Posted on 04/12/2014 6:06:11 AM PDT by Uncle Chip
but he 'was abruptly cut off'
The co-pilot of missing flight MH370 made a call from his mobile phone as the aircraft flew low over the west coast of Malaysia.
Investigators have learned that the call was made from Fariq Abdul Hamid's mobile phone as the Boeing 777 flew low near the island of Penang, on the north of Malaysia's west coast.
The New Straits Times reported today that it was understood the aircraft, with 239 people on board, was flying low enough for the nearest telecommunications tower to pick up Fariq's signal.
The call ended abrupty, however it has been learned that contact was definitely established with a telecommunications sub-station in Penang state.
The paper said it had been unable to ascertain who Fariq was trying to call 'as sources chose not to divulge details of the investigation.'
It added: 'The telco's (telecommunications company's) tower established the call that he was trying to make. 'On why the call was cut off, it was likely because the aircraft was fast moving away from the tower and had not come under the coverage of the next one,' the paper said, quoting 'sources'....
The dramatic revelation that Fariq tried to make a phone call after regular communication from the aircraft to ground control was lost opens up a new field of speculation - and more questions about the mysterious disappearance of the jet.
If Fariq was able to make a call, why was there no attempt by the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, to also make a mobile phone call?...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
That's been my theory, too. This news bolsters it. The co-pilot early-on figured out the captain had wigged out. Then he turned his phone on hoping to put out the mayday, but it didn't get near enough to a tower to check in until the airplane passed back over the Malay Peninsula.
Did the captain depressurize the cabin? If so, maybe the copilot and the rest of them were knocked out by the time the phone obtained service.
And what of the captain? Why did the airplane make several more turns before finally heading south? Did some further malfunction incapacitate the captain later, while the plane was flying south, perhaps to avoid Indian radar on the way over to jihad-land?
There wouldn't be anything on the bill unless he had actually completed a call. All there would have been would be detail logs from the cell tower(s) involved.
They had all this cell phone info from early on as they admitted that interviewing everyone the pilots spoke with on the phone was one of the first things that they did.
not sure. The NST ‘time’ is the first time I’ve seen an actual time with hours and minutes, tho.
Here’s the article you read back on March 21 - the DM is quoting the SUN. Recall back on March 21 the Malays were already throwing Shah under the bus and we didn’t have word on the flight simulator yet. (not sure if that matters)
“His comments come as investigators were reportedly trying to identify a mysterious phone call made by pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah while he was in the cockpit.”
STAR - do you have an article from the SUN on your master list, from around March 19-20? I’m basically looking for something that says ‘Malaysian officials said Shad made a phone call from the cockpit” or “inside sources say...” or anything to help us identify where the ‘cockpit’ comment in the DM article originated? thanks much !!
The way you'd scuttle such a thing would be to land it on the water very carefully, in the style of Sullenberger or Kawasaki, get whatever you want off of it, and then flood it and let it sink. There would be no implosion because the pressure would be the same inside and out all the way down.
If it wasn't flooded, on purpose or not, it wouldn't sink. It would just be a very interesting piece of debris to find in satellite imagery.
oh, and I just noticed, the DM says he made the call, but the mystery woman story says he received a call. I need a spreadsheet at this point to keep it all straight !
Yep -- and the following sentence:
It is not known who he rang or what was said, but officials believe the call, made minutes before the plane took off, could solve the mystery of the flight's disappearance, The Sun reported.
Are investigators now denying this phone call from the mystery woman???
Here’s the Sun article:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/5518625/MH370-pilot-made-mystery-call-before-take-off.html
Then there’s this:
Pilot of the missing Malaysia Airline passenger jet reportedly made a call just minutes before taking off from Kuala Lumpur.
With focus on the pilots after possible terror links, investigators are trying to find out who Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah spoke to in the cockpit before taking off for Beijing.
Discovery of the person on the other end of the call would provide a lead to understand the mystery of the ill-fated passenger jet.
However, Malaysian authorities have not commented on the lead or confirmed a phone call took place, news.com.au reports.
http://www.siasat.com/english/news/mh370-pilot-made-mystery-call-minutes-take
well, I’ll have to side with AP on this one: “The Malaysian government and media have repeatedly contradicted each other and themselves over details of the search and criminal investigation.”
meanwhile, back at the ranch, here’s a few eastereggs from Anwar Ibrahim, (shah’s cousin’s cousin or something?) who wants an international investigative team to take over, says government is concealing information, and states :”...when he was the country’s finance minister in 1994 he personally authorised the installation of “one of the most sophisticated radar” systems in the world, based near the South China Sea and covering Malaysia’s mainland and east and west coastlines. The radar would have instantly detected the Boeing 777 as it travelled east to west across “at least four” Malaysian provinces, he said, describing the fact that the plane was not spotted by the sophisticated radar immediately after it changed course as “not only unacceptable but not possible, not feasible.”
