Flight 370: Thai radar spotted unknown plane but 'didn't pay any attention to it'

10 days after flight 370 went missing, Thailand has revealed radar data saying that it may have spotted the missing plane.

15:13 19 March 2014

10 days after flight 370 went missing, Thailand’s military revealed that its radar detected a plane that may have been Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 but didn’t share the information with Malaysia because it wasn’t ‘specifically asked for it’.

When questioned, Thai air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn said: "Because we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country, so anything that did not look like a threat to us, we simply look at it without taking actions."

"When they asked again and there was new information and assumptions from (Malaysian) Prime Minister Najib Razak, we took a look at our information again," Suchookorn said. "It didn't take long for us to figure out, although it did take some experts to find out about it."

Thailand’s failure to share the information did not impact the search as Malaysian’s authority apparently already knew the same information – that the plane was going to the Strait of Malacca as the Malaysian radar has confirmed.

However, this raises questions about the degree to which some countries are sharing their defense information even during this international aviation mystery.