KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 ― The military initially assumed that a Malaysian jet detected on its radar on March 8 was ordered to turn back by the air traffic controllers, deputy defence minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri told Parliament today.

Questions had been raised over the military’s failure to immediately report the detection of the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH370, but Abdul Rahim repeated the Malaysian government’s explanation that the aircraft was considered non-hostile.

“The turnback was detected in our radar, only we thought the turnback was done by MAS, an aircraft that was not hostile or a friendly aircraft, so we thought maybe it’s an order from control tower,” the Kudat MP told Parliament today in the ministry’s winding up speech.

Although the military initially believed the Boeing 777-200 ER jet was making a detour based on the air traffic control tower’s instructions, it later saw its position was facing the Straits of Malacca or the Andaman Sea, Abdul Rahim explained.

Malaysia moved its assets to these two areas to search for the aircraft, after concluding the plane had turned back, he said.

In explaining the delay in the public disclosure of the military’s sighting of the plane, Abdul Rahim said the Malaysian authorities had wanted to verify the information and be “100 per cent sure” before releasing a statement.

Malaysia later worked with the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) to analyse the radar data, he said.

MH370, a large wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft carrying 239 people, first disappeared from civilian radar at 1.30am on March 8, shortly after it left the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA)

Initial search operations were concentrated on the South China Sea and the waters between Malaysia and Vietnam as the aircraft was last spotted hovering 120 nautical miles off the coast of Kota Baru.

On March 12, local authorities confirmed that military radar had spotted an aircraft northwest from Penang in the Straits of Malacca at 2.15am on the same day it went missing, but could not determine it was the MH370.

In a press conference on March 13, Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) chief Tan Sri Rodzali Daud explained that Malaysia was still working and corroborating with experts to confirm the aircraft was indeed the missing MH370.

Although Rodzali said the plane was then considered non-hostile, he did not elaborate.

In the same March 13 press conference, Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman explained that the primary radar used by the military gives no other information and only shows the presence of an aircraft.

Civil aviation radars are secondary radars which receive information from aircraft transponders showing the type of aircraft along with other identification details.

On March 15, the search in the South China Sea was called off after satellite data suggested that the MH370 could be either in a northern corridor that stretched into Central Asia or a southern corridor that went over the Indian Ocean.

As new information appeared based on analysis of satellite data, Malaysia announced the conclusion on Monday that the flight MH370 was assumed to be lost in the Indian Ocean.

The multinational search for the MH370 and the 239 people on board is still going on.