Will MH370 Be Found? Crucial Radar Data Containing Clues To Location Of Missing Plane Withheld By Malaysia, Experts Claim

Just two days after Australia, Malaysia and China called off the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, members of an independent group of international aviation and data experts claimed that Malaysia withheld crucial radar data that could help find the missing plane. The news comes amid growing concerns over the future of the search for the missing plane.

According to Australia's news.com.au, MH370 investigators Victor Iannello and Don Thompson, who have been part of the independent group that advised Australian authorities in the search, said that crucial radar data captured by eight military sites across four nations was never shared by Malaysia with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

“My own ‘hot button’ is that military long-range air defence surveillance data from assets operated at seven, possibly even eight, sites across four nations is absent from the data set available to ATSB,” Thompson told news.com.au.

According to the experts, those satellites, all within the range of the flight path MH370 is believed to have taken, are located at Lhokseumawe, Sabang/Pulau We and Sibolga in Indonesia; Car Nicobar and Port Blair in the Indian Andaman Islands; Khok Muang and Phuket in Thailand; and Western Hill in Penang, Malaysia.

Flight MH370, with 239 people on board, went missing on March 8, 2014, while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Authorities earlier said that the plane may have crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

The underwater search for the plane that had been ongoing for nearly three years was called off Tuesday as the 46,000-square-mile search zone yielded no concrete clues as to the plane's whereabouts. However, the decision by the tripartite was criticized by the next of kin of those on board the jet.

On Wednesday, Australian Transport Minister Darren Chester said that future underwater search for the missing Boeing 777-200 has not been ruled out. He added that the cost involved in the multimillion-dollar search was not the reason for the suspension of the search.

"There's no question this has been a very costly exercise — in the order of 200 million Australian dollars has been spent on the underwater search effort of which 60 million dollars has been provided by the Australian government, and the Malaysian government has contributed more than anyone else in that regard," he said. "So it has been a costly exercise but it hasn't been the factor which has led to the decisions to suspend the search. We are in a position where we don't want to provide false hope to families and friends."

The only physical evidence in the search for the missing jet was the discovery of debris pieces on western Indian Ocean shorelines. Some of the debris are believed to be from a Boeing 777-200 jet, the same make as the missing Flight MH370.