Malaysian civil aviation chief resigns over MH370 report

July 31 (UPI) -- Malaysia's civil aviation chairman Azharuddin Abdul Rahman resigned Tuesday after the release of investigators' report on Flight 370's disappearance four years ago.

Azharuddin said he resigned "to take responsibility" for Monday's report, which showed air traffic control lapses when the plane with 239 people aboard veered off course en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in March 2014, transport minister Anthony Loke told reporters.

"Therefore, it is with regret and after much thought and contemplation that I have decided to resign as the chairman of CAAM effective 14 days from the date of the resignation notice which I have served today," he said.

Investigators believe MH370 crashed somewhere in the Indian Ocean, but they've never come up with an explanation or found the plane's wreckage.

Officials said the goal of the report is to prevent future accidents, not assign blame. It failed to find definitive answers to what happened and said there's no evidence to suggest that the aircraft was flown by anybody but the designated pilots.

Still, it did not rule out intervention by a third party and found air traffic control mistakes in protocol.

"What's obvious was the standard operating procedures were not followed; there are still air traffic controllers who were on duty that [are] still working, we are probing," Loke told reporters.

While the report does not suggest that the accident is "caused by the Department of Civil Aviation then," it stated the Kuala Lumpur air traffic controller did not comply with certain standard operating procedures, Azharuddin's statement said.

The DCA was transformed into the Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia earlier this year.