Inmarsat, the British satellite operator that was pivotal to tracking down the final location of flight MH370, will now offer a free tracking service for all passenger airplanes. This free service will carry the aircraft’s exact location (via GPS), along with its heading, speed, and altitude (from the plane’s on-board sensors). This should go a long way towards preventing future planes from going missing — though, sadly, when it comes to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, there’s still sadly nothing to report after two months and hundreds of millions of dollars of search and rescue efforts.
Yesterday morning, the Malaysian prime minister confirmed that Malaysia Airlines flight 370 crashed in the south Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people on board. How did Inmarsat narrow down MH370’s location from two very broad swaths across central Asia and the Indian Ocean, and furthermore, if we know where the plane crashed into the ocean, why haven’t we found it yet?