Preliminary report on causes of MH17 disaster to be published in Netherlands

THE HAGUE, September 09 /ITAR-TASS/. Safety Board of the Netherlands is expected to publish a preliminary report of the causes of the MH17 flight crash in Eastern Ukraine.

Well-informed sources say the document will contain the factual information obtained from accessible sources including onboard flight records and radar stations, as well as satellite imaging and other visual sources.

The council plans to publish final report within the twelve months after the tragedy that occurred July 17.

Safety Board official spokeswoman Sara Vernooij told Itar-Tass earlier it was important to realize that preliminary reports and final reports always had definite difference.

She said Safety Board officials were aware of the hopes that the public quarters, including the media pinned on this document but the problem was that only the first data produced in the course of investigation had been made public.

This meant that the preliminary report would shed some light on the causes of the tragedy but many questions would remain open, Vernooij said.

International investigators have not visited the site of the crash so far but Vernooij said there was no acute need in that visit, as experts could do a careful investigation and draft the final report without it, although a study of certain fragments of the jet lying on the ground and getting confirmation of certain data might still be desirable.

The Dutch Safety Board coordinates investigation of the tragedy as of July 23 on the basis of an agreement with the Ukrainian side. The group of international investigators consists of about people including representatives of Australia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine.

Investigation procedures comply with the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The team’s main objective is to establish the causes of the crash and to offer recommendations for furthering the safety of flights.

The board does not have the right to apportion blame and to lay responsibility for the tragedy on anyone. These issues stay within the scope of powers of the Dutch prosecutorial authorities.

Simultaneously, the board is working to provide answers to another two questions - why the jet was traversing precisely that path and why the list of passengers, who had checked in for the flight, was not accessible after the tragedy. Conclusions on them will most likely be known before the publication of the final report.

Malaysia Airlines’ Boeing 777 crashed in Ukraine’s much-troubled war-torn Donetsk region July 17 when it was performing a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All the 298 passengers and crewmembers died.

A total of 196 passengers were national of the Netherlands.