Here’s a picture of how I’m seeing those arcs:
They are saying that the plane has to be along the two blue arcs. But, in reality, it could be anywhere between the min and max ping distance arcs to the left of the two blue arcs.
Regardless, that area is huge.
I have been given to understand that it is labeled, “Never Press This Switch”.
This runs counter to what has been reported.
The arcs are centered on the satellite. They’re calculating distance based on the time it takes for the satellite to send a signal to the plane and receive a reply.
If the delay was the only info they had, the possible locations would form a full circle on the earth’s surface centered on the satellite. However, there’s apparently some asymmetry to the satellite’ antenna. It picks up signals better at some angles and worse at others. By looking at the strength of the signal they can eliminate some parts of the circle. Probably the signal was too weak to have come from the middle gap, and too strong to have come from the rest of the circle. So it had to come either from the northern arc or the southern arc. Those are the only locations where both the signal strength and signal delay match.
Of course, although I believe the 777 dates from the 1990s. The point I’m making is there are countless perfectly legitimate reasons someone with an iPhone wouldn’t want its location being tracked - but I think most people were, until about 10 days ago, under the assumption that civilian aircraft transponders were always on because it seems like rather a good idea to always know where a multi-million dollar jetliner with hundreds of people on it is.
And a big thanks to Richard Pearse for the insights from the cockpit, so to speak. They’re greatly appreciated. 
Ok, we can rule that out.
Apologies if this has been answered, but Alex Jones’ screed specifically mentions that if the jet crashed, the black Box would be sending homing signals. In the absence of such signals, we are to assume the jet has not crashed. Accurate?
Planes have an ELT - Emergency Locator Transmitter. It gets activated during the impact of a crash.
The ELT has limited range. So the absence of the signal means:
The plane has crashed far from where there is commercial traffic and far fro where the search is being conducted.
The plane has crashed, and sank - the ELT cant transmit through 1000’ of water
or
The plane didn’t crash.
@brewha. Merci.
Well the Flight Data Recorder has its own locator beacon, that is a fact. I don’t know if we can assume it has not crashed.
Again: it’s Alex Jones.
Flight data recorders also contain beacons that start sending signals when they are exposed to water. Nobody has detected this thing, but that doesn’t mean the plane didn’t crash. We know they’ve struggled to figure out where to look, and it could have been damaged and maybe it could even be too deep underwater. This is a classic absence of evidence vs. evidence of absence thing.
Could you do it in such a way that you were close enough that you appeared as a single plane to outsiders, yet far enough that the other plane didn’t notice you?
Indeed, but they don’t have infinite range; as you noted, you have to be within a reasonable distance in order to pick up the signal with a hydrophone. The fact that the signal has not been detected is not proof that the plane hasn’t crashed. To cite an example, the beacon signal from AF447’s data recorders was never detected by searchers, despite the plane having most definitely crashed; the recorders were found two years later by exhaustively searching in areas where it was most likely to be + most likely to be recoverable. That search area was made feasibly small by knowing where the aircraft was shortly before it crashed, which is still an unknown detail in MA370’s case.
Do they? I know the old 121.5 ones had a very limited range, but the modern 406 MHz EPIRBs are meant to be detected by satellites.
In my small plane I have a handheld TCAS that’s not integrated with the transponder. It’s not as dependable as one that is integrated since it depends on some other source to query the transponders on the other planes and have them show up on the TCAS. The integrated ones are more dependable because can generate their own queries.
That’s cool. One can triangulate the location.
Latest reports reveal that the transponder stopped working after the last radio communication from the cockpit, and the ACARS system shut down sometime in a 30 minute window around the time the transponder shut down. So it’s entirely possible that the transponder and the ACARS system stopping working at exactly the same time several minutes after the last radio contact.
I don’t think this was deliberate. I think there was some catastrophe (a cockpit fire?) two minutes after the last radio contact that knocked out the transponder and the ACARS system and incapacitated the pilots. The plane flew itself until the fuel ran out and it crashed into the ocean. The fly-by-wire system on the 777 would keep the plane stable even without the autopilot on, but the plane would make random turns and altitude changes as it encountered different air currents.
A cockpit fire that did not spread and apparently had no effect on critical structure or electronics other than turning off the transponder and still incapacitated the passangers so quickly that no one could text so much as a ‘help?’
Ok with everyone asking about phones on a plane, I have to ask you this: have YOU ever used a phone during the main part of a flight? Not takeoff or landing.
The plane was over water and near the limit of radar coverage. That’s most certainly beyond the reach of any cell phone tower.
Yes, on every single flight I have been on in the last year or two I’ve witnessed someone either talking on the phone, apparently having a 2-way conversation, or else texting or webbing away. Sometimes they’re not even in a window seat. I suppose they could all be talking to no one or webbing in their cache…but then I also left my iPhone on on accident once, and had it ring with 3 bars of signal at 30,000+ feet. Clearly in some cases it can be done.