Flight MH370: How The Search Was Narrowed To The Indian Ocean
The announcement that Flight MH370 “ended in the Southern Indian Ocean” hasn’t prevented conspiracy theories from continuing to surface a day after the Malaysian Prime Minister informed the world that the plane and its passengers were lost in the treacherous waters.
Many are questioning the veracity of the statement made on Monday regarding Flight MH370 — which has been missing since March 8 — since the Malaysian government has been less than accurate ever since the disappearance.
How can the Malaysian PM state as a fact that Flight MH370 met its end in the Southern Indian Ocean without even one confirmed piece of debris?
There are some facts to support the notion that somehow — and this is the reason for the conspiracy theories — the Malaysia Airlines plane was diverted from its intended route, between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing to the waters west of Perth, Australia.
British television host and correspondent Michael Kay has been one of the most clear voices in attempting to explain what the facts are in the case of Flight MH370.
On Monday, during an appearance in the Sean Hannity program on Fox News, Kay put in simple words how authorities appear to be certain the doomed aircraft found its end in the Indian Ocean.
According to Kay, there’s a stationary satellite located in the Northern Indian Ocean, which communicated with the ACARS on Flight MH370 — much like a cell phone — picking up the “pings” sent from the system.
Despite the fact that the ACARS was turned of by someone in the cockpit of Flight MH370, the equipment continued to “talk” with the satellite in what Kay describes as a “handshake,” and every few hours it sent the message “Hey, you still awake?” and the ACARS would respond with “Yes, I’m still here,” Kay says.
The Malysian PM stated that the location of MH370 was possible due to data provided by a British company aiding in the efforts to find the missing flight and investigators had access to never before used procedures.
Kay was able to explain how the breakthrough technology worked, using the mathematical formula Speed=Distance/Time to calculate the final area in which Malaysia Airlines flight may be located.
“They know what time they (satellite) sent the interrogation to ACARS and they know what time they got a response back. So all they’re doing is using distance equals speed times time and dividing it by two and they can get a distance.”
With this information for every five “pings” they have a distance, which creates a path that ends about 1,500 from Perth, Australia, where the search efforts to find Flight MH370 are now focused.
[Image via HitManSnr / Shutterstock.com]
