The Malaysian Parliament was told today that the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) did detect an unidentified aircraft that had turned back but assumed it had done so after being instructed by air traffic control.

Defence deputy minister Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri said that while aircraft could receive specific instructions from air traffic control to re-route, that would not require a response from the RMAF even if it was detected on primary radar.

“We detected the ‘turn back’ but did not regard it as hostile and as it was a friendly aircraft, we thought maybe that it had received instructions from the control tower but what we later realised was that the aircraft had disappeared (off the radar) at the Andaman Sea or northern Malacca Strait.

“For your knowledge, the visibility of our radar is only around 250 nautical miles,” he said in his winding-up speech to debate the royal address.

On March 8, Malaysia Airlines’ MH370 flight bound for Beijing disappeared off the radar about an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

Abdul Rahim denied that the RMAF had delayed reporting the episode.

“The RMAF or any other authority cannot disclose information that had not been 100 per cent verified and all information at the time was being scrutinised and re examined by experts from the Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board and Air Accidents Investigation Branch,” he explained.

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