MH370 An international team of investigators sent to Kuala Lumpur to assist in the investigations when the MAS flight MH370 first disappeared had initially sat idly with nothing to do, claimed a US report.

“The Malaysians stuck them in a hotel room and didn't give them anything (to work on).

"They sat there watching TV,” a former US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member John Goglia told the magazine Popular Mechanics .

The report published online today also quoted an unnamed NTSB official saying that relations with Malaysian officials eventually improved “once they finally figured out their national reputation was at stake”.

Goglia described the Malaysian response to the MH370 incident as “a mess” that took weeks to start following international procedures on airplane mishaps.

This included the International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (ICAO) guidelines stating that Malaysia should assemble a team of international experts "who work as equals" to investigate.

"They didn't follow well-established international procedures from the very beginning, and it took weeks before they started to. And that got them off on the wrong foot," he told the magazine.

Details still secret

Goglia also noted that many aspects of the investigation that are needed remain obscure.

"Everybody that had a role even remotely would have been interviewed about what they heard, what they knew, and all of that would have been vetted," he was quoted saying.

"While Malaysian authorities claim to have conducted extensive interviews, the details are still secret - as is much else surrounding the mystery of MH370," concluded the magazine.

The NTSB and the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) are among the groups contributing their expertise to the  probe in their capacity as representatives of the country that designed and manufactured the aircraft, the USA.

Boeing is also a part of the investigation serving as an adviser to the NTSB and FAA.