Satellite group solves mystery of MH370’s final course

A UK-based company solved the mystery of the final course taken by flight MH370 – the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet that disappeared without trace two weeks ago – by a revolutionary use of satellite data.

The analysis by Inmarsat, a London-based operator of communications satellites, and UK air accident investigators, proved the last signal from the Malaysia Airlines aircraft came from a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean.

Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, said on the basis of this information investigators had concluded that flight MH370, which set off from Kuala Lumpur bound northeast for Beijing, ended up crashing into the sea 2,500km southwest of Perth.

“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean,” he said.

Vanished
The news came 16 days after the Boeing 777 passenger jet vanished in the early hours of March 8th. The focus turned last week to the Indian Ocean based on an analysis of "pings" received by one of Inmarsat's satellites from an automatic system onboard the aircraft.

The data established that the aircraft had veered west from its flight path and flown along one of two arcs – a northern corridor that stretches to Kazakhstan and a southern corridor that runs into the Indian Ocean past Australia.

But over the weekend, Inmarsat’s engineers established the flight went south rather than north. The team used the “Doppler effect” of the satellite as it moved in its orbit to establish a set of measurements for the predicted northerly and southerly paths, a company spokesman said.

Doppler effect
The Doppler effect describes the change in the frequency of sound, radio or light waves as they travel between two objects, when one or both of them are moving.

Chris McLaughlin, senior vice-president for external affairs at Inmarsat, said analysts had tested earlier findings against known flights by other aircraft and judged only the southern route was possible.

The new method “gives the approximate direction of travel, plus or minus about 100 miles, to a track line,” he told Sky News. “All we believe we can do is to say that we believe it is in this general location, but we cannot give you the final few feet and inches where it landed.”

The search teams will now seek to establish exactly where the aircraft crashed.

Possible clues will be contained in the voice cockpit and flight data recorders, assumed to be lying at depths of up to 4,000m on the sea bed.

They are both fitted with transponders that have a battery life of just 30 days under water. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014