Originally Posted by
ollopa
I still don't quite understand how they arrive at the two arcs. Intelsat IOR at 64E I understand, but what tells them it's that narrow band, and not a band through (for example) Pakistan and the Maldives, which are also not overlapped by another sat? Can someone take the trouble to explain in layperson terms?
The reality is that likely the band is not so narrow. Calculating distance from >30000km requires very accurate timing. If they are off by a millisecond, they they could be off by hundreds of kilometres. So the reality is the potential arc of last known locations could be much wider, but these are what they determined to be most likely given the last known position of the aircraft.