Finding MH370 last location is not rocket science

“Planes don’t disappear, leaving heavy debris on the opposite side of the world.”

According to an interview with Inmarsat published on The Telegraph, the MH370 current search zone is the result of complex calculations involving analysis of Doppler effect. Chris McLaughlin, senior VP of external affairs at Inmarsat, said it was something never done before.

But there seems to be a much easier way.

This guy found a way to receive Inmarsat Classic Aero signals (the same used on MH370) in realtime and released instructions on how to do that. Surprisingly he discovered that the received signals actually contains positions from the planes.

How he did that? He found Inmarsat C-Band protocol was thought, and transformed (decode, demodulate) them in something readable (initial state).

The received data proves that the Inmarsat Classic Aero is a system that can actually track plane positions and has a much greater (seems complete) coverage during plane travels.

Note that ADS-B (the protocol used by FlightRadar24) is much more limited, with a lot of coverage holes.

No need for complex Doppler effect analysis on pings. The pings actually contain the coordinates (and many other data).