Inaccurate Malaysian radar readings may have sent MH370 searchers on wild goose chase

KUALA LUMPUR — An international review of MH370’s disappearance has revealed that Malaysia’s military radar equipment had not been calibrated with enough precision to pinpoint the aircraft’s altitude, suggesting that the jetliner may have flown further than initially believed.

Retired Australian military chief Angus Houston, who is now coordinating the search for MH370, said readings of Malaysia’s primary radar data could be inaccurate and the aircraft may not have swooped and soared before its tanks ran out of fuel in the Indian Ocean.

“The primary radar data pertaining to altitude is regarded as unreliable,” Mr Houston told the New York Times in an interview published today (June 24).

Initial readings had suggested that MH370 soared beyond its certified maximum altitude of 43,100ft to as high as 45,000ft before it flew low to hug the mountainous terrain and then climbed back up to 23,000ft or higher when it traversed the Straits of Malacca.

Mr Houston said it was possible that MH370 flew at 23,000ft at some point during its tracked flight but doubted any possibility of proving the Boeing 777 jetliner’s allegedly erratic flight behaviour.

“There’s nothing reliable about height,” Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Martin Dolan was quoted saying in agreement with Mr Houston.

The new discovery has helped investigators conclude that the Malaysia Airlines plane had not likely been seriously damaged while in the air, and had remained in controlled flight until it ran out of fuel over the southern Indian Ocean.

But both Mr Houston and Mr Dolan declined to speculate on why the aircraft might have remained in controlled flight mode while soaring over the Indian Ocean.

However, if MH370 had not flown erratically as initially believed, this could also mean that searchers have been looking for the aircraft much further north than where it could have really gone down.

The NYT report pointed out that if MH370 had maintained a steadier altitude, it would have run out of fuel further south across the Indian Ocean.

As such, investigators have now shifted the search zone hundreds of kilometres south of the previously suspected crash site.

Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing 777 jetliner carrying 239 people, disappeared off the coast of Kota Baru, Kelantan, less than an hour after take-off at 12.41am on March 8 and has remained missing ever since.

Early investigations saw search teams concentrating on the waters off Malaysia’s east coast — in the South China Sea and between Malaysia and Vietnam — where the plane was last heard from before it lost contact with the Subang Air Traffic Control (ATC).

But local military radar later spotted the plane flying westwards, forcing the authorities to redirect their search efforts to the Straits of Malacca.

More information from foreign military and satellite data then confirmed the plane’s location to the west of Malaysia, hundreds of miles away from its original flight path to Beijing.

According to data from British satellite firm Inmarsat on March 14, its satellite registered “routine, automated signals” from the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft during its flight from Kuala Lumpur.

On March 15 — a week after MH370’s disappearance — Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told a press conference that Malaysia would call off the search at the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca.

Search troops were then redirected to scour two corridors — a northern arc from northern Thailand to the border of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan in central Asia, and a southern one from Indonesia to the southern Indian Ocean.

On March 20, authorities in Australia announced what they said was a possible breakthrough in the two-week hunt for MH370.

Satellite images taken by DigitalGlobe, a Colorado satellite imaging company, four days earlier showed at least two objects in the Indian Ocean, south of the search zone.

On March 24, Mr Najib concluded in a press conference that flight MH370 had “ended” in the southern Indian Ocean. The announcement subsequently led the search to be called off in the northern arc to concentrate on an area some 2,500km southwest of Perth in Australia.

It later moved over 1,000km north from where investigators had announced a possible flight pattern, which showed that the aircraft could have run out of fuel before it went further south.

At present, the specifics of the aircraft’s flight track are still in the midst of being determined but the latest search zone back in the south, which has yet to be announced, is likely to be roughly about 650km long and 100km wide, the NYT reported today. THE MALAY MAIL ONLINE