A NUMBER of authorities, including the Malaysian military, reportedly let MH370 disappear, according to shocking new claims about the missing plane.

ABC’s Four Corners program quoted Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein as saying that Malaysia’s civil aviation authorities called the military asking them to keep an eye on the plane but that the military allowed the plane to glide out to sea.

The plane was deemed not to be hostile and therefore the military did not send a plane up to investigate.

“If (we didn’t) shoot it down, why send it (jet up),” Mr Hussein said.

MH370 flew almost directly over the Malaysian military air base located on the island of Penang but that it appeared nothing was done.

Anwar Ibrahim said the military had completely breached the standing operating procedures.

“The air force will be alerted and will have to then be flown to that area to either ... guide the plane to land or to leave the Malaysian airspace. They’re standard operating procedure and this was never done,” he said.

“Yeah I mean it’s a major scandal here because ... this is of course amounting to a major threat to national security.”

media_camera Happy family ... A screen capture from a You Tube tribute for Malaysian Airlines pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, posted by his family.

MORE: Doubts raised over ‘ping’ validity

The program also addressed rumours that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s wife had left him.

His brother-in-law, Asuad Khan, said claims that his sister Faizah had left Zaharie, taking their children with her to another house, in the hours prior to the ill-fated flight’s take off were “completely false”.

Mr Khan also denied that his 53-year-old brother-in-law was experiencing personal problems, had been upset about politics or that he was unfit to fly on March 8.

He said the veteran pilot’s marriage was not in trouble over a rumoured affair, saying that as a Muslim he was permitted to have multiple girlfriends outside his marriage.

media_camera Close family ... Ahmad Seth Zaharie, 26, with his sister Aishah Zaharie, 27, left, and mother Faizah Khanum Mustafa Khan.

RELATED: Pilot’s family lash out at reporters

“Even I don’t believe it because she, she’s at home. Well the normal procedure for their ... whenever the husband fly the wife will go to another house where the younger son’s staying. Otherwise she will be alone in that big house. That’s been practised since they bought the house.”

It was claimed Captain Zaharie had received a two-minute phone call shortly before takeoff from a mystery woman, using a mobile phone number obtained under a false name.

MORE: Captain Zaharie’s ‘mystery phonecall’

Mr Khan defended his brother-in-law’s right to have a girlfriend.

“That I do not know about. Even if I know I said why not? We are allowed to, as long as you take good care of your wife. Even if you ask my sister and she said she don’t care,” he said.

“He can marry another one. Why not — we can marry four. We are Muslim.”

Technical experts in the US were also working to recover deleted information from a sophisticated flight simulator Zaharie had set up on a home computer.

But Mr Khan said the simulator had not been used this year.

“I don’t think so because the simulator is not working,” he said.

“That simulator was dismantled already, the things crash. It don’t work so he got to ah reformat the drive.”

media_camera Family ties ... Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and daughter Aishah Zaharie. Source: Facebook.

RELATED: Captain Zaharie’s daughter ‘was in Australia’

Mr Khan also said Zaharie had not attended the trial of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim that day, which some reports suggested proved he had been radicalised and had hijacked the plane in an act of terror.

“No. I ask my sister personally, even my sister herself informed him on what happened on that day,” he said.

The program also claimed that someone inside the cockpit began interfering with the in-flight entertainment system around the time MH370’s transponder was turned off or failed.

It also revealed that a team of up to five officers could or should have been on duty at the nearby radar operations centre at Butterworth air base looking for unidentified aircraft.

Originally published as Authorities ‘let MH370 disappear’