After 17 days of desperation and doubt over the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, the country’s officials said an analysis of satellite data points to a “heartbreaking” conclusion: Flight 370 met its end in the southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, and none of those aboard survived.
The somber announcement late Monday by Prime Minister Najib Razak left unresolved many more troubling questions about what went wrong aboard the Boeing 777 to take it so far off-course.
It also unleashed a maelstrom of sorrow and anger among the families of the jet’s 239 passengers and crew.
Officials said they concluded that the flight had been lost in the deep waters west of Perth, Australia, based on more thorough analysis of the brief signals the plane sent every hour to a satellite belonging to Inmarsat, a British company, even after other communication systems on the jetliner shut down.
The pings did not include any location information. But Inmarsat and British aviation officials used “a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort” to zero in on the plane’s last direction, as it reached the end of its fuel, Najib said.
In a statement, Inmarsat said the company used “detailed analysis and modelling” of transmissions from the Malaysia Airlines jet and other known flights to describe “the likely direction of flight of MH370.”
Najib gave no indication of exactly where in the Indian Ocean the plane was last heard from, but searchers have sighted possible debris in an area about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth.
via yahoo.com
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