acars. richard quest is an anchor and aviation correspondent for cnn. think of acars as a giant smartphone that will send out huge amounts of information via satellite or by radio transmission. then at 1:19 a.m., a standard handoff with air traffic control as the plane leaves malaysian airspace and enters vietnamese airspace. the controller here in malaysia tells him to speak to ho chi minh. and he says good night, malaysian 370, something i would do. there was no indication that anything had gone wrong. david soucie is a former safety inspector for the faa. so for the first 40 minutes of this flight, up to that point everything has been routine.
the world s attention turns to the malaysian government and airline officials. to many critics, they don t seem to know what they re talking about. there was a deer in the headlights component to those early news conferences. you could almost see them struggling through it, not knowing what they were doing. we cannot indulge in speculation. not understanding how to begin the investigation. there are currently 43 ships and 40 aircraft searching for it. an unprecedented investigation that would baffle the greatest minds in the aviation world and the accident investigation world. they put out information without really corroborating it, and much of it turned out to be false. i would like to refer to news reports suggesting that the aircraft may have continued flying for some time after last contact. as malaysian airlines will confirm shortly, those reports are inaccurate. so they ended up, you know, on both sides of a bad situation with too little information.
even days after the plane disappeared, families believe they aren t being told the truth. this chinese woman demanded answers just before another press conference in kuala lumpur. she didn t get any. after ten days to two weeks, you know, there was a public perception that was set in stone that the malaysians were not able to handle this situation and that they were having trouble. as far as the images are concerned, i don t think we can actually verify when they were taken. i will check with the australian sorry, but this is very important. i know it is very important. family members were left asking what on earth was happening. one wonders whose interests are being served or protected by this long wait and something
there was just no indication that there was anything going on in his life other than he had made it. fariq had made it and was on an impressive career trajectory. at 5,000 hours on a 737 you go from a small plane to a big plane, and this was his promotion. cnn aviation correspondent richard quest gained permission to fly on malaysia airlines in february 2014. in an eerie coincidence it was one of fariq s last training flights on the boeing 777. there is absolutely no question that he was a qualified, competent pilot. the captain said he was one of the best they had. he landed the aircraft perfectly. you know how to impress people. one of fariq s next flights would be his last, malaysia 370.
inmarsat, a british company, reports that flight 370 had exchanged digital signals, known as handshakes, with their satellites. that was a watershed moment. and that changed everything. it changed everything because everyone had thought flight 370 had gone completely dark. but the discovery of the digital handshakes was proof the plane was in the air for several hours longer than anyone thought. suddenly they have evidence that it flew west and south and continued to fly for some 6 1/2 hours. using complicated calculations, inmarsat could roughly determine where the plane was going. this is evidence that is kind of getting close to black magic. i mean it s a feat of mathematics and ingenuity and reverse engineering. but we just don t know how accurate it is. but it is also the only hard evidence available to investigators and malaysia s prime minister at the time, najib razak. i asked them again and again,