One minute after MH370’s flight crew said “Good Night” to Malaysia air traffic controls, and five seconds after the plane passed waypoint IGARI at 1720:31 UTC, the plane’s Mode S signal disappeared from air traffic control screens. As it reached the border of the Ho Chi Minh Flight Information Region (FIR) approximately 50 seconds after that, the plane made an abrupt 180 degree turn. The radius of this turn was so small, and the ground speed so low, that it appears to have been effected via a semi-aerobatic maneuver called a “chandelle.” Similar to a “box canyon turn,” this involves climbing under power while also banking steeply. The maneuver offered WWI pilots a way to reverse their direction of flight quickly in a dogfight.
Chandelles are not a normal part of commercial 777 operation. They would not be used by pilots responding to in-flight fire.
The fact that such an aggressive maneuver was flown suggests that whoever was at the controls was highly motivated to change their direction of flight. Specifically, instead of going east, they wanted to go west.
At the completion of the left-hand U-turn the plane found itself back in Malaysia-controlled airspace close to the Thai border. It flew at high speed (likely having increased engine thrust and dived from the top of its chandelle climb) toward Kota Bharu and then along the zig-zaggy border between peninsular Malaysia and Thailand (briefly passing through the outer fringe of Thai airspace) before making a right-hand turn south of Penang. We know this “based mostly on the analysis of primary radar recordings from the civilian ATC radars at the Kuala Lumpur (KUL) Area Control Centre (ACC) and at Kota Bahru on the east coast of Malaysia; plus (apparently) the air defense radars operated by the RMAF south of Kota Bahru at Jerteh, and on Penang Island off the west coast,” according to AIN Online.
At 18:02, while over the small island of Pulau Perak, the plane disappeared from primary radar, presumable because it had exceeded the range of the radar at Penang, which at that point lay 83 nautical miles directly behind the plane. Then, at 18:22:12, another blip was recorded, 160 miles to the northwest.
The most-asked question about the 18:22 blip is: why did the plane disappear then? But a more pressing question is: why did it reappear? If the plane was already too faint to be discerned by Penang when it was at Pulau Perak, then how on earth could it have been detected when it was three times further away?
One possibility is that it was picked up not by Malaysian radar, but by the Thai radar installation at Phuket. An AFP report from March 2014 quoted Thailand’s Air Marshal Monthon Suchookorn as saying that Thai radar detected the plane “swinging north and disappearing over the Andaman Sea,” although “the signal was sporadic.”
At 18:22, the plane was approximately 150 miles from Phuket. This is well beyond the range at which Penang had ceased being able to detect the plane. What’s more, when the plane had passed VAMPI it had been only about 120 miles from Phuket. If it hadn’t seen the plane when it was at VAMPI, how was it able to detect it when it was 30 miles further? And why just for a momentary blip?
I don’t believe that, as some have suggested, the plane climbed, was detected, and then dived again. As Victor Iannello has earlier pointed out, the plane was flying at around 500 knots, which is very fast, and suggests a high level of motivation to be somewhere else, not bleeding off speed through needless altitude changes.
I propose that what happened at 18:22 was that the plane was turning. Entering into a right bank, the plane would turn its wings temporarily toward the Phuket radar station, temporarily presenting a larger cross section. Then, when the plane leveled its wings to straighten out, the cross section would shrink, potentially causing the plane to disappear.
Why a right bank? The diagram at top is an annotated version of one presented in the DSTG’s “Bayesian Methods” book. The vertical white line is the 18:25:27 ping arc. The orange line represents the path from the 18:22:12 radar detection to the first ping arc. It is 13 miles long. To travel 13 miles in 3.25 minutes requires a ground speed of 240 knots. Prior to final radar return, MH370 was traveling at approximately 490 knots. A plane can’t slow down that quickly without a radical climbing maneuver, which can be dangerous at cruise altitude (cf Air France 447.)
If it had continued at its previous pace, the plane would have traveled 26.5 miles in that time — enough to carry it to the unlabeled yellow thumbtack. Or, to turn to the right and take the path shown in green.
I don’t mean this path to seem so precise and deterministic; there are errors associated with both the position of the ping arc and the radar return. The ping arc, for instance, is generally understood to have an error bar of about 10 km. If the ping arc radius is 10 km larger, and the radar hit location stays the same, then the heading will be be 336 degrees instead of 326 degrees; if the ping radius is 10 km smaller, the angle will be 310 degrees, representing just a 20 degree right turn from a straight-ahead path.
