We Asked For The MH370 Data. Nine Months Later: One Sentence, No.
The satellite operator holds the original burst-frequency records for MH370. Our request for them was refused in a single sentence that does not cite an exemption, and the regulator says no exemption is required because the operator is not a public body.
LONDON, United Kingdom — The reconstruction this newspaper published on 3 September rests on a correction chain we had to infer. The originals exist. We asked for them in December and were told no in September.
The reply runs to one sentence: the records are commercially confidential and will not be released. It cites no statutory exemption, because none applies. A satellite operator is a private company and freedom-of-information law does not reach it.
Hyacinth Obuya-Ferrers, an information-rights solicitor, told us the position is settled and unsatisfying in equal measure.
"There is no route," she said. "Not a difficult route. No route. The data that underpins the most-searched-for aircraft in history sits with a company that is under no obligation to show it to anybody, and it has no obligation because nobody wrote one."
The accident investigation received the records under a confidentiality undertaking. That undertaking survives the investigation's closure.
We have asked the operator whether it would release the records to an independent engineer under a similar undertaking, which would cost it nothing and settle a twelve-year argument. That letter, sent in June, has not been answered.
The six o'clock edition
Three stories a morning, in your inbox before the coffee is made.
Sources & Method
Who we spoke to
- Aurelie Fenn-Massard, Former satellite communications engineer. Interviewed by video call 2026
- Hyacinth Obuya-Ferrers, Information-rights solicitor. Interviewed twice by telephone 2026
Documents
- PX-2203 — Refusal of a request for the original burst-frequency records held
How was this story?
We publish the result, whatever it is. Reader verdicts appear on the front page and in our newsroom metrics.
Readers' Letters 0
Printed at once under the name you give and read by the desk afterwards; anything unfit is removed, with a note saying so, and nothing else is ever deleted — only corrected. Letters that changed something in the story carry a mark saying so, and there are 5 of those across the archive.