Makes a person wonder that the jet successfully performed a water landing mostly intact and then sank in depths around 16,000 feet down.
Maybe in the nest 24 hours they may pinpoint by triangulation where its at.
Range is what 3 miles? What about when pinger is nearly three miles down, you would have to be almost directly on top of it.
And now IF its for real and the plane IS NOT in Pakistan and its down on the ocean floor then they have a chance to find out if a terrorist used a bio bomb or nerve gas.
No distress calls were received. It seems highly unlikely that human beings were managing its contact with the sea. That of course, assumes Inmarsat's analysis is correct and it really did head for the Roaring Forties and not the 'stans.
On the other hand, if it flew to Waziristan and landed at Taliban International, wherever that is (hopefully the NRO knows), then why haven't we heard any ransom demands?
My theory is, it was hijacked, probably by one or both of the pilots. At some point not far in, somebody else realized what was going on and tried to intervene. There was a struggle which somehow resulted in depressurization, incapacitating good and bad guys alike. The plane was headed south at the time. And the autopilot flew it until it ran out of fuel. It replied to Inmarsat's pings until it didn't (the bad guys having forgotten to pull that particular breaker).
Maybe in the nest 24 hours they may pinpoint by triangulation where its at.
Range is what 3 miles? What about when pinger is nearly three miles down, you would have to be almost directly on top of it.
Its spec sheet doesn't actually quote a range.
What's for sure, however, is unless those black boxes are found, what really happened is going to remain a mystery.