Preliminary results of the international investigation into the causes of the crash of a Boeing 777 jetliner belonging to the Malaysia Airways in the Donbas will be released in the first week of September, the Kommersant publication reports, citing the Dutch Safety Board, which heads the investigation.
The document will reflect information from various sources, including flight recorders, air traffic control, radars, satellite images, and the conclusions of the international experts that visited the crash site.
As explained by the Dutch Safety Board’s spokesman Wim van der Weegen, experts with the board have completed part of the work in Ukraine, and an analysis of the collected data will be performed at the headquarters of the Dutch Safety Board in The Hague. According to the standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a preliminary report should be published within one month after a disaster. However, an exception was made in this case because the access of international experts to the site of the tragedy was severely limited.
British experts deciphered the airplane’s flight recorders in London on behalf of the Dutch Safety Board. Representatives of Malaysia received the flight recorders from separatists on 22 July and later sent them to the Dutch Safety Board. "We transferred the ‘black boxes’ to the British because only a few centers in the world are capable of deciphering them properly," said van der Weegen.
As pointed out in The Hague, the Dutch Safety Board will determine the reasons for the crash of the plane, but it has no right to assign blame or responsibility for the crash. As reported, the Dutch Safety Board heads the investigation into the crash of the Malaysian airliner because 196 out of the 298 people on the plane were citizens of the Netherlands.
