Here is a bit more of the story:
Originally Posted by Wall Street Journal
Updated March 13, 2014 8:43 p.m. ET
Communication satellites received intermittent data “pings” from a missing Malaysia Airlines jet, giving the plane’s location, speed and altitude for at least five hours after it disappeared from civilian radar screens, people briefed on the investigation said Thursday.
The final satellite ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a “normal” cruising altitude. The people declined to say where specifically the transmission originated, adding that it was unclear why the transmissions stopped. One possibility one person cited was that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.
The automatic pings, or attempts to link up with satellites operated by Inmarsat PLC, occurred a number of times after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370’s last verified position, these people said, indicating that at least through those hours, the Boeing Co. 777 carrying 239 people remained intact and hadn’t been destroyed in a crash, act of sabotage or explosion.
Malaysian Airlines said it hadn’t received any such data.
If the plane remained airborne for that entire period it could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles from its last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand, these people said.
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Looks like periodic ‘registration’ attempts or handshakes by an Inmarsat data terminal were taking place ... why it stopped, the aircraft may have finally run out of fuel, descended, etc. (RIP) ... reg attempts might have been once very 10 min or 30 min or an hour ... at which times ‘data’ e.g. location? was sent.
Or they determined it was transmitting and simply logged it off, not hard to do.
In spite of your tag line.....
Is it not of interest that the Malaysian authorities have been totally uncooperative, given out misinformation, bad information, conflicting information, etc?
It would be interesting to know who the Chinese passengers are, what their jobs are and whether the Malaysian government would have any desire to be rid of them....without starting a war with China.
That airplane is on some remote military airbase in some country friendly to Malaysia.
“Looks like periodic ‘registration’ attempts or handshakes by an Inmarsat data terminal were taking place ... why it stopped, the aircraft may have finally run out of fuel, descended, etc. (RIP)...”
Or it landed and the A/C was shut down. I think the amount of time that elapsed after disappeared and then had the ACARS data stop was about four hours. From that we can determine approximately how far it flew and where it could have landed.
Keep in mind that some cell phones stayed on until some time Monday so the a/c did land somewhere.