As the days pass, the likelihood of ever finding Malaysia Airlines Flight 370‘s black boxes grow dimmer. Searchers initially began looking for the jet in the Gulf of Thailand, the location of the Boeing 777’s last reported position. They then fanned out to the west, believing that the jetliner may have veered off course with its transponders switched off. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that the airplane’s onboard satcom appears to have continued broadcasting for four hours after the airliner dropped off radar.
If that’s true, a deepening, perhaps unsolvable mystery is unfolding. Flight 370 could be almost anywhere within 2,000 nautical miles of its last known location. If it crashed in the ocean hundreds or even thousands of miles from where searchers are looking, we might never know what really happened.
