eight minutes after the last ping, that would be unusual and against pattern. what on board the aircraft could cause that ping eight minutes after the last ping? we re not really sure, and i m not sure about the ping. all these things have come up, we have this partial information, bits and pieces of information. let s say it s in that area. again, we re not i don t think it narrows it down a great deal even if it was. maybe something broke, maybe it wasn t a ping, maybe it was an echo. this whole thing from day one has been breakthrough after breakthrough that wasn t a breakthrough. very true. mike, thank you. if the plane did go down in the indian ocean, what kind of clues will investigators be looking for. dr. michael boden was the forensic biologist in charge of the twa 800 capture. supervised diving operations for
news involving the missing malaysian airlines flight. the flight sent a bar shall ping that could help investigators figure out what happened to this plane and potentially where it was when we last had contact with it. trace gallagher reports from our west coast newsroom. trace? we talked about this, how these planes send out these satellite pings to say, i m still here. what the satellite does, it measures those pings, in other words the closer the airplane, the louder the ping, just like a police siren coming toward you. we were told there were six pings from flight 370. and what inmarsat did, they measured those to chart this path, saying the plane flew a similar path for the first few pings. then you can see it got closer to the satellite, it got a little further away and closer again. we thought the final ping was at 8:11. now we re being told there was a partial ping, a slight ping that happened down here at 8:19.
it was very close to the water when they got that final slight ping at 8:19. trace, thank you. for more on this, we want to bring in mike boyd. let me start with that, whether this ping could be helpful in determining the last known location of this aircraft. do you buy that? it could, but again, it s more half information, and it doesn t really move the needle a lot. if it s in that area, i m not really sure what that means. and again, if it was six pings on a flight that long. remember two nights ago, there was breaking news that the airplane at one time was at 12,000 feet. analysts were saying, what a break that was to find out about the aircraft. we find out that probably wasn t true. it doesn t help us find the plane any more than we had before. the ping was going off once every hour. if that s true, and this came
news involving the missing malaysian airlines flight. the flight sent a bar shall ping that could help investigators figure out what happened to this plane and potentially where it was when we last had contact with it. trace gallagher reports from our west coast newsroom. trace? we talked about this, how these planes send out these satellite pings to say, i m still here. what the satellite does, it measures those pings, in other words the closer the airplane, the louder the ping, just like a police siren coming toward you. we were told there were six pings from flight 370. and what inmarsat did, they measured those to chart this path, saying the plane flew a similar path for the first few pings. then you can see it got closer to the satellite, it got a little further away and closer again. we thought the final ping was at 8:11. now we re being told there was a partial ping, a slight ping that happened down here at 8:19.
eight minutes after the last ping, that would be unusual and against pattern. what on board the aircraft could cause that ping eight minutes after the last ping? we re not really sure, and i m not sure about the ping. all these things have come up, we have this partial information, bits and pieces of information. let s say it s in that area. again, we re not i don t think it narrows it down a great deal even if it was. maybe something broke, maybe it wasn t a ping, maybe it was an echo. this whole thing from day one has been breakthrough after breakthrough that wasn t a breakthrough. very true. mike, thank you. if the plane did go down in the indian ocean, what kind of clues will investigators be looking for. dr. michael boden was the forensic biologist in charge of the twa 800 capture. supervised diving operations for