Zee Media Bureau
London: More than hundred days after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines jet, British satellite company INMARSAT has said that the searchers of the missing plane never focussed on what according to them is the crash `hotspot`.
Talking to the BBC`s Horizon TV programme, the satellite company Inmarsat claims that the search mission could not really zero in on the area in the southern Indian Ocean, which has the highest possibility of eing the crash site.
Inmarsat officials added that even though Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield was sent to search for the hotspot, it was distracted midway by the `pings` thought to be coming from the plane`s flight recoders.
After which the search was mainly focussed on the pings as prime lead and it consumed over two months of search with searchers scanning 850 sq km of sea bed. However, it turned out that `pings` were perhaps sonar detections from some other objects and the hunt yielded no results.
Speaking to the BBC Horizon, Inmarsat`s Chris Ashton said that the area around the pings was “by no means an unrealistic location but it was further to the north east than our area of highest probability".
The satellite company Inmarsat has plotted the plane`s possible flight path based on its hourly electronic connections between the jet and one of its spacecraft after the crash.
"We can identify a path that matches exactly with all those frequency measurements and with the timing measurements and lands on the final arc at a particular location, which then gives us a sort of a hotspot area on the final arc where we believe the most likely area is," Mr Ashton told the BBC Horizon.
The search for the plane is now on hold as the ships are carrying out detailed mapping of Indian Ocean floor.
As the search resumes, the Australian authorities are expected to focus on the hotspot claimed by the Inmarsat scientists to be the area of highly probable crash zone.
Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared enroute to beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8, with 239 passengers and crew on board.
Since then 100 days have passed and despite a multi-billion dollar search involving more than 20 nations, no trace has been discovered so far.
