The 'final' report into what happened to doomed flight MH370 has been released by the Malaysian government - but provides very few answers to what happened to the plane and where it is now in one of the greatest mysteries in aviation history.
One of the report's few concrete conclusions is that the plane, travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers on board in March 2014, was deliberately and manually turned from its course either by one of the pilots or by a third party.
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Communications equipment had also been turned off before it flew for over six hours in a south-westerly direction before crashing into the Indian Ocean.
Only three pieces of the Boeing-777 aircraft have ever been recovered, spread as far north as Tanzania to as far south as South Africa.
Kok Soo Chon, the lead investigator, said in a press conference that it could not be established whether the plane had been flown by anyone other than the pilot, but nor could they 'exclude the possibility of unlawful interference by a third party'.
He said the plane's diversion could not be attributed to 'anomalies in the mechanical systems' and it was not possible that the plane had been remotely taken over by hackers.
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In terms of the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, Kok said he was 'very competent' and had an 'almost flawless safety record'.
The co-pilot's flight simulator was seized as part of the investigation, but nothing suspicious was found on it, and there was no criminal or psychological evidence to suggest any of the crew deliberately crashed the plane as part of a suicide mission.
Kok added that while some of the evidence strongly suggested 'unlawful interference' - such as proving that the plane's turn-back was a deliberate action - he also recalled that no terrorist group had claimed responsibility for MH370's disappearance.
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The investigation also found that all four of the plane's emergency locator transmitters had failed, meaning they didn't give off the normal distress signals that would have helped find the plane.
It also criticised the air traffic control staff in both Malaysia, where the plane took off from, and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, where the plane was passing on its way to its intended destination of Beijing.
Kok said: "The air traffic controllers did not initiate the various emergency phases required of them, thereby delaying the activation of the search and rescue operations.
"They did not maintain a continuous watch on the radar display, did not release control according to the agreed transfer time, relied too much on masked information and did not initiate the various emergency phases as required."
Loved ones of those on board MH370 have been patiently waiting for over four years for answers of what happened, and have criticised the government's latest report for meticulously disproving various theories without providing real significant answers.
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The Malaysian government had said the report was to be the 'final' one - but have since backtracked on that statement.
Grace Nathan, a lawyer whose mother was on board, said on Facebook: "Ladies and gentlemen, after 4.5 years of investigation the conclusion... is: 1. We don't know what happened. 2. We don't know why it happened. 3. We don't know how it happened. 4. We don't know what if anything is going to be done about it."
And after a joint $200m search operation by Australia, China and Malaysia was ended last year, and a privately-funded underwater search was called off two months ago with no findings, there's a strong possibility the families of those lost will never know what happened to their loved ones in one of the most unprecedented aviation disasters in history.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: World News