Wednesday, 12 March 2014

MAS exec doubts woman’s report on co-pilot

KUALA LUMPUR: MAS commercial director Hugh Dunleavy said he was sceptical of a report by a South African woman who said the co-pilot of the missing MH370 flight, invited her and a female travelling companion to sit in the cockpit during a flight two years ago, in an apparent breach of security.

“Because just getting into that area requires you to go through the secure doors that we have in the cabin.
“And not only would that have been unusual, but it also would have meant you’d have to walk by our cabin crew as well, and have the code to get through.

“I’m going to let the authorities investigate and tell us what happened,”he said.

Earlier, the airline said it was taking seriously the report by the woman, Jonti Roos, who said in an interview with Australia’s Channel Nine TV that she and her friend were invited to fly in the cockpit by co-pilot Farid Ab Hamid and the flight pilot from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur in December 2011.

The TV channel showed pictures of the four apparently in a plane’s cockpit.

Dunleavy said he had “no reason to believe” that any action by the crew caused the disappearance of a jetliner over the weekend.

The search for the jetliner, which vanished on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, expanded further into the Andaman and South China Seas today, with the authorities no closer to explaining what happened to the plane or the 239 people on board.

Police have said they were investigating whether any passengers or crew on the plane had personal or psychological problems that might shed light on the mystery, along with the possibility of a hijacking,
sabotage or mechanical failure.

Dunleavy said the flight captain was a seasoned pilot with an excellent record.

“There have been absolutely no implications that we are aware of that there was anything untoward in either his behaviour or attitude,” Dunleavy told Reuters in an interview.

“We have no reason to believe that there was anything, any action, internally by the crew that caused the disappearance of this aircraft,” he said.

– Reuters

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