bud leon said,
I imagine people who criticise the Malaysian response have little experience in emergency management, which is typified by a lot of information but little intelligence (verified information) in the early stages. And this is a particularly difficult one cutting across many countries with a lot of noise, exacerbated by media. Much of the criticism has actually stemmed from misconceptions about what has and has not been said. Australia has come in much later, when information quantity and quality has greatly improved.
for the record,
This is specifically what was reported in the news cycles on March 8th:
According to a press statement by Malaysia Airline Systems Bhd, Subang Air Traffic Control reported that it lost contact with Flight MH370 at 2.40 am on Saturday.
March 9th:
"We are trying to make sense of this," the Malaysian air force chief (Daud) told a media conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back and in some parts, this was corroborated by civilian radar."
March 10th
Berita Harian quotes Air Force chief General Tan Sri Rodzali Daud as saying the plane was last detected by military radar in the vicinity of Pulau Perak, in the Straits of Malacca, at 2.40 a.m. on Saturday, hundreds of kilometres off course.
An AP reporter was also standing right there, hears it, and supposedly verifies the statement with multiple (unnamed) Malaysian Officials
March 11th
"I wish to state that I did not make any such statements as above. What occurred was that the Berita Harian journalist asked me if such an incident occurred as detailed in their story. However, I did not give any answer to the question.
"Instead, what I said to the journalist was, 'Please refer to the statement which I made on 9 March 2014, during the press conference with the Chief of Defence Forces at the Sama-Sama Hotel, Kuala Lumpur International Airport'," the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) chief said in a statement late last night.
His March 9th press conference statement, of course, being that there was corroborated evidence it had turned back to the Straights
Yet despite all that, the official position remained
“we [Malaysia] had no reason to suspect that the aircraft that we tracked flying across our peninsula was MH370” ...until
day 8 of the search.