With the permission of Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation (DCA), British satellite firm Inmarsat today released the raw data that may allow family members of passengers on MH370 to seek independent verification that the plane crashed into the Indian Ocean.
The data has long been demanded by the families of the 239 passengers aboard the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft that went missing on March 8.
With it, analysts may be able to examine the theory that the plane ended in the Indian Ocean. No debris has been found there despite a 10-week Australia-led search effort.
"On the 19th of May, the acting Minister of Transport, Hishammuddin Hussein ( right ), has instructed the DCA to discuss with Inmarsat on the release of the Inmarsat ‘raw data’ for public consumption.
"As a result, the data communication logs from Inmarsat as well as the relevant explanations to enable the reader to understand the data provided are being released," the DCA said in a press statement.
The data released today by the DCA and Inmarsat is a 47-page document with hundreds of communication pinpoints, including time information and frequency.
From these, only 14 data points are apparently useful in showing what the plane was doing, why and where, in its last hours.
Experts had said that the data could bring the search back to square one if it does not conclusively proof that MH370 headed south, after a turnaround from its flight path to Beijing.
Search may stop for two months
Meanwhile, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Martin Dolan, told CNN that once the underwater robot Bluefin-21 wraps up its work in a couple of days, it will be “up to two months, if not longer, until new underwater vehicles are contracted and deployed in the hunt for MH370”.
Dolan said the Australian government would post its request for tenders for the next phase of the search in the next week or so.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) search has so far discovered only four pings, or signals, from the bottom of the Indian Ocean that it suspects were from the MH370 flight recorder.
After tripartite meetings among Malaysia, Australia and China, the search for MH370 is bound for bottom of the ocean and to cover a broader area.
