Why are the cellphones of missing Malaysian Airlines passengers still ringing?

Few things..
Assuming this isnt a fault in the carriers:

Surely the batteries on these phones would be dead by now.
The phones would have been off or in plane mode during the flight. If they have now been turned on, it says they are alive.
Maybe some of them have redirection turned on? especially considering they are going away on a plane?
How can they have range, what towers are they pinging off?
Do all of the phones just ring out, or do they go to voice mail eventually ?

Spooky as it sounds, I think this plane crashed, these people have perished and the phone issue will be considered a glitch.

reply to post by Drezden


Malaysia Airlines Passengers' Phones Ringing? Maybe Not

If the phone you're calling is in airplane mode, or is off, out of range, or destroyed, the network may still take a few seconds to confirm it's unreachable. In a video from a Chinese news channel purporting to show one of the calls in question, the caller's phone appears to ring for only a second or so before failing. The family members who were able to "get through" or "connect" to a missing person's phone, which subsequently "hung up," could very possibly be experiencing this caller-side ringing effect, Kagan said.

hellobruce

westcoast
but NO ONE managed to send a text or phone call. If the plane had been hijacked, there likely would have been numerous texts or phone calls while it was in progress.

So exactly where was the mobile tower for the phones to connect to/?

I have no idea if its possible or not. I know it used to be that you had to turn your phones off, but I haven't been on a plane for several years. I know that most large airlines now offer Wi-Fi and people use their phones/tablets to access the internet during flights.

Big eyes coming to the rescue.

China satellite is positioning itself to scour the area, now we can probe for larger areas.
I'm betting on Vung Tau areas, southern vietnam, there seems to be debris there.

calculate the fuel range left of the airplane..than how much islands were in range with an suitable landing strip in case the plane was indeed hijacked

abecedarian
Reasons for a cell phone caller to hear ringing but no answer:

- phone moves out of range of a tower, but not into the range of another;
-

Like over the middle of the ocean?

The reason that some phones ring even though they are unreachable or turned off is because the ringing is done by the exchange NOT the phone. Don't know why some phone systems work like this but some do in Asia.

I can't help but look at the 777 and think it is symbolic, whatever is going on. Maybe some higher entity showing it's powers? What if they just show up 1 day in a field in Nebraska with stories of Heaven, or other dimensions, or whatever they see. For real though. It would explain everything.

Explanations why the cellphone calls may be ringing make sense; but could the same be said about the person(s) that showed as "online" on the QQ network until Monday afternoon?

...and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.

One man said that the QQ account of his brother-in-law showed him as online, but frustratingly for those waiting desperately for any news, messages sent have gone unanswered and the calls have not been picked up.
...
One man who had asked police to come to his house and see the active QQ account on his computer was devastated to see that by Monday afternoon it had switched to inactive.
...

Maybe it's just some last hope the family members are clinging to? I don't blame them. It must be horrible to have your loved one(s) simply disappear into thin air...

Assuming the plane just crashed and wasn't being hijacked, I don't see why the cellphones would be even switched ON since they have to be switched OFF during flight.

Something's fishy..

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "airplane" mode on the cell phones.
Even older phones have this feature.

People on MSN and Skype have been "online" for years, only for them to go offline when you actually send them a message, or later they simply state they were never online at all, or at least, only briefly. So those quirks exist where it seems people are "connected" but aren't. The same with mobile phones, I can only imagine what kind of quirks you experience out on that side of the world... If they don't regulate passport control quite as well as other regions, who's to say their telecommunication companies are well regulated too. I don't know, that's my naive western self asking... But even I can agree that with standard telecoms companies, when there's a dial tone for a good 10 seconds or so, it's definitely ringing the device.

So it certainly is a mystery. It did take some days to locate wreckage from Flight 447 that crashed off Brazil. And that was also a case of "why didn't anyone get in touch?". It's sad to find out that they, also on such a high tech aircraft, were literally descending very slowly toward the ocean, whilst the captain was on a scheduled nap break. Everything would have seemed perfectly normal to the passengers until perhaps literally the last moment before impact, tragic to think about really

It appears MH370 was a night flight and could've faced similar circumstances. There's still vertigo/orientation issues without bad weather that inexperienced crews can face. In the UK we've had at least one crash whereby pilots simply haven't known if they're flying straight, down, up etc at night and inevitably, and sadly crashed into a field. Various cases similar to that, yes I'm a fan of Mayday (air crash investigation)

Of course, this currently still has all the hallmarks of Tempus Fugit as Flight 447 did in its first few days. Even more so perhaps, with the calligraphist passengers, and the men using foreign passports... But I don't want to seem senseless likening this incident to an episode of X Files, but flights disappear. Where is Flight 19 for example? (Bermuda Triangle).