It does not, however, seem possible that the combined radar and ping-arc errors will allow a scenario in which the plane continued on its VAMPI-to-MEKAR heading and speed. As the “Bayesian Methods” book puts it, “the filtered speed at the output of the Kalman filter is not consistent with the 18.25 measurement, and predictions based purely on primary radar data on this will have a likelihood very close to zero.” Neil Gordon confirmed to me in our conversation that something must have changed.
Dr Bobby Ulich, in his recent work examing different flight-path scenarios, has also concluded that the plane turned north at this time. He looked at a southern turn, too, but observed that “the left-hand turn… needs a turning rate higher than the auto-pilot bank limit allows.”
Looking at the over picture of MH370’s first hour post-abduction, we note that:
- The timing of the silencing of the electronics was coordinated to within several seconds to the optimum time to evade detection.
- The 180-degree turnaround maneuver was highly aggressive.
- The plane’s course allowed it to remain in Malaysian airspace. After Penang it stayed closer to the Indonesian FIR (lower black line) than the Thai FIR (upper black line).
- Post diversion, the plane was traveling at high speed, faster than normal cruise flight. This suggests that whoever was flying it was motivated to escape primary radar surveillance–they wanted to get away.
- When last observed, MH370 was likely making a turn to the northwest, in the general direction of Port Blair in the Andaman islands. This is consistent with Air Marshal Monthon Suchookorn’s assertion that Thai radar detected the plane “swinging north and disappearing over the Andaman Sea.”
The overall shape of the flight path from IGARI to 18:25 is U-shaped, curving around Thai airspace. In the Malacca Strait it remained closer to the Indonesian side than the the Thai side. It is possible that the turn at 18:22 resulted from a compromise between two goals: to stay beyond the detection range of the radar station at Phuket, and to travel in a northwesterly direction.
It is widely believed that, since the plane presumable ended up in the southern Indian Ocean, the flight up the Malacca Strait was undertaken in order to avoid penetrating Indonesian airspace en route to the southern ocean. If this were goal, and the person flying the plane should have turned to the left at 18:22, onto a westerly or west-southwesterly heading.
The fact that they did not suggests that, whatever ultimately transpired aboard the plane, the goal prior to the “final major turn” was a destination to the northwest, and that the reason the plane flew southwest from IGARI before turning northwest was to avoid Thai airspace and radar surveillance.
(@DennisW)
Perhaps it might be more exact to describe the position of your 18:25 arc
in relation to kilometres or nautical miles directly due west of MEKAR.
An example is Oleksandrs ‘spiral dive’ graphic, wherein that distance is
about 65km directly due west of MEKAR, for an aircraft at a height of 6034m
(~19796 feet).
+1 Susie.
@b90
My 18:25 arc is ~64km West of Mekar.
@photo discussion:
I would caution from reading too much into the photo, and any of the photos I have seen of Z. If anything Gloria has a point that most images from his own end are happy in character. The airport picture is not a portrait photo, it is a snapshot, and a snap can end up pretty much in any way. It does not look like the photo of a mass murderer in my book. And he seemed to have a lot going already without thinking about a hijacking.
“The press” you are referring to (Gloria), is web picture editors on the basement floor or working from home who will pick something from a folder which look tragic while they listen to Nirvana or Die Hintergasseknaben. Don’t get upset about it. There may well be those who want to make him look guilty but not everyone everywhere.
Instead I was a bit struck by how orderly he appears. And there is some significance in the police investigation’s judgement that he showed no signs of deteriorating before the event. Imagine how you would manage to sleep yourself at nights if you were about to hijack a plane and kill all passengers. I can assure you it would influence most people profoundly, much more than is easily imagined. That is something that perhaps could be looked at again by a profile maker.
@Jeff Regarding position of first arc, note that we have a cluster of BTO values around 1825 and they are not all the same. The 12560 value (most folks use the 12520) would give a bigger ring, slightly closer to 1822 position.
@Johan
You said:
“Instead I was a bit struck by how orderly he appears. And there is some significance in the police investigation’s judgement that he showed no signs of deteriorating before the event. Imagine how you would manage to sleep yourself at nights if you were about to hijack a plane and kill all passengers. I can assure you it would influence most people profoundly, much more than is easily imagined. That is something that perhaps could be looked at again by a profile maker.”
Thank you (not really in case you were wondering) for an observation that has no qualification whatsoever. You are merely stating your uncredentialed opinion. Why even bother with a post like that. It is not helpful. Said another way, who gives a shit.
