Malaysian defense minister defends inaction on MH370 radar

Canberra: Malaysia’s defense minister today defended his military’s failure to scramble a fighter jet to follow a Malaysian airliner when it veered off course and vanished two months ago, saying it wasn’t seen as a hostile object. [caption id=“attachment_1533401” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein. AFP[/caption] Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 became invisible to civilian radar when its transponder stopped transmitting during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on 8 March. But the plane was tracked by Malaysian military radar after it turned west across Peninsular Malaysia. In response to criticism that fighter jets should have been scrambled to investigate the then-unidentified flight through Malaysian air space, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told Australian Broadcasting Corp.’s “Four Corners” program broadcast today that the plane was deemed commercial and not hostile. “If you’re not going to shoot it down, what’s the point of sending it (a fighter) up?” Hishammuddin asked. He said had the Boeing 777 been shot down with 239 passengers and crew on board, “I’d be in a worse position, probably.” Delays in confirming the flight’s change of direction led to several days of wasted searching for wreckage in the South China Sea along the airliner’s original course, before an analysis of satellite data identified the southern Indian Ocean as a more likely crash site. Hishammudin previously defended the military’s inaction in pursuing the plane for identification after a preliminary report on its disappearance was released early this month. On that occasion, he said he was informed of the military radar detection two hours later and relayed it to Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who immediately ordered a search in the Strait of Malacca. Also on “Four Corners,” Asuad Khan, the brother-in-law of missing pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah, rejected speculation that Zaharie was the perpetrator of a mass murder-suicide. Asuad said media reports that his sister Faizah and her children had left Zaharie hours before the flight were false. PTI