The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is getting stranger.  There are now indications that it ‘may have’ flew for several hours after its transponders stopped transmitting flight data early in the morning last Saturday, and the US Navy is taking a more proactive role.

If this is true, it means the search area has gone from a chessboard to a football pitch.  With the amount of fuel the jet was carrying, enough to get to Beijing, it conceivably could have wound up anywhere from the Outback in Australia’s far northwest, to the Pacific Ocean, to China’s sparsely populated deserts, or far west of Malaysia in the Indian Ocean.

The key is the Boeing 777-200ER’s Rolls Royce engines, which send out their own flight data information to the factory independent of the transponder or radio.  According to CNN, “pings” of engine data were sent hours after the last transponder signal.  The system is called ACARS – for Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System – which sends different sorts of information between the plane and airlines and manufacturers on the ground.  

Malaysia has given mixed messages when it came to earlier reports about this system, but the US feels more confident.  The USS Kidd and the USS Pinkney were already helping with the search, but the former has been dispatched to the Indian Ocean to commence looking. https://xannonce.ch