No sign of debris. But just how big is the search operation? Larger than that of Flight 447 or smaller? Can a 777 stay in-tact, fully, on impact? Probably not, but they're more likely too today, especially if a slow landing on water was attempted. It sounds like the pilot was experienced, but was he on a break at the time of the incident? Why did the plane make an apparent turn? It's all very confusing at this stage.

It's hard to think of a positive outcome from this unless the plane WAS abducted by aliens. If it had gone anywhere else, another pilot would've likely seen it, and, unless it's in the French Polynesia right now, presumably military radars and other things would have picked it up trying to go somewhere on a different route. If it's hijacked, then the pilot is still using official flight corridors, and such, without being detected? That seems way too "out there" for me, hijacking does not seem like a probable cause at this stage nor an in flight explosion.

Remember the Helios plane? Their simple unfortunate mistake of not switching one switch, led to the intoxication of the whole crew and passengers, their plane circled on autopilot for an hour or two before it was starved of fuel and crashed into a hill, sadly, the only man still conscious, was too weak and inexperienced to land the plane in anyway. Really sad instance, but again, those people passed out without getting the message out, they were intoxicated... its sad. There can be these tiny little faults/manufacturing quirks that have overwhelming large catastrophic outcomes. That said, it would seem Airbus planes usually overwhelm the crew (that was the case of Flight 447) whereas Boeing planes keep the pilot in control... so for a Boeing to just disappear... is very peculiar.

Fingers crossed..

PS. As for flight mode, it's only required during take off and landing. In flight you can have it on, normally, but it's generally not likely to pick up any carrier/network, especially if you're flying over an ocean between two countries... There aren't going to be any carriers out there. I don't know the full technical details. But the phones could well be on, in full receiving mode etc and we still wouldn't be able to reach them or they us. UK networks seem to work about 50-100 miles from the coastline and then that's it, you gotta wait til you hit the shorelines of another country. Does Malaysia have T-Mobile? (Poor them if they do)

Im2keul
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "airplane" mode on the cell phones.
Even older phones have this feature.

Because with airplane mode you don't get a signal. It's like being switched Off

Hellas

Im2keul
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "airplane" mode on the cell phones.
Even older phones have this feature.

Because with airplane mode you don't get a signal. It's like being switched Off

I seem to recall calling someone to see if they had landed and it rang normally, not like being switched off.
I admit it has been a few years, so I may be mistaken.

reply to post by Dianec


Yeah...why did or do the authorities not think of that? Star for you my friend.

reply to post by jaxnmarko


Hi,

did you ever called a powered off cellphone? Usually, there is no ringing and you get straight to the voicemail. IMO this is fishy. Unless, like another user said, those passengers had their cellphones in a waterproof case.

Peace out

reply to post by Im2keul


It's because, like me, you didn't read all the posts before yours

Peace out

ispyed
The reason that some phones ring even though they are unreachable or turned off is because the ringing is done by the exchange NOT the phone. Don't know why some phone systems work like this but some do in Asia.

This was also my first thought

I want them to have been hijacked.. Is that weird?

I've just said the same on FB. I "hope" they have been...

Im2keul
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the "airplane" mode on the cell phones.
Even older phones have this feature.

I don't know about Asia, but when I fly in Europe (I'm a frequent flyer, 2-3 times a month), it is always explicitly stated by the crew members that we have to turn OFF our phone and other electrical equipment that can transmit or receive a signal, and that putting it in Airplane Mode is not allowed during flight.

It's all very strange. Assuming these people were also told to turn off their phones, one would immediately get voicemail when trying to call one of these phones, because at the time of turning off their phones, they would still be in range of a mobile tower to register the event. If this was not the case, i.e. they turned off their phones while out of range, then that event would not be registered by the carrier and any attempt to call these phones would result in the phone "ringing" and eventually going to voicemail as if they were still turned on. However, in this case that is highly unlikely. I cannot imagine a big airport without a telephone carrier signal available. Remember, they must have been still sitting at the airport when they were told to turn off the phones.

If there was an explosion or other sudden, fatal emergency, then people would not have had time to turn on their phones. And even if they did, they would have no signal and the carrier could not receive this event and the phones would still be registered as "turned off" with the carrier.

So what we have here, some phones that are seemingly available for phone calls, but are not picked up and others appearing online in chat services up to a point is not in line with the theory of a sudden disaster.

One conclusion that one can now draw is that the plane was somehow re-routed, for whatever reason, and that some or all of these people were or are alive somewhere where they have a carrier signal. However, if this is true then you could wonder why phones are not answered and chat messages ignored.

One explanation I can think of is that the plane was hi-jacked and some or all of the passengers turned on their phones during the hi-jack to try and warn somebody on the ground. However, without a carrier signal these attempts were fruitless. The hi-jackers were aware of people trying to make phone calls and then confiscated the phones. This explains why some or all of the phones seem to be turned on once they were in range of a signal again.