This image
(and variants of it) have appeared on a number of WWW sites. I got mine from CNN.
My understanding of it is that it's based on timing or signal power information extracted from the hourly ACARS ping that the aircraft sent after the main radar transponder was turned off. [I was wrong - it's just the last ping.]
If find it odd that the aircraft would have flown on a circular path with the geostationary satellite at the center. I think the circular nature of the paths is more probably due to some artifact in the data collected.[The data is just for the last ping.] Maybe the resolution of the timing information or signal power is quite low. If that's the case then the possible flight path is much wider than the lines indicate.
Unless, the flight path of the aircraft is assumed to be perpendicular to the lines in which case the aircraft must have travelled west over the indian ocean and then turned north or south. I'm not sure it had enough fuel to do that.
Update 1 : This is more like it.
Update 2 : It seems the earlier pings were closer to the satellite got further away with time. This is consistent will the aircraft flying south (or north) from the last radar contact point towards the further end(s) of the plots above.
(and variants of it) have appeared on a number of WWW sites. I got mine from CNN.
My understanding of it is that it's based on timing or signal power information extracted from the hourly ACARS ping that the aircraft sent after the main radar transponder was turned off. [I was wrong - it's just the last ping.]
If find it odd that the aircraft would have flown on a circular path with the geostationary satellite at the center. I think the circular nature of the paths is more probably due to some artifact in the data collected.[The data is just for the last ping.] Maybe the resolution of the timing information or signal power is quite low. If that's the case then the possible flight path is much wider than the lines indicate.
Unless, the flight path of the aircraft is assumed to be perpendicular to the lines in which case the aircraft must have travelled west over the indian ocean and then turned north or south. I'm not sure it had enough fuel to do that.
Update 1 : This is more like it.
Update 2 : It seems the earlier pings were closer to the satellite got further away with time. This is consistent will the aircraft flying south (or north) from the last radar contact point towards the further end(s) of the plots above.
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