Satellite operator Inmarsat said Monday it managed to work out which direction the missing Malaysia Airlines plane flew in by measuring the Doppler effect of hourly ‘pings’ from the aircraft. Analysis of flight MH370’s path placed its last position off Australia’s west coast, meaning it must have ran out of fuel above the southern Indian Ocean. Despite the plane’s communication systems being switched off, satellite pings were still bouncing back from the aircraft. The pings are sent from a ground station to a satellite, then onto the plane, which automatically sends a ping back to the satellite and down to the ground station. The pings do not include global positioning system data, time or distance information. So the British satellite operator measured the amount of time it took for the pings to return. An Inmarsat official commented all commercial aircraft should be fitted with existing technology that would mean a plane cannot go missing.
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