MH370 raw data released

The Malaysian Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) released 45 pages of communication logs on Tuesday recorded by the British satellite operator Inmarsat. The data indicate the last satellite traces of flight MH 370. Family members of the 239 passengers and crew on board have been demanding the information's release for weeks, although experts cautioned that it would be unlikely to contribute to new findings.

"It's a whole lot of stuff that is not very important to know," said Michael Exner, a satellite engineer who has been researching the calculations. "There are probably two or three pages of important stuff, the rest is just noise. It doesn't add any value to our understanding."

The transmissions between satellite and aircraft were not intended to be used for tracking, but nevertheless managed to provide a rough estimate that the plane ended up somewhere in the Indian Ocean.

"Basically it shows the timings of the handshakes of the plane with the satellite over the Indian Ocean," said Greg Waldron, managing editor for the Singapore-based aviation publication group Flightglobal. "The fact that they are using this type of data shows how desperate the search for the plane is."

For family members of passengers and crew, there is hope that any new data could lead to possible alternatives in searching for the missing aircraft. "Finally, after almost three months, the Inmarsat raw data is released to the public. Hope this is the original raw data and can be used to potentially 'think out of the box' to get an alternative positive outcome," a group representing some of the families wrote on its Facebook page.

Other family members were more skeptical: "I am not convinced at all by the data," said Malaysian Selamat Umar whose son was on MH370. "why are they releasing it now? Before, when we asked for it, they did not want to release it. What can we do with it now?"

The massive sea and air search based on the Inmarsat data will be stopped on Wednesday for several months while a strategy using new powerful sonar equipment is prepared. The search was more reliant on the Inmarsat data than normal because MH370's other communication and navigations systems were disabled.

The next search area will cover 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles) and include a complicated topographical analysis of the seafloor.

Malaysian Airlines flight 370 went missing on March 8 en route from Kuala Lampur to Beijing. No trace of the aircraft has been found.

wr/msh (AFP, dpa, AP)