mh370
A policeman takes a nap beside a board written with messages for passengers onboard the missing Flight MH370 in Beijing. Reuters

Malaysian authorities said Tuesday that they will publicly release the raw satellite data used to narrow down the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared with 239 people on board more than two months ago.

Malaysia's Department of Civil Aviation, or DCA, and Inmarsat, the British company whose satellite last communicated with the missing plane, said in a joint statement that the decision to make the data public was "in line with our commitment to greater transparency" while family members of the jet's passengers demanded access to the data for independent analysis.

"All parties are working for the release of the data communication logs and the technical description of the analysis for public consumption," Inmarsat and the DCA said, in a joint statement.

Malaysia's Acting Minister of Transportation Hishammuddin Hussein, on Monday, said Inmarsat had been asked to release the data for "prioritizing the interests of the family members of those on board MH370."

According to CNN, Malaysian officials had said last week that they did not have the raw data while Inmarsat officials reportedly said that all the data were provided to Malaysian officials “at an early stage in the search.”

Data from Inmarsat suggested that the missing jetliner ended up in the southern Indian Ocean, after it went missing on March 8 shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur, leading the search to a region about a thousand miles off the coast of Western Australia. However, no wreckage has been found so far and an underwater hunt continues, while authorities investigate the disappearance of the plane, which is suspected to have been deliberately steered off course.

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