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RI govt insists no detection of MH370 in RI airspace
The Indonesian government has strongly opposed the theory that the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight number MH370 spent hours flying through Indonesian airspace without any radar detection before crashing in the southern Indian Ocean
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T
he Indonesian government has strongly opposed the theory that the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight number MH370 spent hours flying through Indonesian airspace without any radar detection before crashing in the southern Indian Ocean.
The government issued a press statement on Tuesday amid growing concerns that the plane had indeed flown over Sumatra and Java, as suggested by a number of reports by foreign print and electronic media.
The suggestions of this possible route were made after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Monday that the Boeing 777-200's journey had ended in remote waters southwest of Perth, Australia.
But spokesman for the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, Vice Marshall Agus Ruchyan Barnas, insisted that the most likely route taken by the plane was via the northern Indian Ocean, northwest of Sumatra, before flying south to the location that Najib had indicated as the plane's crash point.
'Has anyone dared to confirm that the plane flew through our airspace? No.' Agus told The Jakarta Post.
The Indonesian Air Force has also repeatedly said that none of Indonesia's military radars had detected any flying object that could have been been flight MH370.
'One hit on military radar suggested that the plane had been detected in the Andaman Islands, west of Thailand. So it could have very likely cleared Sumatra in the north before making another turn to the South to the waters 2,500 kilometers off Perth,' he said.
'Don't be misled by graphic illustrations and maps because our earth is not flat as on those maps,' he added.
When asked about the possibility that some of the military radars could have been inactive at the time the plane flew over Indonesia, Agus said, 'don't listen to rumors'.
'Many of our military radars, particularly those in the Western half of Indonesia, are integrated with civilian radars. So, even though some military radars were inactive, the area was still covered by civilian radars, which operate non-stop,' Agus said, adding that all military radars made regular real-time hourly reports to Jakarta.
'The majority of our civilian radars have both primary and secondary systems. So they would still have been capable of detecting an aircraft flying without its transponder switched on - albeit that would have been more difficult,' he added.
Agus also claimed that the Indonesia-Malaysia agreement on the exchange of radar data, which was signed in the 1990s, was still in effect.
'That's why Najib has never mentioned Indonesian radar,' he concluded.
