Malaysian PM: 'MH370 Ended in the Southern Indian Ocean'
According to satellite data analysis
What's happening in news on MH370 today, March 24:
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has said that according to analysis from the British company Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 went down in the southern Indian Ocean. In the announcement Razak did not expand on the nature of the analysis. According to Razak, MH370's last position was west of the Australian city of Perth.
According to the BBC a text sent to the relatives of the 239 people on the missing flight said that it had to be assumed that there were no survivors.
Background:
MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing on March 8. The pilots never indicated that anything was wrong, although radar data suggests that the flight was deliberately flown off course. Its disappearance prompted a massive search that included over two dozen countries. The fuel range of the plane stretched from Afghanistan to parts of Australia (map below):
It was revealed that two young Iranian men had boarded the flight with stolen passports. However, authorities said that the men were likely asylum seekers and not connected to any terrorist organizations. The Chinese ambassador in Kuala Lumpur said that background checks on the Chinese nationals on board MH370 had not uncovered any links to terror groups.
Theories about what happened to the plane:
The mysterious disappearance of MH370 led to a range of theories about what happened to the plane being put forward, including that a black hole was somehow involved.
A theory about the plane's disappearance that was written up by pilot Chris Goodfellow was republished in Wired and discussed at Business Insider. According to Goodfellow, what most likely happened was that the pilots tried to land MH370 after a fire broke out on the plane, thereby explaining the unexpected change in course. Goodfellow explains that if the pilots passed out or died because of smoke in the cabin the plane would simply have continued on its revised course until it ran out of fuel and crashed. However, 777 pilots who spoke to Business Insider claim that the first thing pilots would do if smoke was in the cockpit would be to put on oxygen masks.
Recently, possible debris from the flight was spotted in the southern Indian Ocean.
