Missing Malaysia jet 'a travesty' as Clark sees search dropped

[TOULOUSE] The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 almost exactly a year ago is a "travesty" without precedent in modern civil aviation that raises questions about tracking data made available, Emirates President Tim Clark said.

Speaking in an interview with Bloomberg Television, Mr Clark, whose company is the world's biggest international airline, said information typically available on a jet's journey, including a "second-by-second flight path" that can be dissected by experts, hasn't been forthcoming in the case of flight MH370.

"We've actually seen very little about what actually happened to the plane," Mr Clark said in Berlin, adding that authorities may be searching in the wrong place.

"It's a modern-day jet, a formidable airplane that has the latest communication technology on board - for it to disappear and for the industry not to know why it disappeared is a travesty."

No trace of the Boeing Co 777 the has been found since the wide-body plane vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 carrying 239 people, with the Malaysian government declaring the flight an accident on Jan 29 and all on board presumed dead. The yearlong search has broadened from a regional effort in southeast Asia to the depths of the Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, Australia, after authorities concluded that the jetliner was taken far off course.

Mr Clark, who is regarded an aviation industry sage having run the airline for more than a decade, speculated that efforts to locate the wreck of MH370 may be called off, as government ministers from China, Australia and Malaysia will discuss next month whether to fund another stage of the hunt. Current search operations are being funded jointly by the Australian and Malaysian governments.

"Whether it was ever there in the first place is a question that needs to be answered," Mr Clark said. "But I don't think they're prepared to continue. After it's finished I would suspect the file will be closed."

BLOOMBERG