Originally Posted by
EDMJ
If the point of the last civilian radar return and the point of the last military radar return had been known at the same time, would a search effort not have begun at both points more or less simultaneously and not with a 4 day delay?
You have to ask yourself, "known to whom?"
Civilian authorities only had access to the civilian radar return, which terminated in Gulf of Thailand. Military radar return only existed on a tape somewhere in a military base and consisted of a single track among hundreds if not thousands of plane tracks seen by the military radar every day, without any association between the track and the plane ID.
It took time for a high-ranking officer to order the review of the tapes, and more time to perform the review, and even more time to authorize the release of this info to SAR. All in all, looks like it took about 2 days for this to happen.