Painful reminder: A part of the MH17 wreckage at a crash site near Rassypnoe, Ukraine. — KAMARUL ARIFFIN/The Star
KUALA LUMPUR: A decade ago, a former chief of the Civil Aviation Department (DCA) was numb with shock and disbelief when he learnt that the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 had been shot down over conflict-hit eastern Ukraine.
“I just went numb. Only four months earlier, we had lost MH370,” Datuk Seri Azharuddin Abdul Rahman remembered.
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At the time of the MH17 news, the then DCA director-general was in China as part of a delegation accompanying the newly-appointed transport minister for a two-week meeting with his counterpart, where MH370 was a central topic of discussion.
“Yet, we were struck by more tragic news. Another Malaysia Airlines (MAS) plane had met with disaster,” he said in an interview with Bernama.
MH17 had taken off from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. But a few hours later, the plane exploded after being hit by a missile, killing all 283 passengers, from 17 countries, and 15 crew members on board.Azharuddin, who led the DCA for 11 years starting in 2007, recalled feeling “surprised” upon arriving at Beijing International Airport, China, on July 17, 2014, and promptly being handed a boarding pass for the same plane back to Kuala Lumpur.
After spending over six hours on a flight, his primary concern was the last-minute cancellation of the transport ministers’ meeting.
However, his unease grew when an official asked: “Do you know something is going on in KL?”“I immediately switched back on my mobile phone. It was flooded with incoming messages.
“Before I could check them, my wife called to inform me that a MAS flight had crashed.”
The Pahang-born Azharuddin added that they headed straight to the MAS operations centre upon their early-morning arrival on July 18, 2014. One of the unforgettable moments was meeting the relatives of MH17 passengers and crew who were already there.
“At that point, I struggled to find words to comfort the victims’ next-of-kin.
“Understandably, they sought certainty about when the victims’ remains could be repatriated,” he said.
Azharuddin, together with the transport minister and officials from the Transport Ministry and MAS, flew to Kyiv, Ukraine, with the same luggage he had brought for Beijing.
In Kyiv, they were not allowed to visit the scene. After several attempts, Malaysia was finally permitted to send three representatives to the scene.
The allowed “quota” comprised DCA officer Capt Philip J. Selvaraju, aircraft engineer Naemy Fahmy Mustafa and MAS maintenance and engineering director Azhari Dahlan.“They had to use a bulletproof four-wheel-drive vehicle and pass through several roadblocks manned by various rebel forces to reach the location.
“They (the representatives) are trained in conducting air accident investigations. They must make an initial report and, most importantly, retrieve the black box.
“What we didn’t know at the time was that our country’s leader had secretly instructed a Malaysian team to enter the scene of the incident, covertly through the Russian border, to secure not just the bodies of the victims but also the downed aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder,” said Azharuddin.
A team of 12, known as “The Dozen Persons”, including commando personnel and led by the National Security Council principal secretary Col Mohd Sakri Hussin, successfully completed the mission after obtaining permission from rebel leader Alexander Borodai in Donetsk, Ukraine, on July 21, 2014.
Azharuddin said he was informed that the MH17 black box was being sought after by various parties.
As a result, specific instructions were issued for the black box to be removed from the location as soon as possible, which the Malaysian special team successfully carried out.
Upon arrival in Kharkiv after a train ride that took more than eight hours, Azharuddin said the special team was flown to Kyiv in an aircraft provided by the United Nations.
The black box was then taken to the Air Accidents Investigation Branch in Farnborough, United Kingdom.
Azharuddin said he was one of the first individuals to listen to the black box recording of MH17.
“Everything was fine until suddenly, the recordings of the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder cut off like a broken radio at 4:20:03pm Ukraine time, or 10:20:03pm Malaysia time, leading to the initial conclusion that there was an explosion, which resulted in the aircraft system stopping, and the aircraft having been shot down, based on the condition of the wreckage,” he said.
The tragedy put Azharuddin on the spot when he was questioned why the MAS plane had gone through the airspace where there was a conflict.
He explained that the airspace was a very busy flight path, with more than 60 planes passing through it daily, and that on the day of the incident, planes from India and Singapore also used the same airspace.
“The incident increased vigilance towards air safety. If the party that controls the airspace is experiencing a conflict, then it needs to declare the matter or close the airspace.
“Additionally, international authorities aware of unsafe areas need to inform the airlines so that risk assessments can be carried out,” he said.
The tragedy also deeply moved Azharuddin, who appreciated support from various parties, including the international aviation community.
They extended help from the beginning and equally wanted justice to be done for the passengers of MH17, as well as MAS and Malaysia, who are all still facing the loss of MH370.
