Satellite Firm Says Its Data From Jet Could Offer Location

SEPANG, Malaysia - As the hunt for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet expanded into the daunting vastness of the Indian Ocean, a satellite communications company confirmed on Friday that it had recorded electronic 'keep alive' ping signals from the plane after it disappeared, and said those signals could be analyzed to help estimate its location.

The information from the company, Inmarsat, could prove to be the first big break in helping narrow the frustrating search for the plane with 239 people aboard that mysteriously disappeared from radar screens a week ago, now hunted by a multinational array of ships and planes that have fanned out for thousands of square miles.

Inmarsat, a Britain-based satellite communications provider of systems to ships and airplanes, had equipment aboard the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jetliner, said David Coiley, the vice president of the company in charge of the aviation business. The equipment automatically communicates with satellites, much as a mobile phone would automatically connect to a network after passing through a mountain tunnel, he said.

'It does allow us to determine where the airplane is relative to the satellite,' he said of the signal, which he likened to the 'noises you might hear when you when you put your cell phone next to a radio or a television speaker.' He said: 'It does allow us to narrow down the position of the aircraft.'

Because the pings go over a measurable distance at a specific angle to one of the company's satellites, the information can be used to help mathematically calculate the trajectory and location of an aircraft, he said.

'Communications systems are part of the mandatory requirement for operating any flight and we are comfortable that it would have been operating accordingly,' said Mr. Coiley. He said Inmarsat was sharing information with the airline and investigators, but would not comment further on that information.

Primary radar

Sends out radio signals and listens for echoes that bounce back from objects in the sky.

Secondary radar

Sends signals that request information from the plane's transponder. The plane sends back information including its identification and altitude. The radar repeatedly sweeps the sky and interrogates the transponder. Other planes in flight can also receive the transponder signals.

The Inmarsat disclosure came amid other signs that the aircraft may have turned sharply west from its intended northward route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing and traveled far from the initial focus of the search.

The jet disappeared from the flight control radar an hour into its night-time flight, leading the Malaysian government and others during the first 72 hours of the search and rescue operation to concentrate ships and aircraft in the Gulf of Thailand and nearby waters to the east of Malaysia.

Increasingly, however, the search has encompassed seas to the west of Peninsular Malaysia, stretching from the Strait of Malacca to the Bay of Bengal, where the United States and India sent military planes and ships. The move came in tandem with an increasing amount of evidence that the aircraft flew for as long as four hours after it disappeared from air traffic control radar after 1 a.m. last Saturday.

Military radar detection Military radar detected blips 200 miles northwest of Penang that might have been from the missing aircraft. The last signal came at 2:15 a.m. Saturday, at 29,500 feet.

Known path The plane stopped communicating with controllers at around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, at 35,000 feet.

Even with the help of the Inmarsat data, the new focus on the open ocean shows illustrates the difficulty for the multinational search force, which now must scan thousands of miles of the world's third-largest ocean. The initial search area was in the relatively confined and shallow waters of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand, which are among the world's busiest maritime routes. If the plane ended up in the ocean depths, it will be far more difficult to find and recover.

At a news conference, the Malaysian defense minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, who has been the chief public face of his government's search effort, said that searching seas both to the east and west of his country was a logical next step after days of fruitless searching and false starts. But he also acknowledged that seven days after it vanished, an aircraft with 239 passengers and crew onboard remains unaccounted for, leaving family members in tormented wait.

'A normal investigation becomes narrower with time, I understand, as new information focuses on the search,' said Mr. Hussein, who is also acting transport minister. 'But this is not a normal investigation.'

He said the multinational search had expanded on both sides of Malaysia, into the South China Sea, and increasingly into the Indian Ocean. 'It is basically because we have not found anything in the areas that we have searched,' he said.

But aviation experts, news reports and some American officials have also pointed to military radar and signals collected by satellites as furnishing stronger evidence that the Boeing 777 plane turned sharply from its planned course, flew over the Malaysian peninsula and then headed west toward the Andaman Sea and the vast reaches of the Indian Ocean.

A report from Reuters news agency on Friday said that information culled from military radar records indicated that the plane may have been deliberately flown far of its intended route, from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, and when last recorded was heading toward the Andaman Islands, which belong to India.

If the aircraft did divert so drastically from its planned route, then any clues left by electronic signals captured by satellite and radar will become far more important.

It was not clear if the calculations were underway or had been completed, but ships were headed toward the Indian Ocean.

The multinational effort scattered across the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean. Indian military forces continued their efforts Friday to find traces of the airplane in the Andaman Sea, which lies to the west of Thailand, and expanded the search to the area west of Nicobar Island in the Bay of Bengal. The search in the Indian Ocean includes ships, planes and nearly 1,000 personnel from India's navy, coast guard and air force.

A spokesman for the Indian navy refused Friday to offer an estimate of how long the search might take. 'How can you ask such a question?' said the spokesman, Capt. D.K. Sharma. 'This is like looking for a needle in that vast expanse of sea.'

Adding to the growing emphasis, the Chinese government announced that the Haixun 31, a civilian patrol ship that has been the command vessel for China's contingent in the search, would move from the Gulf of Thailand to the Strait of Malacca, on the other side peninsula. A report on Chinese state television news said a group of experts had advised the Chinese Maritime Search and Rescue Center to 'expand the scope of the search.'

On Friday the United States Navy continued its maritime aircraft patrols, focusing on the area to the west of Malaysia, said Cmdr. William Marks, spokesman for the Seventh Fleet. The Navy's new P-8A Poseidon patrol craft arrived on Friday, he said. The aircraft, built with the airframe of a Boeing 737, has a range of more than 1,300 miles and can search vast swathes of ocean. India on Thursday said it was also deploying its own variant of the aircraft, the P-8i, as well as the C-130J Hercules and other aircraft.

The difficulty, Commander Marks said in an interview, was that given the vastness of the Indian Ocean, the area is best patrolled by aircraft, but sacrificed is the more thorough intense searches by surface ships and helicopters in more confined areas.

'Everything is a trade off. I think the challenge is the sheer size of the area,' Commander Marks said.