( CNN ) -- The Andaman Islands are at the center of one of the newest theories in the increasingly tangled search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 . Analysis of radar data revealed Friday by Reuters suggests the plane was flying toward the Indian Ocean archipelago . Reuters cited unidentified sources familiar with the investigation . Aviation experts and locals are debating whether it would even be possible for a giant 777 to land -- or even approach -- the islands undetected . An Indian military search operation is being launched from Port Blair , the administrative center for the islands . Here are five things to know about the islands now enveloped in the missing plane mystery : . They 're remote and mostly uninhabited . The Andaman Islands are part of India 's Andaman and Nicobar Islands territory . There are 572 islands in the territory , only three dozen of which are inhabited . The territory has a population of nearly 380,000 , according to India 's 2011 census . The Andaman group is about 850 miles ( 1,370 kilometers ) east of the Indian subcontinent in the Indian Ocean . Most of the population descends from immigrants from South Asia . India has designated five indigenous tribal groups in the territory as `` particularly vulnerable '' due to the loss of sustaining resources and customs . The airport 's runway is long enough for a 777 . The main airport , Veer Savarkar International Airport in Port Blair , is on the east coast of South Andaman Island , one of the three largest islands . Airport officials hope to have night landing equipment this year , but only daytime flights are permitted now . The airport is an Indian navy facility with a civil enclave administered by the Airports Authority of India . Indian authorities own the only four airstrips in the region , according to Denis Giles , editor of the Andaman Chronicle newspaper . The Port Blair airport 's runway could accommodate a Boeing 777 . The runway is 10,794 feet in length ( 3,290 meters ) , a couple of thousand feet longer than Boeing 's requirements for landing a fully loaded 777 in poor weather . It 's hard to imagine the Boeing 777 landing at any of the remote island chain 's mostly military airstrips without anyone noticing . The islands are in a strategically important area for India . It 's a highly militarized zone with surveillance capacities covering a large part of the Indian Ocean , which would make it nearly impossible for an unidentified aircraft to enter the zone undetected . `` There is no chance , no such chance , that any aircraft of this size can come toward Andaman and Nicobar Islands and land , '' Giles said . The 2004 tsunami hit the islands hard . Thousands of India 's nearly 11,000 deaths in the December 26 , 2004 , tsunami were on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands . The tsumani , which was triggered by an undersea earthquake off Indonesia 's Sumatra , killed more than 283,000 people across a dozen countries . It 's a former penal colony . The Andaman Islands were a British penal colony for a short time in the 1790s and then again from 1858 when a new prisoner settlement at Port Blair was established . The penal colony in the Andamans was abolished after the British recaptured the islands from Japanese occupation during World War II . India took over administration of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1947 when it gained independence . Marco Polo a visitor , scene of Sherlock Holmes mystery . Marco Polo is thought to have visited the islands in the 13th century , calling one island `` Angamanain . '' The Andaman Islands also star in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 's Sherlock Holmes novel `` The Sign of the Four . ''
Only three dozen of the Andaman and Nicobar islands are inhabited . The airport runway in Port Blair is long enough for a 777 . Landing a large aircraft in the highly militarized area without detection unlikely , experts say .