Days Passed Before Officials Acted on Malaysia Airlines Satellite Data

At the Wall Street Journal, "Critical Data Was Delayed in Search for Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight: Investigators Are Still Working to Recover From the Delay":

Four days went by before officials acted on satellite data showing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 flew for several hours away from the area being covered by a massive international search, people familiar with the matter said—a delay from which investigators are still working to recover.

The satellite's operator, Britain's Inmarsat PLC, on March 11 turned over to a partner company its data analysis and other documents indicating that the plane wasn't anywhere near the areas on either side of Malaysia where more countries and ships had been searching for three days since the plane disappeared. The documents included a map showing two divergent north and south corridors for the plane's route stretching some 3,000 miles from the plane's last previously known location, the people said.

The information was relayed to Malaysian officials by Wednesday, March 12, the people said. Inmarsat also shared the same information with British security and air-safety officials on Wednesday, according to two of the people, who were briefed on the investigation.

Two additional people familiar with the Malaysian side of the probe said the information could have arrived in Kuala Lumpur as late as the morning of March 13.

Malaysia's government, concerned about corroborating the data and dealing with internal disagreements about how much information to release, didn't publicly acknowledge Inmarsat's information until March 15, during a news conference with Prime Minister Najib Razak. Malaysia began to redirect the search effort that day to focus on the areas the information described, and said for the first time that deliberate actions were involved in the plane's disappearance.

The disclosures about how the information made its way into the investigation underline how international efforts to find the plane have been repeatedly marred by distrust among the countries involved, confusion in many of Malaysia's public statements, and criticism from many countries that has led some to suspend or change their search efforts in frustration.

The lost days and wasted resources have threatened to impede the investigation, according to some officials involved with the probe.

The delay also means that 12 days after Flight 370 vanished, investigators are still refining search maps, dividing regions to cover and seeking satellite-surveillance records from several countries along the routes the aircraft is now suspected of taking...

Yes, and it's not hard to understand the anger of all the passengers' families.

More at that top link.

RELATED: At the New York Times, "Newly Detected Objects Draw Searchers for Malaysian Plane," and "Plane Debris Would Be Modest Clue Two Weeks After a Crash, Experts Say."