Air traffic supervisor was ‘sleeping’ on the job

SYDNEY: With many still mourning the tragic disappearance of 239 passengers and crew on board Malaysia Airlines (MAS) MH370 that went missing slightly over a year ago, it is doubly disheartening to hear now that the Malaysian traffic control supervisor on duty that day was asleep four hours after the flight disappeared.

Transcripts made available detailing conversations at 5.20am between civilian, military and airline personnel also showed the air controller on duty at Kuala Lumpur International Airport insisting he had only taken over tower operations at 3am and wasn’t sure if Malaysian air traffic control had successfully handed over responsibility for the Boeing 777 to Vietnamese air traffic control.

However when pressed for information, he said he would have to wake his supervisor up.

“Aaaa … never mind, laa. I wake up my supervisor and ask him to check again, to go to the room and check what the last contact … all this thing, laa,” the controller was heard saying in the recording, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Commenting on the 580-page report released Sunday, Desmond Ross, an Australian commercial pilot and airline security expert, said the report raised more questions than answers, including why there was confusion between Kuala Lumpur air traffic control and its counterparts in Vietnam.

He said air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh took 20 minutes before asking why the plane had not entered its airspace when international protocols demand this should have been done within two minutes.

He also touched on the amount of time wasted by officials, pointing out that a distress phase was only triggered by Malaysian emergency services five hours and 13 minutes after the last communication from the plane, with the first search aircraft taking off only at 11.30am – a whole 10 hours after the plane disappeared.

There was also the issue of language, with transcripts clearly indicating that Vietnamese air traffic controllers struggled to understand what was being asked of them by Malaysian officials resulting in at least one emergency request left unanswered. International rules introduced in 2010 require that all pilots and air traffic controllers pass a test in English.

Ross also said the most glaring issue was that there was zero co-ordination between Malaysia’s military and KLIA’s air traffic controllers despite an unidentified aircraft having entered into their airspace.

“How did they not know it was not a threat to Malaysian security?” Ross asked, adding if the two parties had communicated as they should have, an interceptor aircraft could have been dispatched to trail MH370 to establish what was going on.

The report also highlighted that one of the batteries on the plane’s flight-data recorders had expired in December 2012, with no record available to show it had been replaced.

“From the top down, there should be an immediate review of the safety culture of Malaysia Airlines,” said Ross, who has worked as a security consultant at Kuala Lumpur airport.

The report on MH370 was the result of extensive research into the disappearance of MH370, conducted by a seven-country investigation team.

Source : http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2015/03/10/air-traffic-supervisor-was-sleeping-on-the-job/