Two New Zealand journalists writing a book about the flight say they spoke by phone to Faizah Khan, who revealed that her eldest son had identified the voice which delivered the final sign-off of as that of his father. The call was made from the cockpit to air traffic controllers in Kuala Lumpur less than an hour after take-off.
The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8 with 239 passengers aboard; no wreckage has been found despite a continuing international search.
Geoff Taylor, deputy editor of New Zealand’s Waikato Times, said he and his co-author Ewan Wilson spoke to Zaharie’s brother-in-law Asuad Khan in Penang and then to the 53-year-old pilot’s wife. Khan initially claimed the voice from the cockpit was not Zaharie’s but then telephoned his sister Faizah, who spoke in the journalists’ presence and confirmed the voice belonged to her husband.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10921910/MH370-latest-Pilot-spoke-final-words-from-cockpit-says-wife.html
And in relatiion to the above, also this :
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/247235/nzers-claim-to-solve-mh370-mystery
@DennisW
For some reason, I consider you to be the Byron Bailey of this forum 😀
But with a difference : quick on the draw yet acerbically good natured ;D
@Johan, Just as I was organizing my thoughts on other plane traffic in the area, and TCAS (which wouldn’t have been working), you beat me to it! I didn’t think it was rush hour at that time of night but it I had also expected there would be some traffic. Seemingly there was very little.
Just a small puppy here…..
Is it correct that at or around 18.22:12 the plane was flying at approx. 21.5ft or lower? Perhaps to further evade ID radar? Or for other reasons? Resolute depressurization and dealing with hypothermia (from what I gather outside temperatures would have been -44C at 37k ft) have not been presented yet. Just wondering if there is a causal connection between the different altitudes and possible depressurization?
Does anyone know whether there is a time stamp on Fariq’s last phone call attempt over Penang? (If in fact this piece of information is reliable). It appears he connected briefly but was then cut off? For this to occur the aircraft would have been at a much lower altitude for Fariq to have gotten coverage.
@Dennis
“It was not their radar. Even the DSTG said they were given a single point. Why do you think that point is accurate based on the source of the info? A source who has consistently obfuscated this investigation every step of the way.”
Good point, why not apply the same measurement to the two sim points in the SIO? Did you read the report? were you able to redheck the continuous integrity of the data? Do you have proof that Z created those two points? Nada.
@Dennis
“Why is the Lido Hotel graphic not accurate – and never corrected? There are a lot of inaccurate points in that image. In fact, all of them.”
Can you elaborate in detail?
Imho it is what it is. A replay of composed digital data of several primary radar stations on an older radar comsole, which served the intended purpose at that time. This purpose was to show the press and NOK that there is evidence (given, poorly presented) that MH370 flew that flightpath and diappeared after MEKAR. That we are stuck with this poorly presented second hand information is no wonder, it happens in all areas of interest. If we throw away this kind of second hand information we will have empty hands on most matters.
@Rob re stealth
The B777 has a very steady radar cross section over 360°. From front and rear the engines work like corner reflectors. See the attached link, which shows the RCS of a scale model 777
http://www.itp101.com/rcsisar.htm
Re picture of Z with his two fellow pilots
This pic looks like being taken close by the security check area and shows a captain with authority and 2 other pilots might be his crew for the coming flight. There are other people around and a captain behaves like a captain in this situation. First talks with subordinate guys, he is going to fly with and whom he might have never met before. Nothing to see there. .
@Wazir Roslan @others
From your post 9/19 8:18PM:
“The flight crew oxygen supply had been checked prior to departure, showed a pressure of 1750psi with no leaks and was topped up to 1800psi.”
Is this standard procedure before every departure?
It seems to me checking and when necessary topping the oxygen supply is part of scheduled maintenance at regular intervals unless a special request is made by a captain/co-pilot.
Was this a special request by the captain/co-pilot before departure?
@Jeff pls, comments are vanishing without a trace from here? why?
@DennisW
It’s my belief many would like the outcome to be : Z didn’t do it. Having said that, there is no hiding from a whole range of known facts that point in Z’s direction. I agree with you fully on that point. Perhaps he was coerced, perhaps not.
As the saying goes: Publica fama non semper vana – where there are the signs of something, something is there.
@DennisW:
I was trying to make conversation (actually, if you did not recognize that). There was already enough of ame himuncredentialed opinion out there. Who would look for a wrinkle in a face to prove he’s a murderer?
If this is supposed to be the guy, he is obviously not your average Joe — in that case he would have been found out by now. So it takes a little more than wanting it to be him. In my opinion.
