Under pressure for more information from families of those lost aboard Malaysia Flight 370, data collected by a British satellite company about the missing plane’s final hours was released Tuesday.
The Malaysian government has released 47 pages of raw satellite data used to conclude that the missing Malaysia Airlines jet crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
That Inmarsat data consists of a few electronic pings between the plane and the British company’s satellite network. It was analyzed and used as the basis for focusing the recovery search — so far without success — on a remote section of the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing was lost March 8 with 239 people aboard after departing Malaysian airspace. Based on analysis of Inmarsat data, aviation experts concluded the plane had circled back over Malaysia and then tracked to the south over ocean.
The plane carried 227 passengers and a crew of 12. Families of the passengers, two-thirds of them Chinese, have demanded that the data be made public.
Some family members of missing passengers have been demanding Malaysia release the data so that independent experts can verify it.
Last week, Inmarsat and Malaysian authorities said they were trying to make the raw data accessible.
“In line with our commitment towards greater transparency, all parties are working for the release of the data communication logs and the technical description of the analysis for public consumption,” Inmarsat and the Malaysian aviation officials said in a joint statement.
