Thai military says missing flight MH370 followed a twisting path to Strait of Malacca

By

Daniel Miller

|

Asian military officials may be staging a mass cover-up over missing flight MH370, because they do not want to expose gaping holes within their countries’ air defences, a leading aviation expert has suggested.

The Malaysian Airlines jet went missing 1.30am on Sunday, March 9. But it wasn’t until the following Tuesday that the Malaysian Air Force reported they had spotted the aircraft on radar over the Strait of Malacca at 2.15am.

Now Thailand’s military say they detected a plane at 1.28am, eight minutes after MH370′s communications went down, heading towards the Strait but didn’t share the information because they were not asked for it.

Spotted: Thai military say they picked up an unidentified aircraft on radar bearing off the flight path, heading left over Malaysia and towards the Strait of Malacca

The revelation comes on a day when it emerged the captain of flight MH370 is a relative of Malaysia’s jailed opposition leader.

After previously denying he

recognised the pliot’s name, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim admitted

that Malaysia Airlines MH370 Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah is related to

his son-in-law.

Intensive background checks on everyone aboard

had turned up no-one else with a political or criminal motive to crash or

hijack the plane.

It was also revealed girlfriend of the co-pilot is holed up in a hotel with his family awaiting news of the plane’s fate.

Fariq Abdul Hamid, 27, was planning to marry his girlfriend Captain Nadira Ramli, 26, a fellow pilot from another airline.

Writing on his blog, Aviation expert David Learmount said: ‘Maybe these states’ air defences, like Malaysia’s, are not what they are cracked up to be.

‘And maybe they wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know that.’

Mr Learmount, a former pilot and now operations and safety editor at the respected Flight Global publication, points out that MH370 might have flown over several Asian countries including Thailand, Burma, China, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan.

Holding back: Aviation expert David Learmount suggested some countries may be withholding radar information

He said said they may be withholding vital radar data about Flight MH370 for fear it would expose gaping holes in their multibillion pound air defences.

If it emerges that an unidentified aircraft had been able to fly over a territory undetected and unchallenged it would amount to an embarrassing security failure.

Regarding the Malaysian sighting Mr Learmount wrote: ‘Clearly they had let an unidentified aircraft pass through Malaysian sovereign territory without bothering to identify it; not something they were happy to admit.

‘The Malaysian government has called upon all the countries to the north-west as far as Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea to check their primary radar records for unidentified contacts in their airspace in the seven hours after the 777 went missing.

‘Depending on the actual track the aircraft followed, if it had headed approximately north-west this could include some–if not all–of the following countries: Thailand, Myanmar/Burma, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan.

‘If the aircraft had gone that way, surely military primary radar in one of those countries–or several–would have picked up the signal from this unidentified aircraft, and the vigilant radar operator would have scrambled a fighter to intercept the intruder?

‘Wouldn’t s/he? Or maybe not. Maybe these states’ air defences, like Malaysia’s, are not what they are cracked up to be. And maybe they wouldn’t want the rest of the world to know that.’

For the critical first three days the seach was focused on the South China Sea. So when the Malaysian military reported the sighting over the the Strait of Malacca, it became clear that was the wrong search area.

Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:40 a.m. Malaysian time and its transponder, which allows air traffic controllers to identify and track the airplane, ceased communicating at 1:20 a.m

‘Terrain masking’, as illustrated here, is a technique used by pilots to avoid radar detection

Hunt: An Australian pilot scans the surface of the sea during the search operation for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 to the west of Peninsula Malaysia

Today Malaysian authorities said they were ceding control to other countries in the hunt for the airliner as they announced the search area now consists of 14 huge sections covering an area the size of Australia.

Witnesses in the Maldives reported seeing what they described as a ‘low-flying jumbo jet’ around 6.15am.

Maldivian news website Haveeru said the residents on the remote Maldives island of Kuda Huvadhoo in Dhaal Atoll said they saw a white aircraft, with red stripes across it like the planes operated by Malaysia Airlines.

It would mean that MH370 continued for a further 2,000 miles flying westwards.

Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn of the Royal Thai

Air Force said an unidentified aircraft was detected at 1.28am, eight

minutes after MH370′S transponder stopped communicating.

He said the plane was following a twisting path, turning towards

Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca. The radar

signal was infrequent and did not include any data such as the flight

number.

He said he didn’t know exactly when Thai

radar last detected the plane. Malaysian officials have said Flight 370

was last detected by their own military radar at 2:14 a.m. heading toward the strait.

When asked why it took so long to release the information, Montol said, ‘Because we did not pay any attention to it.

‘The

Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country,

so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it

without taking actions.’

  

Clueless? Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishamuddin Hussein, centre, director general of the Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, right, and Malaysian Deputy Foreign Minister Hamzah Zainudin during a MH370 press conference near the Kuala Lumpur International Airport yesterday

A man stands in front of a board with messages of hope and support for the passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 at the departure hall of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport

The final picture: The missing jet is pictured here in February this year above Polish airspace

He said the plane never entered Thai

airspace and that Malaysia’s initial request for information in the

early days of the search was not specific.

