Search for MH370 continues 1 year on

Plane’s underwater locator beacon battery had expired

ATC supervisor was sleeping on duty
The air traffic control supervisor was asleep on duty during the crucial hours following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 last year, an interim report into the tragedy has said.Released a year after the Boeing 777-200 went missing, transcripts of conversation between Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Controller and a Malaysia Airlines (MAS) official have showed that between 1.20 am local time—when communications from the flight had ceased—and 5.20 am, the supervisor was asleep.A controller started the four-minute-long conversation with the MAS official at 5.20am when he repeatedly pressed the former for details, especially whether there was any positive handover between Kuala Lumpur Air Traffic Control Centre and Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control.The MAS official’s persistent request for information led the controller to say that he would wake his supervisor up.The controller replied he only took over tower operations after 3am, and was not sure about the details, media from Malaysia reported.“I (would) wake up my supervisor and ask him to check again, to go to the room and check what the last contact (was) …” the controller said.
The report said air traffic controllers in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City air traffic control took 20 minutes to ask why the plane had not yet entered its airspace when international protocols demand this should take place within two minutes.
The first comprehensive report into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 showed that the jet’s underwater locator beacon’s battery had expired — but offered few other clues on the one-year anniversary of the plane’s disappearance.
Malaysia’s prime minister said that the country remains committed to finding MH 370 which disappeared with 239 people aboard.
However, the report revealed that the battery on the beacon attached to MH370’s Flight Data Recorder had expired in December 2012 but the fact went unnoticed because of a computer data error.While it is possible the battery will operate past the expiry date, “it is not guaranteed that it will work or that it would meet the 30-day minimum requirement,” according to the report.The significance of the expired battery on the beacon of the Flight Data Recorder was not immediately apparent, except indicating that searchers would have had lesser chance of locating the aircraft in the Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed, according to The Associated Press.