Originally Posted by
awblain
These reports of looking in Turkmenistan AND northern Thailand are surely misrepresentations, unless the news editors' atlases were just open at T in the index. Turkmenistan is as far from KL as Beijing is, but a long long way from northern Thailand.
The intention of the press statement was presumably to say that there's the possibility of looking along a track from Turkmenistan to Thailand - since it presumably wasn't seen by either Chinese or Indian radars.
I'm going to infer, from the press conference remarks, that the last satellite point was somewhere 40-deg north or south. That they took a map of that part of the world, drew an arc from the last know primary skin paint, out to the range of fuel, then looked to see where 40 north or south would intersect that arc. I suspect that they also took note of potential routes, and who had PSR that might have seen it pass. As the a/c was flying east to west, it would have been moving in the same direction as sunrise, so it could have been in darkness the entire trip.
Would you send a fighter up to investigate a radar blip, in the dark, in mountainous terrain ?
As for the south corridor, there are a few islands out there ... including DG (already mentioned several times). If the a/c had made it to DG, I think most governments would already have been notified. But DG, as a destination, violates the 40-deg north/south, so I doubt that was the target.
Most perplexing.