According to an Air Force spokesman this morning, the AirAsia flight was tracked to its last known position at bearing 247 degrees, 127nm from Pangkalanbun.
Thanks PeeKay4. Unfortunately that word "known" leaves a lot of wriggle room. Those stated ranges are (presumably) for cruise flight levels. They will be much shorter range at lower levels - this systems are not over the horizon capability.
If the aircraft had really been tracked close to its last position, we should have found something yesterday. The Indonesian primary radar data would not have been released to the public. But the Indonesian military and civilian authorities would sure know where to look for an Indonesian aircraft carrying mostly Indonesian citizens.
Hope I'm wrong, but its looking a lot like MH370.
1. Over water. Pretty much equidistant from major centres. Would not have to descend too far to get below the horizon of any operating primary radar.
2. Dark. Early hours of Sunday morning.
3. ATC advised of weather and a request to deviate. So loss of radio, loss of secondary radar and then loss of primary radar not entirely out of the blue. Would look a bit like AF447 with upset and stall.
4. No wreckage found so far.
No one has to be "looking at" a particular aircraft as radar data are kept for a period of time.
By way of clarification, I meant that systems may not even have been operational at that time - not that an operator was siting at a screen monitoring traffic.