Families of those missing on
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have rejected a report issued on the
first anniversary of the plane's disappearance.
The interim report gives no new clues as to what happened to the plane. One relative described it as useless.
It
does reveal that an underwater locator beacon battery had expired a
year earlier, but it is unclear whether this affected the search.
The airliner was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it vanished.
Malaysia and Australia say they remain committed to finding the missing plane.
As
families of the 239 passengers and crew held remembrance ceremonies on
Sunday, some expressed their frustration with the report.
It
contains masses of technical information about the missing aircraft, its
maintenance record, the background of the crew, and the various air
traffic control and military radar tracking records of the plane, says
the BBC's Jonathan Head.
It notes the battery on the beacon of the flight data recorder had
expired, which may suggest searchers had less chance of locating the
aircraft, although the battery on the locator beacon of the cockpit
voice recorder was working.
But the report offers no significant
new information which might explain where the plane went, or what
happened to it, adds our correspondent.
Sarah Bajc, whose partner Philip Wood was on board, ridiculed the fact that investigators had interviewed just 120 people.
"That's
less than our tiny underfunded private investigation has done," she
said, referring to a private inquiry launched by a group of next-of-kin.
Raymund
Gagarin, whose cousin Anne Daisy was one of the passengers, said he
believed the government was hiding information from families.
"It's just taking a lot of people's emotion on a big merry-go-round. It's a bit cruel," he added.
Analysis: Jonathan Head, BBC News, Kuala Lumpur
Of all the many theories about what happened to MH370, the idea that
it might have been diverted to a remote airfield and its passengers
taken off, seems the least plausible. What motive could the mysterious
hijacker have had? No demands have been made.
But it is a theory
that Wen Wan Cheng is clinging to with defiant certainty. And who can
blame him? The 64 year-old property developer from Shandong had his son,
Wen Yong Sheng, on board the ill-fated flight. Until he sees some
evidence of what happened to the plane, he believes his son must still
be alive.
The Malaysian authorities still insist the best theory
is that the plane crashed into a remote part of the southern Indian
Ocean, after being diverted and flying south for several hours.
But
they lost the trust of the families early on due to their clumsy and
confused response to the disappearance. The inexplicable absence of any
wreckage, one year on, allows relatives to hold on to the
near-impossible hope that some of the 239 passengers and crew may have
survived. One woman's year with no news Another relative described the report as "useless".
"We don't accept the announcement from Malaysia on January 19 that
said the event was an accident," said the woman in the Malaysian
capital, Kuala Lumpur, who did not give her name.
Tan Tuan Kee, the father of missing passenger Tan Chong Ling, told the BBC he believed his son was still alive.
"I'm concerned that our government will stop searching for the aircraft," he added.
Earlier
this year, the Malaysian government declared flight MH370 to have been
lost with all on board, in a move it said was necessary to start
processing compensation claims for the families.
Search teams are looking for the plane in a 60,000 sq km zone (23,000 sq m) in the southern Indian Ocean.
Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the search would move to a different area if the current operation was unsuccessful.
"We
owe it to the families of the dead, we owe it to the travelling public
to do whatever we reasonably can to resolve of this mystery," Mr Abbott
told reporters on Sunday.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak
said the search team had followed the "little evidence that exists" but
remained "hopeful" that the plane would be found.
"No words can
describe the pain the families of those on board are going through. The
lack of answers and definitive proof - such as aircraft wreckage - has
made this more difficult to bear," he added.
Earlier on Sunday,
the families of MH370 crew members held a remembrance ceremony at the
house of missing in-flight supervisor Patrick Gomez.
"We're always
thinking exactly what happened on that day itself, the conversations
that we were having, the tears, the hugs that we were giving each
other," said his wife, Jacquita Gonzales.
The search for Flight MH370
Search vessels are focused on a 60,000 sq km (23,166 sq m) priority zone; more than 40% of the area has been scoured to date
Cost of A$120m (£61m; US$93m) has been jointly funded by Australia and Malaysia
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