wow... Just stumbled upon something that I had completely missed until now
"We informed Malaysia on the day we lost contact with the flight that we noticed the flight turned back west but Malaysia did not respond,"
That is Vietnam’s deputy minister of transport, Pham Quy Tieu, and the quote was reported at least 4 days ago
(as can be seen here
Vietnam suspends air search for missing Malaysian jet | NDTV.com )
So that means
A) Vietnam has the plane on radar turning around, and tried to tell Malaysia that day
B) Malaysia knew they had it on their radar at 2:40 in the Straights anyway
...yet still they let 14 countries waste 8 days in the Gulf looking for a plane that wasn't ever there.
Unbelievable