M'sia to look into cost of MH370 hunt
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UK satellite operator decides to offer basic tracking service to all passenger airlines
Malaysia will be looking to share operational costs as the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 enters a new, much longer phase.
“Before this, there has been no talk of dollars and cents, but to be fair to our partners [in the search], it is time for us to look at it more seriously as we go in for the long haul,” acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
He added that he will bring the issue up while tabling plans of moving forward with the search to the Cabinet today.
“The main points that will be tabled include the outcome of the tripartite ministerial meeting between Malaysia, Australia and China, which were very positive and constructive,” he said, after meeting with Royal Australian Navy chief Vice Admiral Ray Griggs during his first official visit to Malaysia.
Hishammuddin also said that any request for information regarding MH370 should be put forward to the panel of plane-disappearance investigation experts – including the National Transportation Safety Board, UK Air Accident Investigation Bureau and China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department.
“Let the panel decide. If it doesn’t effect their investigation, by all means we can release it,” he said in response to recent requests by the families of those onboard MH370, for the Malaysian government to release the raw Inmarsat data.
Meanwhile British satellite operator Inmarsat said on Monday that it was offering a basic tracking service to all passenger airlines worldwide free of charge, following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight.
Inmarsat, which has played a role in the search for the missing plane, said the service it was offering would provide definitive positional information.
It will allow a plane to determine its location using GPS and send that data over Inmarsat’s global network at 15-minute intervals.
Rupert Pearce, CEO of Inmarsat, said in the wake of the loss of flight MH370 providing the free service was “simply the right thing to do”.
In the, so far, fruitless search for the Malaysian jet, electronic pings from Inmarsat equipment on the lost plane led investigators to search for wreckage in the Indian Ocean.
Inmarsat said it would also offer a “black box in the sky” service under which a plane that had deviated off course – which is believed to be the case with flight MH370 – could transmit historic and real-time information from the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
