Flight MH370 mystery ‘may never be solved’

The search continues for the Malaysia Airlines plane in the Indian Ocean. Picture: Getty

A POLICE investigation may never determine the reason for the disappearance of missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, according to Malaysia’s top police officer.

It was also stated that search planes scouring the Indian Ocean for wreckage from the Boeing 777 are uncertain to ever find any trace of the aircraft.

The assessment by Malaysian and Australian officials underscored the lack of knowledge authorities have about what happened on the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing which disappeared on 8 March.

The plane disappeared after its transponders, which make the plane visible to commercial radar, were shut off. Military radar picked up the jet just under an hour later, on the other side of the Malay peninsula. Authorities say the plane’s movements “were consistent with deliberate action by someone on the plane” but have not ruled out anything, including mechanical error.

Inspector General Khalid Abu Bakar said: “Investigations may go on and on and on. We have to clear every little thing.

“At the end of the investigations, we may not even know the real cause. We may not even know the reason for this incident.”

Bakar said police are investigating the pilots and crew for any evidence suggesting they may have hijacked or sabotaged the plane, as well as investigating the cargo and the food served on the plane to eliminate possible poisoning of passengers and crew.

Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the multinational search effort from Australia, said no time frame had been set for the search to end, but that a new approach would be needed if no physical evidence was found soon.

Houston said: “Over time, if we don’t find anything on the surface, we’re going to have to think about what we do next, because clearly it’s vitally important for the families, it’s vitally important for the governments involved that we find (evidence of the plane).

“We will then be able to narrowly focus the search area so that we can start to exploit the underwater technology devices that will hopefully lead to where the aircraft is on the bottom of the ocean.”

The current search area for the jet is a 221,000km2 (85,000sq mi) patch of sea roughly two hours from Perth. The focus of the search has moved several times as experts try to estimate where the plane is most likely to have landed based on assumptions on its altitude, speed and fuel. Currents in the sea are also being studied to see where any wreckage is most likely to have drifted.