With wifi on most flights now, texting and emailing is much more common. I haven’t seen anyone talking, and I fly several times per month. Perhaps some kind of skype thing?
Facetime on iphone works with wifi. Never tried it on a plane, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. A quick google search seems to indicate it works.
That doesn’t explain the 180 degree reversal of the flight path and then turning to fly along another commercial flight corridor out to the Indian Ocean, hitting all the waypoints at least until it was out of radar range. There are too many deliberate textbook maneouvres to account for fly-by-wire autopilot flight.
It also doesn’t explain switching off the data transponders, which apparantly requires a couple of very deliberate steps.
At this point, there are really only 2 possible scenarioes that fit the facts:
(A) The pilot & copilot were quickly overtaken (too fast to send any calls for help) and the plane was hijacked.
(B) Either the pilot or copilot were part of the plot, and took care of the other one (which really could be as simple as locking him out of the cockpit).
Facetime/Skype/iMessage do not require contact with a cellular network to function. They can go over an Internet connection if your phone’s WiFi is connected to an existing WiFi network (which many flights now offer.)
While flying in range of a cell tower you can definitely intermittently get reception and do regular cell phone functions. However based on my knowledge of how cell phone reception works, you cannot in fact make a cell phone call if there is no cell tower in range at all. Anywhere in the continental United States this is highly unlikely to happen, in the most rural parts of the country you may only have one tower nearby instead of the multiple overlapping towers that is typical of more densely populate areas. But if you’re miles out to sea and the land mass nearest to you is an unpopulated island with no cell tower on it I would be quite amazed at how a cell phone could work. They require cell towers in range, they aren’t like ham radios.
In the developing world amongst those with means satellite phones are not uncommon though, precisely because of the limited cell coverage in many parts of the world.
Yep, that’s what I’d say, too. I lean towards B for the reason that no terrorist organization has claimed credit for it, and the plane was probably not over Asia at the time of the last ping between the plane and satellite. If it was, it almost certainly would have been detected. The plane must have been somewhere on the southern arc over the Indian Ocean.
With a cockpit door that since 9/11 was made more secure and to be open only from the inside. With that suicide from a few months ago in Africa I’m beginning to wonder if that door security system should be reviewed again, it seems that under some circumstances it is helping the bad guys.
I’m not quite following your logic here. Why does the fact that no terrorist organization has claimed credit for it make you think that the pilot or co-pilot is responsible?
While I know of no particular significance to give to this piece of information I heard on the radio this morning that the pilot’s wife had moved out of the house the day before the plane disappeared.
Yes, it does work on a suitably equipped plane. But if whoever is responsible for this knew how to deactivate ACARS and the transponder, I think it’s likely they’d also know how to switch off the onboard wifi.
At 1:30 in the morning, would anyone in the cabin know that the plane is off course.
Obviously in early morning and late afternoon, a person with any sense of direction will know what general direction a plane is headed.
But at 1:30 am? I don’t think I would know if a plane is headed West instead of North like it should have been. And if no one in the cabin knows that anything is wrong, they would not text about it.
Most flights? It’s only been on maybe 1/4 of mine in the last 6 months. And several times there it wasn’t working anyways. Plus I wasn’t on WiFi when my phone rang.
And the point was it can be done; I make NO guess as to whether it could be done on that particular flight in that part of the world on those particular mobile bands.
The transponder protocol has a finite amount of bandwidth. If every transponder were active at all times, there would be a much higher rate of interference between transponders (which causes ATC to receive bad data) - see Secondary surveillance radar - Wikipedia for details.
Pretty sure those frequencies will be blocked by any non-trivial depth of water. The ultrasonic beacons on the data recorders are specifically designed to work through water, but sonar sensing requires a transducer in the water relatively close to the source - definitely can’t be done from a satellite.
In-flight wifi works through relay stations on the ground. So they don’t work over the ocean. I know some airlines have introduced satellite based wifi but I think these are still very uncommon.
According to seatguru.com, Malaysia Airlines does not offer wifi service on any of their planes. I can find no mention of wifi on the Malaysia Airlines web site (or any other). The Malaysia airlines web site does say under business class amenities:
There is no mention of a similar facility in Economy. Their 777s apparently don’t have first class sections.
One of the main men in the Aum Shinrikyo sect was convicted on the 7th of March. They have owned large amounts of land in Western Australia (I don’t know if they are still there). From their previous stunts I think they are nutty enough and rich enough to do something like this.
Occam’s razor wouldn’t agree with me of course…
Still, it’s nice to be tin foiled hatted conspiracy theorist once in while…
Hmm that’s interesting. And the flight attendants allow this? Even then, I doubt there’s reception 500 miles from land.
How about the flight tracker in the seatback entertainment center? I’ve never been convinced that they are tracking something in real-time and not just plotting where the plane is expected to be based on the route and time in flight. But if they are tracking real location signals, would this system have alerted passengers to the change in course? It also tracks altitude, so an observant passenger might notice the dramatic changes in altitude and get suspicious.
I’m with you, at least on this point. I’m the last one to believe in conspiracy, but I find it more likely to believe that this plane landed somewhere than crashed somewhere at this point.