Has there been a military cover-up over missing jet? Thai air force says its radar spotted MH370 heading to Strait of Malacca MINUTES after it vanished (but didn't say anything)



MH370 spotted at 1.28am, eight minutes after it stopped communicating

Turned towards Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca



Malaysia detected MH370 on their military radar at 2:14am heading to strait

Thai air force did not report contact because 'it did not look like a threat'

It meant precious time was being wasted searching in the wrong area

Malaysian cedes control to other countries in ongoing search operation



Search area consists of 14 sections covering an area the size of Australia

Witnesses in Maldives report seeing a 'low-flying jumbo jet' around 6.15am

They said plane was white with red stripes like a Malaysia Airlines jet

It emerged the captain is related to Malaysia's jailed opposition leader

Families of the Chinese passengers are threatening to go on hunger strike



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.

The missing plane, considered history's worst aviation disaster, went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board

'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.