The families and relatives of the passengers and crew members of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 which killed all on board may now heave a partial sigh of relieve as the International Civil Aviation Authority has finally welcomed the Dutch Safety Board’s accident investigation Final Report of the incident.
This is coming just as Dutch investigators that conducted the detailed report claimed that decompression, reduced oxygen levels, extreme cold , powerful airflow and flying objects also contributed to the death of the passengers and crew.
The President of ICAO Dr. Olumuyiwa Bernard Aliu who received the report in Montreal Canada said “ICAO and its Member States responded rapidly in the aftermath of MH17 to address some important immediate concerns. Now that the Dutch Safety Board has issued its Final Report, ICAO will be reviewing its recommendations applicable to our Organization and responding as needed to ensure that air transport continues to be the safest way to travel.”
The ICAO president however stressed that even as the investigation and report has emerged members of the organization which regulates aviation all over the world should be concerned about improving flight safety and not use it as an opportunity to apportion blames “In this respect it is important to remind all concerned that investigations under Annex 13 are directly related to improving flight safety, and not to the apportioning of liability or blame,”
Accident investigation Final Reports summarize findings and provide recommendations on the technical investigations conducted under the international requirements established by Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention).
In the weeks following the MH17 tragedy the ICAO had established a special Task Force on risks to civil aviation arising from conflict zones. The Task Force recommended that ICAO should establish an online repository where States could share their conflict zone information more effectively, and where the public could also access it and launched the new online tool in April of this year.
Interestingly the Task Force came out with several recommendations which includes advice on risk assessment terminology, a comprehensive review of existing requirements and message formats, and industry led-initiatives to share operational information and be more transparent with passengers.
The body has also commenced work on agreed contingency flight routings for conflict zones under its regional air navigation planning groups.
It would be recalled that immediately after the accident, ICAO accident investigation specialists began assisting and providing technical consultations to the MH17 investigation, at the request of the States which instituted it. This included advice on the formal handover of investigation authority from Ukraine to the Netherlands.
Aliu however noted that “Any fatality is one too many in civil aviation. Our sector is constantly improving its safety performance through a wide range of collaborative global measures relating to data sharing and the strategic prioritization of flight safety risks, and accident investigation Final Reports play a very valuable part in that process.”
The Dutch safety board which worked with a team of experts from ICAO over a period of 15 months had in the report stated that the impact of BUK, a surface to – air missile was instantly fatal only to the three crew members in the cockpit but the rest of the crew and the passengers died due to a couple of factors including decompression, reduced oxygen levels, extreme cold , powerful airflow and flying objects.
The report also stated that “it cannot be ruled out that some of the occupants remained conscious’’ during the 60 to 90 seconds before the plane crashed.
The Dutch safety board also disclosed in its findings that it is likely that people “were barely able to comprehend the situation in which they found themselves. No indications were found that point to any conscious actions.
The safety board’s report also stated that one passenger was found wearing an oxygen mask but it was unclear how the mask got there.
During the course of its investigation the Dutch safety board identified an area covering 320 square kilometers from which it claimed that the missile which brought down the MH17 was launched. It said the missile exploded less than one metre (3.3 feet) outside the cockpit and killed three crew member inside while breaking off the forward section of the plane. The investigators had unveiled a reconstruction from the fragments of the forward section of the MH17 aircrafts business class and the cockpit sections and flew it to the Gilze Rijen base in Southern Netherlands where much of the detailed investigations were carried out.
The chairman of the safety board Tjibbe Joustra also emphasized that though it could not conclude where the missile was fired from while the MH17 with 298 passengers on board was overflying an area of Eastern Ukraine, authorities had “ sufficient reason to shut down the airspace in that area , nobody gave a thought’’ to the possible threat to civil aviation.
