Originally Posted by
martynemh
How do you 'confirm' a primary radar return (possibly 200nm WNW of Penang VOR) being that of flight MH370?
Covered in detail days ago. It may have been deleted but the short answer is that an air defence system maintains a recognised air picture. A tracker places a Track Number against a contact, in this case MH370, and the system will then associate the track label with the aircraft.
Where the aircraft goes dark the tracker may have to re-associate the track. Admittedly it is possible to re-associate to the wrong track but, assuming other aircraft and track labels remain associated and only MH370 lost tracking then re-association should not be questioned.