One will need to try to figure out how he saw things. What he must have or mustn’t have thought. If bipolar tendencies is a factor over long time or if he felt his life’s success suddenly had turned into nill. In what way he planned for when and how it would be executed. I am afraid his family will only be of help under very special circumstances. And if you are going to get something out of them you still need to do profiling in advance.
You could consider uncocking once in a while or there’s a risk you will fire in your pants.
@Keffertje:
Thanks!
@falken
vanishing comments ?
Oh my points to thought police and intel, editing.
@Keffertje,
it is not a matter of like but of due process, hearsay and pinning a rose on the easiest possible solution, especially when the man is dead.
By labelling him the responsible party, then having most agree due to the extent of mainstream media coverage, this rose pinning excludes other possible culprits.
It always looked like a well orchestrated hit. Nothing to do with Z but since he is gone, easy to place blame on him.
@Johan
If you think Zaharie looks to cool, calm and collected in the range of images available on the internet. He looks like most successful Malay gentlemen. They have centre, a calm manner, men and woman. In a decade I have never seen a Malay person loose their cool. Malaysia is an environment and culture conducive to this calm demeanor.
@Gloria, Your deductions are very silly. …”making animals with balloons? Playing pranks on family?” I will have nightmares now. FYI. Empty vessels make the most noise…
@Johan, No, I am not accusing anyone of being a murderer because of ‘a wrinkle on their face’. I am wondering if a potentially progressing drooping mouth was a symptom of a medical condition. Of a survey return of 1, MH mentioned that his mum has Ball’s Palsy, and possibly smiles in a similar way. I thank MH.
Looking at photos of me, my face is very scarred from chicken pox. This doesn’t make me a murderer, nor does it affect any ability I have to pass a pilot medical examination. And I have no idea whether Ball’s Palsy would either. Could that be a threat to his ongoing employment?
@Gloria:
No I don’t.
@Keffertje,
They are not deductions. If people choose to look at the actual evidence in range and depth and not the cherry picked images of the mainstream media, there for all to see in the images of Z, the array or images not just the two chosen for their darkness by the media.
The goofy, DIY and nerdy interests he had were on his Youtube account/channel from before the plane went missing. It would inform folk better to look at the big picture since so much of the authorized version hinges on him being the culprit. And yet so little evidence, none really, points to this.
And without Z as the perpetrator questions keep being asked about who the agents of this hit were.
@ Suzie,
If it looks like a turd, acts like a turd, smells like a turd it is most likely a sock puppet.
Genuine posters on here will by now be familiar with the term and what it means, how they troll forums to manage the line of discussion to channel it to the intelligence community version.
If you prefer shill, I will use that sometimes 🙂
A quick look at Bell’s palsy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_palsy
@Cofee:
I didn’t say what you quote in my original post, as I was trying to make conversation, not ending one. If I had felt it necessary to say something like that I would have done it then. And when I expressed myself in a condensated style in reply to DennisW it was not you that I was after, but DennisW, first, trying to say that the discussion at hand obviously wasn’t of really deductive nature from the beginning. I don’t like, btw, as apparently Gloria, attempts to make too much in either direction out of a single photo. It is an interesting photo to have seen, but as also Retired4 notes, it is not telling us much more than that he appears to have managed to do his job and enjoyed his junior colleagues’ trust at the moment the photo was taken. We knew that before, through more reliable ways.
Your observation on the other hand would be completely excluded from what I have just said. It is a good observation and I have noticed it myself without paying too much attention to it (I know it is common to be born with irregularities ike that too). Do check if it could be related to the damage to his 2nd lumbar vertebra — but I think it might not, or only indirectly.
@Gloria
It looks to me some projection is going on.
You stepped in recently and all your posts are not on topic but are distracting from them and seemingly deliberate obstructive to serve only your own objectives.
Just what a ‘sock puppet’ would do.
@Ge Rijn
Re Oxy.
Standard procedure on A service /preflight
Engines, Airframe, Instruments, & Radio: Check & top up.
Cheers Tom L
@Tom Lindsay
Thank you. Could have been a hint if this wasn’t the case with the oxygen was my thought and a special request was made.
Another question anwsered and only a hundred or so left to go.. 😉
@Gloria:
Get off the coffey!
@Cofee: I didn’t mean you.
@falken, I checked the spam folder and found a comment from you, which I un-spammed.
@RetiredF4, the first diagram in the link that you post did seem to indicate that the radar return from directly aft of a 777 is significantly less (~20 db) than from the side. So perhaps this idea bears further inspection.
