findings on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 are likely to be released next week, said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

"In the government's commitment to the unrelenting search for MH370, I have also commissioned an internal investigation experts team and the preliminary findings are likely to be released next week," he said in his Facebook account today.

Flight MH370, with 239 people on board, left the KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am on the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learned that the plane had veered off course, along two corridors - the northern corridor stretching from the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to northern Thailand and the southern corridor, from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

Following an unprecedented type of analysis of satellite data, the United Kingdom satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded that Flight MH370 flew along the southern corridor and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth, Australia.

Najib then announced on March 24 - 17 days after the disappearance of the Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, that Flight MH370 "ended in the southern Indian Ocean". The search continues there.

Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein pledged earlier this month that any data eventually recovered from the aircraft's black box would be publicly released.

On Wednesday, Department of Civil Aviation director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said they had sent a preliminary report of the incident to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the United Nations body for global aviation.

Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with CNN s aviation expert Richard Quest, Najib said there was nothing in the report that was embarrassing to Malaysia.

"I just want this team to go through it, but in the name of transparency, we will release the report next week, we will release it," he said.

Asked on what made him so convinced with the Inmarsat data, Najib said: "When I met the (search and rescue) team and mind you, these are the foremost experts in the aviation industry, they are real experts as you know.

"I asked them are you sure? I asked them again and again, are you sure and the answer was 'we are sure as we can possibly be'," he said.

Najib said the MH370 incident was very different from the Air France and the Silk Air incident.

"This is totally unprecedented. What do we have going for us? What is the evidence? The evidence simply lies with the pings, the handshakes that we have analysed. That's all we have," he said.