Why?
So, as predicted (And challenged) way back in the thread, the Malaysians were indeed witholding information.
Don't we need to ask why, especially since it resulted in the waste of so many resources in the Gulf of Thailand/SCS for at least two full days.
The next question would be what else are they witholding? The aircraft was tracked with Military Primary radar into The Straits of Malacca. You can guarantee that the Indonesians were doing the same because its flight path would be towrads Aceh Province in North Sumatera, where the security forces are still very jittery. So with all this Military technology brought into play, surely they must have a much better idea of where to look.
As an earlier poster said, this aircraft could have continued to fly West into the Indian Ocean for another 5 hours before running out of fuel. Is Malacca yet another red herring?