Missing Malaysian flight MH370 not subject to FAA directive, says Boeing

Boeing has announced that the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was not subject to any additional inspections ordered under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) airworthiness directive, in wake of increasing speculation linking it to the aircraft’s disappearance.

Last week, the FAA ordered further inspections on few Boeing 777 jets for cracking, corrosion and potential repairs after an operator reported a 16in crack in the fuselage skin underneath an adapter for the aircraft’s satellite communications antenna.

According to Boeing, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER did not include the antenna that was subject to the latest FAA order.

An FAA spokesman was quoted by Reuters as saying that aeroplanes were built with redundancies in the fuselage and inspection process to catch cracks or corrosion before they became bigger and caused problems.

"There is absolutely no indication whatsoever that this had anything to do with the accident," the spokesman said.

The multinational search for the missing Beijing-bound aircraft is still ongoing, which disappeared off radars an hour after its takeoff from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March.

Malaysia civil aviation chief said that the area showed in the recent satellite images published by the Chinese Government has no signs of the missing jet.

Meanwhile, Malaysian authorities revealed that the last communication received from the aircraft suggests everything was normal onboard before it went missing over the South China Sea.

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Image: Malaysian Airlines 9M-MRO, the aircraft involved in the incident, at Charles de Gaulle Airport in 2011. Photo: courtesy of russavia/Laurent ERRERA.