KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — On the day Flight 370 vanished, air- traffic controllers and Malaysian Air struggled for hours to understand what was happening even as the country’s military watched the plane appear to reverse course.
The initial confusion was disclosed Thursday in Malaysian government documents tracing the start of a mystery that began in the early morning hours on March 8. Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers traded phone calls and relayed a tip from the airline that the jet may have gone to Cambodia, the papers show.
As that exchange unfolded, the Malaysian military detected an unidentified radar target believed to have been the Boeing 777-200ER as it headed west across the country, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in a statement.
“The aircraft was categorized as friendly by the radar operator and therefore no further action was taken at the time,” said Hishammuddin, who was informed of the tracking about nine hours after civilian officials lost contact.
The statement and documents, including a preliminary report dated April 9 and recordings of radio calls, gave no new clues about why a beacon that helped mark the jet on radar went dark shortly before Flight 370 aborted its trip to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board. Nor did the materials explain why Malaysia waited seven days to reveal that it had spotted Flight 370’s turnabout.
Investigators have concluded the plane flew south toward Australia and crashed in the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel. The hunt for the wreckage is the longest for a missing passenger jet in modern aviation history, with weeks of patrols by planes, ships and a robot submarine turning up nothing.
Controllers lost radar contact with Flight 370 at 1:21 a.m. local time. Vietnamese controllers contacted their Malaysian counterparts 17 minutes later because the pilots hadn’t made radio contact as they were due to enter Vietnamese airspace, according to a log of early actions in the case.
At 1:57 a.m., the Vietnam controllers reported they had been unsuccessful trying to reach Flight 370 on “many” radio frequencies and with the help of other aircraft in the vicinity.
Then Cambodia, a country that hugs Vietnam’s western border, became part of the narrative. Shortly after 2 a.m., Malaysian Air told authorities that it “was able to exchange signals with the flight,” and that the plane may have flown into Cambodian airspace.
That idea was quashed about 90 minutes later, when Malaysian Air told controllers that its estimate of the plane’s location was “not reliable for aircraft positioning,” according to the log. By 4:25 a.m., controllers had begun querying authorities in Hong Kong, Beijing and Singapore.
All the while, military radar tracked the plane, which remained unidentified because its transponder beacon wasn’t functioning, according to Hishammuddin’s statement.
At 5:20 a.m., about four hours after civilian authorities lost contact, someone identified only as “Capt” spoke to controllers. “He opined that based on known information, ‘MH370 never left Malaysian airspace,’” according to the log, which didn’t give the source of that information or indicate whether any action was taken.
Military authorities replayed a recording of the radar track at 8:30 a.m., more than seven hours after the plane’s disappearance, according to Hishammuddin’s statement.
That information was passed up through the ranks and Hishammuddin was informed at 10:30 a.m. He then informed Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, according to the statement.
Two ships and a military aircraft were sent to the waters off the northwest coast of Malaysia to search for the airliner. It wasn’t until March 15 that Najib confirmed the plane’s course in a press conference. While the motive behind the jet’s southerly heading remains unknown, Najib has said the jet was deliberately steered back toward Malaysia as it reached Vietnam’s airspace.
Malaysia has set up a team to probe the disappearance that will consist of three groups with specific focus areas, not including any criminal investigation.
Malaysian Airline System Bhd. also said Thursday it will make advance payments to the next of kin of Flight 370 passengers. The payouts won’t affect families’ rights to claim compensation later, and will be calculated as part of the final sum, the airline said in an e-mailed statement. The carrier didn’t say how much would be disbursed.
Assistance centers for relatives set up around the world will close by May 7, and passengers are being advised to return to their homes and await updates on the investigation instead of staying in hotels, the airline said.
Malaysia’s April 9 report on the disappearance, which officials sent to the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization, includes a recommendation that the body develop standards for real-time aircraft tracking.
“There have now been two occasions during the last five years when large commercial air transport aircraft have gone missing and their last position was not accurately known,” according to the report, referring to Air France Flight 447, which was lost in the Atlantic Ocean in 2009.
“This uncertainty resulted in significant difficulty in locating the aircraft in a timely manner,” the government’s report said.
The recommendation didn’t address whether a real-time tracking system should be designed so pilots can’t switch it off. Aircraft designers and aviation regulators currently give pilots the option of cutting power to electronic devices in case of a fire or another emergency.
