Last primary radar contact

At 18:22:12 UTC primary radar lost MH370 in the vicinity of waypoint MEKAR / the Andaman Sea, west-northwest of Malaysia. From this moment the only technical trace is the Inmarsat Classic Aero terminal on 9M-MRO talking to the Indian Ocean Region I-3 satellite via the Perth ground earth station. No further radar, ACARS position, or voice report exists. Search planning after 15 March 2014 is almost entirely a problem of interpreting those satellite metadata — burst timing offset (range) and burst frequency offset (Doppler).