I think some people are thinking in retrospect how they would have liked authorities to have acted at the time. But that is often unfair, and 20-20 hindsight is all too easy.
Fact is it was the middle of a routine night right at handover. Could not have been better planned to create doubt and delay. I see some delay and confusion and procrastination as almost inevitable in this setting. It would have been a big call to have immediately escalated things to a more senior level.
Routine things (like transponder failure) are ... well routine.
4 weeks later we are still trying to work out what really happened.
Same as when a child goes missing. Or someone gets diagnosed with a serious illness. Yes in retrospect the alarm could usually have been raised a bit earlier. But do we really want to live in such a world?
I have no idea whether the following oft quoted anecdote is true or not. Probably not exactly. But it does serve to illustrate the different responses inevitable when someone is "primed" versus "out of the blue."
When Jimmy Carter became President [in 1977], an Air Force general promptly came to the Oval Office to explain the procedure for evacuating the Chief Executive if it ever came to that. The general informed Carter that it would take less than five minutes to get him out of the White House and winging toward safety. "Okay," said the President, "go." "Go?" asked the general incredulously. "That's right," said Carter. "Go." The general turned pale and scrambled into action. Aides scurried about. Phones rang. Carter went back to work. Forty-five minutes later, as the general was still shouting orders into a telephone, Carter calmly asked, "Got the time, General?"