Exactly what we think at our home.
<>Night time.<>
It wasn’t night time — it was 8:00 in the morning.
And if ditching a plane in water is not survivable then why are planes to designed for such ditching emergencies, and flight crews trained for ditching emergencies, and passengers provided life vests and flotation devices for such ditching emergencies.
Water landings happen all the time and passengers and crew and fuselages survive them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing
We don’t actually know when the plane quit aviating. All we know is the last time of contact. Seeing as how the plane was travelling away from the sunrise, the sky may not have been that bright.
Ditching is a polite way of saying, soft crash.
The flotation devices are provided in case you find your once high and dry butt surrounded by water. The airlines will never say, ‘crash into the ocean’. Ditch is such a nicer word.
My point was that for the plane to have survived intact, everything would have had to work out perfectly.
With a homicidal pilot at the controls of a 777, I doubt that everything went as planned.
Sure we do -- if the last ping was 8:11 and there was no 9:11 ping, then it ditched or crashed during that hour.
All we know is the last time of contact.
Yeh -- the last time of contact with a running engine.
Seeing as how the plane was travelling away from the sunrise, the sky may not have been that bright.
It was flying southeast -- into the sunrise -- so the opposite is true.
With a homicidal pilot at the controls of a 777, I doubt that everything went as planned.
At that point what did he have to lose -- he's already killed 238 people -- what's one more???
If he kills himself trying to scuttle it and drowns, he goes down as either a suicidal pilot or a hero trying to save the plane.
A failed scuttle is as good as a crash at that point.
Either way his family collects $10 million of insurance payouts
If he survives he changes his identity and helps his family spend that $10 million while tinfoilers spend the next 20 years looking for the plane in Diego Garcia and Pakistan.
Note how the Malaysian transport minister always comes to the defense of Captain Shah:
Reports in the Malaysian newspaper the New Straits Times claim that the plane’s co-pilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, tried to use his mobile phone while the plane was in the air. This has fuelled speculation that captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah hijacked his own plane after tricking Hamid into leaving the cockpit.
However, Malaysian acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein has denied the claims, and said: “If this did happen, we would have known about it earlier.”
earlier??? earlier than what??? when and how would you have known??? would that be after the plane descended from 45,000ft with everyone dead ??? or after it failed to land in China??? What an idiot —
There were 200 other cell phones on that flight. The investigators need to find out how many of those other 200 other cell phones connected with that tower on Penang like the co-pilot’s did.
But first they need to fire the transport minister —
So what would happen if the pilot locked the copilot out of the cockpit? Copilot comes back and can’t open the door. He gets the rest of the crew involved. They pound on the door, and try to talk to the pilot over the intercom. Sooner or later the passengers in first class are going to know something is haywire. Why is the copilot the only one who tries to use a phone? Wouldn’t everyone at that point? Also, a copilot would know that trying to force the cockpit door would trigger the AH system. Especially one just certified for the 777. He would be kicking that door like his life depended on it. And, if by chance he didn’t know about the AH, the head stew would definitely know. But apparently the door wasn’t forced because the AH system didn’t engage.
I just don’t buy the crazed pilot theory.
That's a legitimate question. Did any device on board MH370 attempt communication (or merely check for messages or simply announce its existence) after the airplane went missing?
Answering that question would not be a trivial task, however. You'd need to compile a list of all the cell phones known to be in possession of passengers and crew. And you'd need to screen all those phones against the logs of all cell towers which those phones could conceivably have attempted to contact.
Do you suppose that work been done?
It's just scripts and database searches. No need to be aloft over the South Indian Ocean watching your fuel supply!
I don't buy the crazed pilot theory either. Whoever did this thought it out carefully from beginning to end.
Going up to 45000ft for 23 minutes was not just taking care of the passengers and crew, it was taking care of the 200 cellphones onboard as well.
This connection with the tower on Penang took place after the 23 minute excursion at 45000ft and an hour after taking over the plane.
Is this connection between the co-pilot's phone and the cell tower an indication that the co-pilot survived the excursion to 45000ft and was trying to make a call at that point or was it just some automatic connection as it came into range and thus meaning nothing??
What about any of the other 200 cell phones range -- were any of them connecting with the tower as well???
Over the Island of Penang is where course adjustments to waypoint IGREX had to be made and thus the pilot would have been busy with the plane making course corrections and having no time to make any cellphone calls himself -- unless this was all part of the plan somehow and the reason to drop to 5000ft over the island in the first place.
Actually it would be a trivial task and should already have been done. They don't need the phones of the passengers/crew -- only the cellphone numbers which they should already have at this point since they have already investigated and cleared them.
They need to answer that simplest of questions -- did any of the other 200 phones onboard also connect with the tower as the plane passed overhead or just the co-pilot's???
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