I don’t know how this would affect the range of detection…
@Jeffwise
It think it would be unwise (no pun intended)to assume the DSTG are necessarily playing a higher level of game. Anyway, even the most learned and erudite make mistakes and errors of omission. I would bet our 1st arc is a good deal closer to the actual than the arc they show on their map.
@Wazir Roslan
Thank you for the post regarding the voice of the final sign off at IGARI being Captain Zaharie, Also thanks for the references (which I should have provided)
Jeff,
Citation from ATSB 2014 report:
“Primary radar data showed that the aircraft tracked along the Malacca Strait. During this time the aircraft passed close to waypoints VAMPI, MEKAR, NILAM and possibly IGOGU along a section of airway N571”.
Note that Fig 2 features a straight line over the Malacca, which contradicts to a minor CCW turn observed in the Lido image and a minor CW turn noticeable in Fig1.1B of the FI report.
If there was no data after 18:02 except a single blip 18:22, then what ATSB description was based on, what was used to generate the Lido image, and on the basis of what FI also showed a minor turn? Also, how could it be suggested that MH370 flew along N571 using the two points only?
@SteveBarratt
Zaharie’s sister said to Blaine Gibson it wasn’t her brother’s voice:
‘”Good night. Malaysian three seven zero.” Die letzten Worte aus dem Cockpit. Sakinab Shah erzählt Gibson, dass sie sich diese Worte bei YouTube angehört hat, immer wieder. Sie sagt: “Ich kenne die Stimme meines Bruders. Das war nicht er.”‘
http://www.zeit.de/2016/34/mh370-malaysia-airlines-wrack-suche/seite-9
‘”Good night. Malaysian 370″ The last words from the cockpit. Sakinab Shah tells Gibson that she listened to these words on youtube, time and time again. She says: “I know the voice of my brother. That wasn’t him.”‘
@Keffertje:
…. still he flies for an hour to be seven minutes ahead of a lone plane going at an angular opposite direction.
It does look like he wants to hide his radar echo.
Or did the hijacker get onto the wrong departure? (:-))
He couldn’t have known exactly where the other plane was, could he? (But with few departures no delays would have been expected). So he ought to have stepped on it first and then, when/if he spotted the plane, he adjusted his speed to get where he wanted, or the best he could do.
Wouldn’t it have been better to be behind?
@Jeff Wise
“@RetiredF4, the first diagram in the link that you post did seem to indicate that the radar return from directly aft of a 777 is significantly less (~20 db) than from the side. So perhaps this idea bears further inspection.”
The RCS pattern is spiky, few degrees of turn and you might get more or less reflectivity. Aditionally a scale model has static engines, the fans are not turning. Those increase the radar cross section significantly.
Going back to the original question of the OP to put the station at the tail is the fastest way to get some distance in between.
I would not count on evading primary radar other than descending below the radar horizon or flying out of max range (about 200 NM for a military primary radar). This max range of 200 NM is not definded by the RCS of a target like a B777, but by the probability of ambiguity errors. It is a system limit.
@Keffertje
There were no dramatic changes in altitude, although MH370 was slowly descending directly after the diversion, perhaps to around FL300 (or 295?), perhaps in order to gain speed or avoid traffic. It was eventually flying at higher altitude over the Strait of Malacca, the ATSB assumes (perhaps after it had spotted EK343?).
There was no registered phone call from the plane, only media reports that the FO’s mobile phone connected to a tower in Penang at around 1:50 after he had earlier turned off his phone before take off, as required.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/14/world/asia/malaysia-airlines-plane
@ALL
So the best estimate for the 1st arc is 65km due west of MEKAR. This is useful, because it puts NILAM 10Nm uprange of the 1st arc crossing at 18:25:30. In other words, 1.2 minutes uprange of the arc, assuming a groundspeed of 500Kts. Can it be coincidental that the SDU is re-energized as he passes through NILAM? I am thinking it cannot be a coincidence. Does it suggest that the pilot decided NILAM was where it would be safe to re-energize LH main AC bus, and the SATCOM? Yes, very probably.
So, this might then give a clue as to why the pilot decided to keep the SATCOM off-line for the first hour. He didn’t need to disable the SATCOM in order to block outgoing email and text messages, because to block these, all he needed to do was set the IFE/Seat Power switch to off. I believe he didn’t want any handshake interrogation pings to be generated during the first hour, because these just might be used in conjunction with primary radar fixes, to trace his progress. He was banking on not being noticed or tracked by primary radar, but he couldn’t be totally confident of it. Switching off the SATCOM would be an additional safeguard against being tracked during the 1st hour.
