Safety Investigation Report — MH370

The Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team, chaired by Kok Soo Chon, released the principal official report on 30 July 2018. It reconstructs the night using ATC tapes, radar, SATCOM logs, debris examinations, and crew/background material. It does not reconstruct a cockpit sequence, because the CVR and FDR were never recovered. Key published conclusions include: no identified airframe, engine, fuel or control failure that would produce the observed deactivation plus diversion; loss of communications more likely from systems being manually turned off or unpowered than from a random single failure, without being able to prove intent; the 18:25 log-on most likely a SATCOM power interruption; the 00:19 log-on most likely fuel exhaustion and APU/bus restore; lithium-ion cargo not supported as a cause; remote takeover not technically implemented; “the possibility of intervention by a third party cannot be excluded”; and the team “is unable to determine the real cause.” The report is the baseline against which every later hypothesis should be read.