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Pilot Questions Strange Flight Path

Pilot Questions Strange Flight Path
Pilot Questions Strange Flight Path

An investigation is underway after a Malaysia Airlines flight that was meant to be en route to Kuala Lumpur took an unusual turn of direction towards Melbourne.

Flight MH132 left Auckland Airport for Kuala Lumpur at 2 a.m. on December 26.

But the pilot noticed the plane was not going in the right direction after a few minutes into the flight.

Eight minutes after the plane took off at 2.23am, the pilot called air traffic controllers in Auckland to see why the flight was not flying towards Malaysia.

The plane was heading south toward Melbourne, News.com.au reported, quoting local media.

The pilot then steered the plane began heading northwest to the Malaysian capital.

Passengers were not told about the mix-up.

News of this latest Malaysia Airlines mishap will cause headaches for the carrier’s executives, who have already been plagued by controversy grappling with the MH370 and MH17 tragedies.

Flight MH370, scheduled to fly from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, disappeared on March 8 last year carrying 239 people.

Airways Corporation, New Zealand’s air navigation service provider, is now investigating the incident.

A spokeswoman confirmed: “The flight plan that the airline has filed with us was slightly different to the flight plan that the pilot was expecting to follow. So obviously he had a slightly different flight plan on board. Basically what that meant was the turn-off point at which he would leave New Zealand air space was in a different place to the one that we had for him.”

She also confirmed that both flight plans were going to Kuala Lumpur and the flight path taken was a frequently used route.

“We tell the pilots where to go and how high and how fast and the pilot said that doesn’t match with what I’ve got,” she said.

“Within about a minute we can get the flight plan that we have up to him so they both match, so he continued on the flight plan that we had for him.”

New Zealand aviation commentator Peter Clark praised the pilot for his actions.

“The pilot has done a very good job by noticing it, querying it and not just blindly flying off and ending up in the Southern Ocean,” he said.

 

Financialtribune.com