‘When

they asked again and there was new information and assumptions from

(Malaysian) Prime Minister Najib Razak, we took a look at our

information again,’ Montol said.

‘It didn’t take long for us to figure out, although it did take some experts to find out about it.’

Flight

370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12:40 a.m. Malaysian time and its

transponder, which allows air traffic controllers to identify and track

the airplane, ceased communicating at 1:20 a.m.

Montol

said that at 1:28 a.m., Thai military radar ‘was able to detect a

signal, which was not a normal signal, of a plane flying in the

direction opposite from the MH370 plane,’ back toward Kuala Lumpur.

The search area for the plane initially focused on the South China Sea, where ships and planes spent a week searching. 

Pings that a satellite detected from

the plane hours after its communications went down have led authorities

to concentrate instead on two vast arcs — one into central Asia and the

other into the Indian Ocean — that together cover an expanse as big as

Australia.

Thai officials said radar equipment in southern Thailand detected the plane.

Malaysian officials have said the plane

might ultimately have passed through northern Thailand, but Thai Air

Chief Marshal Prajin Juntong told reporters Tuesday that the country’s

northern radar did not detect it.

Search: Sailors from the U.S. destroyer USS Kidd prepare to launch a helicopter in the hunt for flight MH370

Thailand’s failure to quickly share

possible information regarding the fate of the plane, and the 239 people

aboard it, may not substantially change what Malaysian officials know,

but it raises questions about the degree to which some countries are

sharing their defense information, even in the name of an urgent and

mind-bending aviation mystery.

With

only its own radar to go on, it took Malaysia a week to confirm that

Flight 370 had entered the strait, an important detail that led it to

change its search strategy.

The U.S. Navy says that it will use long-range naval aircraft to look for the plane, and send its destroyer, the USS Kidd, back to normal duties. Australia is leading the search efforts in the southern Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, furious Chinese families today

threatened to go on hunger strike until the Malaysian government tells

them the truth about the fate of their relatives aboard the flight which

went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Ten

days after the airliner vanished an hour into its flight, hundreds of

family members are still waiting for information in a Beijing hotel.

Around two thirds of the 239 passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are Chinese.

Families

vented their pain and anger on Chinese representatives sent by the

airline to meet them on Tuesday and demanded to see the Malaysian

ambassador.

‘What we want is the truth. Don’t let

them become victims of politics. No matter what political party you

are, no matter how much power you have, if there isn’t life, what’s the

point? Where is compassion?’ asked one middle-aged woman angrily.

‘You’re

always going back and forth. I think your government knows in their

heart why we want you to answer us. Because you’re always tricking us,

telling us lies,’ added one man.

China

has repeatedly called on the Malaysian side to do a better job at

looking after the relatives of the Chinese passengers, and to provide

them with updated information.

Comments (412)

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The comments below have not been moderated.

guns482,

Thailand,

2 hours ago

Well if the Thai Air Force where expecting a formal detailed invitation, then it is they who seem to be guilty of mis-information and complete lack of human decency, any plane that goes missing therefore according to them a full invitation to reveal anything suspicious even if it did not infringe on their air-space. Another moment Thailand has lived up to its publicity hype ‘Amazing Thailand ‘

justtellingithowitis,

Coventry, United Kingdom,

2 hours ago

It’s parked up in Diego Garcia US base. Can they come clean and tell us what special cargo was on board?

Eli84,

Cuernavaca, Mexico,

2 hours ago

I wonder if a politician or someone very important will be in that plane, would they take that long to find it?

Hmm i dont think so!

Trustnobody,

Landofthefreeloaders, United Kingdom,

2 hours ago

They’re keeping very quiet about the four Chinese scientists who were aboard the plane?

bukelacktavose,

tuvalo, British Indian Ocean Territory,

4 hours ago

Coverup is possible but mid flight fire more likely.

Jaded,

Lancashire, United Kingdom,

4 hours ago

I’ve not seen any mention of submarines being used in the search. I would have thought that they’d be better equipped to search in the south corridor for a signal coming from the black box. Maybe they already are, there is a lot about this we may never know about.

Jules Cartwright,

Crick, United Kingdom,

4 hours ago

I find it hard to believe that if the plane has landed somewhere that one of the passengers did not have a mobile phone to contact someone

Li Sai Hung,

Hong Kong, China,

4 hours ago

May be!

Petunia,

Timbuktu,

4 hours ago

Would it be too obvious to suggest searching the area around the Maldives, with less importance spent upon where the flight first was? Or assuming it did pass by the Maldives or even stop there, wouldn’t it make sense to look at a flight path that leads up to it and search for pings there, and to question people in the flight path to the Maldives?

Ben123,

Leeds, United Kingdom,

5 hours ago

Lets be realistic, the governments couldn’t organise a p*** up in a brewery with a fist full of fivers. So there is no chance they could keep track of every one of the 10,000′s of relatively tiny aircraft flying in the relatively big sky, all constantly taking off and landing around the world.

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Thai military says missing flight MH370 followed a twisting path to Strait of Malacca