Al-Jazeera.com :
The first report on Malaysian Airlines MH17 flight, which crashed in eastern Ukraine in July, suggests that there is no evidence of technical fault or pilot error.
Dutch investigators said in the report, which was published on the website of the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) on Tuesday morning, that a large number of high-energy objects caused the passenger jet to break apart in midair.
The Boeing 777 exploded en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, killing all 298 people on board including 193 Dutch citizens.
The West has accused Russian-backed separatists of shooting down the plane with a Moscow-supplied surface-to-air missile. Russia has blamed Ukrainian forces.
According to the report by Dutch experts, the fact that there were many pieces of aircraft structure distributed over a large area indicated that the aircraft broke up in the air.
The report said: “The pattern of damage observed in the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft was not consistent with the damage that would be expected from any known failure mode of the aircraft, its engines or systems.”
The findings also suggested that all crew was properly licensed and had medical certificates. The plane was also in airworthy conditions to make the flight from the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
The report also stated that there was no evidence or indication of manipulation of the flight recorders on the plane, adding that no aural alerts or warnings of aircraft system functions were heard in the cockpit.
“The communication between the flight crew and members gave no indication of any mamalfunction or emergency prior to the occurance,” Dutch investigatiors said, adding that engine parameters were consistent with normal operation during the flight.
