SEPANG(Malaysia): The radar blip that was Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 did a wide U-turn over the Gulf of Thailand and then began moving inexorably past at least three military radar arrays as it traversed northern Malaysia, even flying high over one of the country's biggest cities before heading out over the Strait of Malacca.Yet inside a Malaysian Air Force control room on the country's west coast, where American-made F-18s and F-5 fighters stood at a high level of readiness for emergencies exactly like the one unfolding in the early morning of March 8, a four-person air defense radar crew did nothing about the unauthorized flight. "The watch team never noticed the blip," said a person with detailed knowledge of the investigation into Flight 370. "It was as though the airspace was his."
Kermit Tyler is probably turning over in his grave, but he did a better job than that.
It was not the first and certainly not the last in a long series of errors by the Malaysian government that has made the geographically vast and technologically complex task of finding the $50 million Malaysia Airlines jet far more difficult.
... The mistakes have accumulated at a remarkable pace.
"The fact that it flew straight over Malaysia, without the Malaysian military identifying it, is just plain weird -- not just weird, but also very damning and tragic," said David Learmount, the operations and safety editor for Flightglobal, a news and data service for the aviation sector.
Senior Malaysian military officers became aware within hours of the radar data once word spread that a civilian airliner had vanished. The Malaysian government nonetheless organized and oversaw an expensive and complex international search effort in the Gulf of Thailand that lasted for a full week. Only on Saturday morning did Prime Minister Najib Razak finally shut it down.
The Malaysian air force base at the former RAF air base Butterworth sits on the mainland across from the island of Penang at the northern reaches of the Strait of Malacca. There, in the early morning hours of March 8, the four-person crew watching for intrusions into the country's airspace either did not notice or failed to report a blip on their defensive radar and air traffic radar that was moving steadily across the country from east to west, heading right toward them, said the person with knowledge of the matter.
Neither that team nor the crews at two other radar installations at Kota Bharu, closer to where the airliner last had contact with the ground, designated the blip as an unknown intruder warranting attention, the person said. The aircraft proceeded to fly across the country and out to sea without anyone on watch telling a superior and alerting the national defense command near Kuala Lumpur, even though the radar contact's flight path did not correspond to any filed flight plan.
As a result, combat aircraft never scrambled to investigate. The plane, identified at the time by Mr. Najib as Flight 370, passed directly over Penang, a largely urban state with more than 1.6 million people, then turned and headed out over the Strait of Malacca.
The existence of the radar contact was discovered only when military officials began reviewing tapes later in the morning on March 8, after the passenger jet failed to arrive in Beijing.
With so much uncertainty about the flight, it is not yet possible to know whether any actions by the Malaysian government or military could have altered its fate.
Is it just me, or would an intercept by a Malaysian military jet investigating an unknown blip flying over their country be considered a substantial alteration of "fate"?
For a week after the plane's disappearance, Malaysian law enforcement authorities said that their investigation did not include searching the home of the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah.
On Saturday afternoon, the police were seen entering the gated community where Mr. Zaharie was said to have lived, and Malaysian news media reported that they had searched his home. The police declined to comment, and it is not known whether the authorities made any effort to secure Mr. Zaharie's home and prevent any destruction of evidence over the past week.
For discussion: what would happen in the USA if a flight departing JFK for Europe turned off its transponder & disappeared from radar 300 miles (or so) offshore?
