The Malaysian airliner's disappearance underscores the need for improvements in security, both in tracking aircraft and in screening passengers, the International Air Transport Association said Tuesday.
Investigators, meanwhile, were conducting a forensic examination of the final recorded conversation between ground control and the cockpit of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 before it went missing three weeks ago with 239 people on board, the Malaysian government said.
The examination could shed light on who was in control of the cockpit and will also seek to determine if there was any stress or tension in the voice of whoever was communicating with ground control — crucial factors in an air disaster investigation.
The IATA announced it is creating a task force that will make recommendations by the end of the year on how commercial aircraft can be tracked continuously.
"We cannot let another aircraft simply vanish," said Tony Tyler, the director general of IATA, whose 240 member airlines carry 84 percent of all passengers and cargo worldwide.
Tyler also urged governments to step up the use of passport databases such as the one operated by Interpol to determine if they have been stolen. Most countries including Malaysia don't run passports through Interpol's computer system.
The presence of two men on the Malaysia Airlines flight with stolen passports had raised speculation of a possible terrorist link, but it is now thought they were migrants attempting to get to Europe. Nonetheless, their easy access to the flight "rings alarm bells," Tyler said.
Responding to repeated media requests, Malaysia's government released a transcript of the conversation between the cockpit and air traffic controllers, which showed normal exchanges as the cockpit requested clearance for takeoff, reported it had reached cruising altitude and left Malaysian air space.
"Good night Malaysian three-seven-zero," were the final words received by ground controllers at Kuala Lumpur's international airport at 1:19 a.m. on March 8. On Monday, the government changed its account of the final voice transmission which it had earlier transcribed as "All right, good night."
There was no explanation of why the last words were changed. The conversation was in English, the universal language of aviation.
Malaysia has been criticized for its handling of the search, particularly its communications to the media and families of the passengers. In Tuesday's statement, the government said police and forensic examinations were trying to confirm if the voice in the final conversation belonged to the co-pilot as was earlier believed.
The hunt for Flight 370 has turned up no confirmed sign of the Boeing 777, which vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The search area for the plane has shifted as experts analyzed the plane's limited radar and satellite data, moving from the seas off Vietnam and eventually to several areas west of Australia. The current search zone is a remote 254,000-square kilometer (98,000-square mile) area roughly a 2 ½-hour flight from Perth.
The 11 planes involved in the search Tuesday returned to their base in Perth without any significant sightings, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
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