Thailand's military said Tuesday it saw radar blips that might have been from the missing plane but didn't report it "because we did not pay attention to it," according to CNN.
Search crews from 26 countries, including Thailand, are looking for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished early March 8 with 239 people aboard en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, CNN reported.
Aircraft and ships are scouring two giant arcs of territory amounting to the size of Australia with half of that area being in the remote waters of the southern Indian Ocean, according to CNN.
Cmdr. William Marks, a spokesman for the U.S. 7th Fleet, said finding the plane was like trying to locate a few people somewhere between New York and California, CNN reported.
Military officials in neighboring Thailand said Tuesday their own radar showed an unidentified plane, possibly Flight 370, flying toward the strait beginning minutes after the Malaysian jet's transponder signal was lost, according to CNN.
Air force spokesman Air Vice Marshal Montol Suchookorn said the Thai military doesn't know whether the plane it detected was Flight 370, CNN reported.
Thailand's failure to quickly share possible information about the plane may not substantially change what Malaysian officials now know, but it raises questions about the degree to which some countries are sharing their defense data, according to CNN.
At a minimum, safety experts said, the radar data could have saved time and effort that was initially spent searching the South China Sea, many miles from the Indian Ocean, CNN reported.
"It's tough to tell, but that is a material fact that I think would have mattered," said John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, according to CNN.
"It's just bizarre they didn't come forward before," Scott Hamilton, managing director of aviation consultancy Leeham Co., said of Thai authorities, CNN reported.
"It may be too late to help the search ... but maybe them and the Malaysian military should do joint military exercises in incompetence," according to CNN.