When he passed MEKAR he judged himself to be out of radar range. He made a little dogleg manoeuver at 18:22, which unwittingly produced a radar echo, and got back onto N571. 2.5 minutes later he flew through NILAM and re-energized the SATCOM. The pilot wasn’t worried about any subsequent interrogation pings being used to track him from that point on. The important thing was he was safely out of radar range.
Just my interpretation of events. I am not entirely discounting the possibility of a different explanation for the 18:25 logon.
@ROB, I’ve yet to meet an airline captain who has even heard of an SDU; prior to March 8, 2014 only a satcom expert would know anything about hourly pings. So while I too am attracted to the idea that satcoms were reestablished as a result of MH370 clearing primary radar coverage, I think we must understand that this would imply a level of sophistication far above that of an airline captain.
Also, what would be the point of a dogleg?
@Nederland, There are a lot of contradictions on the last ATC communication. In June 2014 Z”s brother in law claimed it was Z and his wife confirmed that also. I read a while back (I will try and find it again) that voice analysis confirmed it was Z. None the less, since 2014 relatives have recanted their initial statements. That is not surprising., IMO. Would be interesting to know for sure.
@Nederland, Thank you! I was very curious about that!
@Rob, What if a passenger just happened to have his/her own satellite phone? With SDU on it can be used.
ROB,
“I believe he didn’t want any handshake interrogation pings to be generated during the first hour, because these just might be used in conjunction with primary radar fixes, to trace his progress.”
Nonsense. So he cracked Inmarsat as well as air defence systems of at least 4 countries? It was not generally known outside of Inmarsat that they record BTO; and how could he know in advance what military radars will not be operating on that night? At the very end it makes little sense to switch off SATCOM, and no sense to switch it on again at NILAM for the reason you suggested.
TBill,
“Has there been prior discussion about Moonset at IGARI?”
Yes. And the most curious thing is that the heading over the Malacca 1 hour later was precisely towards the moonset, 1 or 2 degrees difference. Can you make sense of such a coincidence?
@Johan 🙂 Hiding in plain sight and trailing another aircraft (if there was one) would be a good option IMO to confuse? ATC.
Satcom:
Just to clear the table: the SATCOM was not used, is that known for sure? I mean that would have been noticed via the sat link? Or would it be possible to circumvent that in any way?
And not needed for any instruments onboard? And only coming to use when receiving a call-up attempt or two from ATC?
No apparent reason to switch it on?
Satcom continued:
But ground called 15-20 minutes after logon.
What could the pilot deduce from getting a call? That ground by then suspected he had not gone down in SCS (and confirmed that when they were getting through?).
That they didn’t know exactly where he was but perhaps that he was outside Malay territory and out of primary radar sight to the West as they didn’t call all the time and no jets were in sight? Which meant that he probably had been spotted by primary radar somewhere along the line? That ground eventually would be able to see what satellite the connection came through and thus that he was not over China?
That they suspected he was rogue (also from not calling all the time, and confirmed by the call getting through while noone was trying from air to ground?) — and would be waiting with jets if he re-entered any nation’s airspace?
By logic, since he apparently was trying to avoid detection, the logon seems to say that he would like to know if he succeded. Or is it pushing it?
@Johan, Hand held satellite phones are widely available now. So, I am just stating that its a possibility any of the passengers could have owned one. You need to connect to a satellite obviously to make calls. Perhaps it’s more challenging through a metal aircraft body, but not impossible. We know nothing about phone use in general since this data has not been made available. At high altitudes phones don’t work anyway so passengers depend on IFE to communicate to the outside world. That was shut off.
@Johan, I am just a small puddy tat here 🙂 but if I am a hijacker and did all my song and dance around radars (with apparent success) an incoming call at the time it was placed would be all telling IMO. Noone knew where the heck he was and he knew that. Indonesia was the hijackers nemesis for some reason since he did everything possible to skirt those radars.
@Keffertje: thanks. Knowingly the switch-on was thus not for actively using it, or he got cold feet.
@ABN397, @MH thank you.
@Johan 🙂 haha and thanks.
I will do some research and get back to you.
@Keffertje:
Okay. Maybe you are right. And it would be unwise to try to figure out from one call exactly how bewildered the Malaysians were. Perhaps.
@Keffertje:
You are probably right. And trying to deduce exactly how bewildered the Malaysians were from just one single phone call would be perhaps unwise.