Turn back across the Malay Peninsula
17:21–17:52 UTC
Primary radar shows a left turn off the Beijing airway, a crossing of Malaysia, and a track toward the Andaman Sea. The official report calls this diversion likely the result of manual inputs.
After the transponder was lost, reconstructed primary radar (civil and military) shows MH370 turning left, crossing back over the peninsula south of Penang, and tracking northwest up the Strait of Malacca. Altitude reconstructions from primary radar are coarse, but the track is not the random wander of an uncontrolled aircraft in the first hour. The 2018 safety investigation concluded that the departure from the filed flight plan “likely resulted from manual inputs,” while being unable to say who made them. No mechanical failure mode identified in the report accounts for a sustained, navigationally coherent reverse course plus simultaneous communications silence.
Sources
Related
Malaysian military primary-radar track
17:21–18:22 UTC · westbound after IGARI
The diversion likely resulted from manual inputs
Penang
Westbound primary-radar track · FO phone register
First officer’s phone registers at Penang
17:52:27 UTC
Flight-crew diversion
Manual inputs from the cockpit — who, and why, unproven
Waypoint IGARI
17:20:31 UTC
Secondary radar lost
17:21:13 UTC
MH370: The Forensic Evidence
Capt. John Cox · Sit Down With Sid · 13 June 2026 · 37:10
MH370 Disappearance: Minute by Minute
Licensed 53-minute feature · 2025–26 reprints
Deep Dive: MH370 Episode Three — The Turn Back
Deep Dive Podcast Network · 28 September 2023 · 31:12
Wikipedia timeline — night of 7–8 March 2014
Duty sign-in through failed 09:15 handshake