Malaysian Prime Minister Says That Flight 370 Is Gone; Airline Weirdly Informs Families with a Text

Damn.

The story of Flight 370 reached its probably-inevitable conclusion today when Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced “conclusive satellite data” that indicates the plane crashed in the Southern Indian Ocean. 239 people were on board.

“Malaysia Airlines have already spoken to the families of the passengers and crew to inform them of this development. For them, the past few weeks have been heartbreaking,” Najak said. “I know this news must be harder stilI urge the media to respect their privacy, and to allow them the space they need at this difficult time.”

The Airlines informed the families via text. It hasn’t exactly inspired confidence at any point in this story.

Anyone who has flipped by CNN in the past three weeks knows that the Boeing 777 essentially disappeared once it reached an altitude of 35,000 feet on March 8. With no communication from the pilots (including an SOS call), or any idea where the plane might have turned toward, Malaysian Airlines was forced to rely on state-of-art analysis from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which concluded that the plane took a trajectory toward the Southern Indian Ocean, far away from any land mass. 

Via Razak’s press conference:

“This evening I was briefed by representatives from the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB). They informed me that Inmarsat, the UK company that provided the satellite data which indicated the northern and southern corridors, has been performing further calculations on the data. Using a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort, they have been able to shed more light on MH370’s flight path.

“Based on their new analysis, Inmarsat and the AAIB have concluded that MH370 flew along the southern corridor, and that its last position was in the middle of the Indian Ocean, west of Perth.

“This is a remote location, far from any possible landing sites. It is therefore with deep sadness and regret that I must inform you that, according to this new data, flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

Keep in mind investigators still haven’t found any conclusive wreckage, and they are yet to rule out the possibility that plane was taken down by sabotage or terrorism. So this flight will probably remain a strange, strange mystery.