KUALA LUMPUR, March 17 — Malaysia’s efforts to “refine” data on the possible location of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 hit an early snag after several neighbours said they have no radar records of the missing plane.
Malaysia earlier appealed to 15 countries for information including general satellite data and radar playback — both military and civilian — to help chart search efforts now narrowed down to two opposing “corridors”.
But according to the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Indonesia said its two radar stations in the Aceh province, nearest to where Malaysia lost sight of the Boeing 777-200ER carrying 239 people in the Straits of Malacca, found no indication of the aircraft.
“Malaysia said their radar detected [an object] near Pulau Perak, and then it disappeared.
“Had the plane entered Indonesian territory, the two radars must have detected it,” First Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto of the Indonesian air force told the WSJ.
Thailand and Myanmar also delivered equally bad news.
Royal Thai Air Force and the state-owned Aeronautical Radio of Thailand both said they found nothing to show that MH370 had entered the country’s airspace.
Myanmar’s Department of Civil Aviation said its three radars saw no data plots that might have been the missing plane.
On Saturday, Malaysia confirmed that satellite data indicated that the flight that went missing over a week ago could be in one of two corridors: a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, or a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said search efforts were not favouring either location.
“We are currently discussing with all partners how best to deploy assets along the two search corridors. At this stage, both the northern and southern corridors are being treated with equal importance,” he said yesterday.
Investigators are reported to favour the “southern corridor” as the more likely route flown by the plane, as the advanced air defence radar of the tightly-guarded countries in the northern arc would have likely detected the MH370 flight.
But without more data to rule out either corridor, Malaysia will have to split available assets between the two regions thousands of kilometres apart.
Hishammuddin yesterday acknowledged the new challenges in the hunt for MH370.
“The search was already a highly complex, multinational effort. It has now become even more difficult.
“From focusing mainly on shallow seas, we are now looking at large tracts of land, crossing 11 countries, as well as deep and remote oceans,” he said.
Hishammuddin said there are now 25 countries participating in the search operation.
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