Missing passengers’ phones are still ringing. Can they hear it?
BY BRIAN RIES From Mashable
The mysterious saga of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 got even stranger this week when a family member of one of the missing passengers appeared on Chinese television to show that her brother’s phone was still ringing.
“This morning, around 11:40 a.m., I called my older brother’s number twice, and I got the ringing tone,” Bian Liangwei said. She then dialed the number and watched as the phone rang multiple times before disconnecting.
Other family members tried it, too. According to a reporter with China.org.cn, a group of 19 families signed a joint statement delivered to Malaysia Airlines asking for an explanation. Why could they get through to their family members’ phones but not hear anything? Why did the calls hang up? Most importantly, does this mean the passengers are still alive?
Unfortunately, the ringing phones don’t mean much of anything at all.
When you place a call, hit the send button, and your phone starts to ring, it “doesn’t mean it is ringing on the phone of the person you are calling,” says wireless analyst Jeff Kagan.
“What it means is the network is at work, trying to locate the party you are calling,” he says. “It rings once, twice, three times, and if it finds the phone, it delivers the call. If it doesn’t find the phone, then the call is disconnected.”
” Family members over there are hearing the [ring] tone and they are hoping, but this is not a sign of anything. Family members over there are hearing the [ring] tone and they are hoping, but this is not a sign of anything. This is just how the networks work,” Kagan says.
That ringing sound to which we’re so accustomed is actually a psychological trick, meant to keep us on the line while the network works to locate the other phone.
“The ringing sound is generated by the originating carrier’s switch while the network sets up the call,” a CTIA-The Wireless Association spokesperson tells Mashable. “This keeps callers from abandoning the call when they hear no sound. The ringing sound has nothing to do with the actual ‘ringing’ of the called party’s device.”
Still, an official with Malaysia Airlines told reporters he, too, had experienced the eerie ringtone.
“If I could get through, the police could locate the position, and there is a chance he could still be alive,” one woman is quoted as saying, hopeful that the phones could be used to perhaps find the missing passengers.
But tracking a phone’s location is more complicated than it seems.
“It depends on the phone. It depends if it has GPS. It depends if the GPS is on. And it depends if the cell site that they’re on has GPS, too,” Kagan says. “If everything is working right, yes, the network can tell where that phone is — within a very small area,” he says.
Though he cautions that, in order for that to work, everything has to be working properly. So, if that phone is on the ocean floor, it would be nearly impossible to track.
These calls were never answered because they likely were never were delivered. That’s a tough pill for the families who are short on information on their loved ones’ fate, nearly five days since they boarded the flight to Beijing.
IMAGE: BINSAR BAKKARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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UPDATE: Report: Chinese defence website has satellite images of suspected debris from missing plane
By Chris Brummitt and Eileen NG, AP From The Gazette
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Murky satellite images that a Chinese science and defence agency said may show debris from the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner provided a fresh clue Thursday in the search for the plane, pointing searchers to a location nearer to the plane’s original flight path south of Vietnam.
The revelation could provide searchers with a focus that has eluded them since the plane disappeared with 239 people aboard just hours after leaving Kuala Lumpur for Beijing early Saturday. Since then, the search has covered 35,800 square miles (92,600 square kilometres), first east and then west of Malaysia and even expanded toward India on Wednesday.
The Chinese sighting, if confirmed, would be closer to where the frantic hunt started.
The Xinhua report said the images from around 11 a.m. on Sunday appear to show “three suspected floating objects” of varying sizes in a 20-kilometre radius, the largest about 24-by-22 metres (79-by-72 feet).
The images originally were posted on the website of China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. That site reports co-ordinates of a location in the sea off the southern tip of Vietnam and east of Malaysia.
But since the satellite images were taken four days ago, it is far from certain that whatever they show would be in the same location now.
No other governments have confirmed the Xinhua report, which did not say when Chinese officials became aware of the images and associated them with the missing plane.
Two-thirds of the passengers were Chinese, and the Chinese government has put increasing pressure on Malaysian officials to solve the mystery of the plane’s disappearance.
Malaysia’s civil aviation chief, Datuk Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, said Malaysia had not been officially informed by China about the images, which he said he was learning about from the news.
He said if Beijing informs them of the co-ordinates, Malaysia will dispatch vessels and planes immediately.
“If we get confirmation, we will send something,” he told The Associated Press early Thursday.
Until then, he urged caution. “There have been lots of reports of suspected debris.”
On Wednesday, it was revealed that the last message from the cockpit of the missing flight was routine. “All right, good night,” was the signoff transmitted to air traffic controllers five days ago.
Then the Boeing 777 vanished as it cruised over the South China Sea toward Vietnam, and nothing has been seen or heard of the jetliner since.
Those final words were picked up by controllers and relayed in Beijing to anguished relatives of some of the people aboard Flight MH370.
The Chinese reports of the satellite images came after several days of confusing and conflicting statements from Malaysian officials.
Earlier Wednesday, the Malaysian military officially disclosed why it was searching on both sides of country: A review of military radar records showed what might have been the plane turning back and crossing westward into the Strait of Malacca.
That would conflict with the latest images on the Chinese website.
For now, authorities said the international search effort would stay focused on the South China Sea and the strait leading toward the Andaman Sea.
Malaysian officials say they have evidence that the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 changed directions prior to its disappearance. Crews have now expanded their search area to include the Malacca Strait. (March 11)
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Related story:
Iranian Men With Stolen Passports on Missing Jet Probably Not Terrorists [Updated]
By Margaret Hartmann and Joe Coscarelli From New York Magazine
On Monday, more fuel was added to the popular theory that terrorists are behind the disappearance of a Malaysian Airlines jet when a travel agent said tickets for the two men who boarded the flight with stolen passports were arranged by a “shadowy Iranian” known as “Mr. Ali.” Now it seems their secrecy had nothing to do with terrorism. One of the men has been identified as Iranian teenager Pouria Nour Mohammadi (his age has been reported as 18 or 19), who was trying to enter Germany to seek asylum. The other has been identified as Delavar Seyed Mohammad Reza, 29. There’s no evidence so far that either was connected to terrorism.
“The more information we get, the more we’re inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident,” Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said on Tuesday at a news conference in France.
When Mohammadi did not show up as planned in Frankfurt, his mother contacted the authorities. “We believe he is not likely to be a member of any terrorist group,” said Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar.
Tickets for both men, each one way, were bought using stolen Italian and Austrian passports last Thursday in Thailand. The older man’s trip was scheduled to end in Copenhagen, Denmark. The men had been in Malaysia since February 28, and entered using valid Iranian passports.
As for the stolen ones, Interpol said they were in its database, but not checked before the plane departed. Thus, the agency said it was “unable to determine on how many other occasions these passports were used to board flights or cross borders.”
“There are 14,226,140 reports of stolen passports in the database, so we have to work by intelligence,” said Khalid. “We didn’t have any prior intelligence on the possibilities of terrorism so the two stolen passports were not supplied to the immigration department.”
The Beijing-bound plane has been missing since Saturday, and Khalid said police are focusing on four possibilities: hijacking, sabotage, psychological problems, and personal problems of those onboard (i.e., a targeted killing). So basically, investigators still have no idea what happened.
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