right now. how did they come up with that? the inmarsat pings created a big arc. actually, an entire circle. you have the quadrants of the circle. this is the location on the arc that they had picked. however, it s based on one other factor which involves an awful lot of guesswork. the last known altitude and speed. and that tells them about the power setting and altitude and the range of the aircraft. now, assume for a minute they held whatever that altitude was and we ve heard all kinds of information about that altitude and speed. whatever that was, for seven hours. that s a big assumption. that s what puts them there. what if the speed changed? the aircraft could be there, could be there, could be down there and that is why, when the australians say we are operating on a lot of guesses, that s a big part of the guesswork. it s on a giant arc but how far did it fly?
that turn, whether it is this big arc or other information that malaysian officials have, that doesn t appear to indicate that the plane went through some catastrophic malfunction, that it was, in fact, turned under careful control. someone with a thorough knowledge of the aircraft, excellent at controlling the aircraft, according a someone else. that s why somebody was in there turning it, knowing what they were doing, not responding to an emergency and therefore that s why they call it a criminal act, don. nic robertson, thank you. i want to get to jeffrey thomas now. he is the editor in chief of airlineratings.com. i want to ask you about nic s reporting. but first i want to ask you about a new report in the wall street journal that is saying poor coordination cost three crucial days do. you believe that aspect of the investigation was mishandled?
the only place they cross is right there. well, we don t have that. we only have in fact one satellite here. so we have a circle. we have the one circle and nothing else crossing that circle. so as the satellite found this ping at 8:11 a.m. the day the plane disappeared, this is what we have. this is where the plane right now could be. it s like having one ping, one ring, one satellite on your gps. you re not going to know where you are. the gps in your car won t even work. let s start whittling it down. we whittle it down because this is too far. the plane couldn t get there in time. it wasn t enough speed and likely not enough gas or fuel for the plane to actually get that far. and we also whittled down this. we whittle down this area right here because the government says you know what, we have really great radar coverage right here. we would have seen that. so all of a sudden, we have this arc and we have this arc. big arc. a million square miles, just 100
i i truly thought that whoever was in the gondola must be burned to death because it was a tremendous flash. another big arc, enormous arc, and it burned through the basket and balloon and that s when it separated. the balloon itself is cast off to sputter through the air. as for the gondola, it is hard to imagine anyone on board it could survive. they have endured a series of potentially lethal high voltage shocks and a 30-foot drop. it s like slow motion. that basket, can you just see it going down. and it hits the ground. you think, oh, boy, if they live through that, they re going to be in really bad shape.
lines. all of a sudden, there s this flash, i mean, flash, and it took all of our breaths way. the balloon could burn. it could catch on fire. the tanks could explode and kill people. with circuit breakers cutting the power from the line temporarily i m thinking, my god. what are they going to do. i can t see how they re going to get down from there without something happening. the balloon is suspended in a deadly tangle of high tension wires. then suddenly, the power surges on again. oh, jesus. oh, jesus. there was a bigger flash and i i truly thought that whoever was in the gondola must be burned to death because it was a tremendous flash. another big arc, enormous