Lack of calls, texts from MH370 add to mystery

KUALA LUMPUR, March 18 — With radar confirming that Malaysia Airline flight MH370 flew across densely-populated parts of peninsular Malaysia, investigators are baffled why none aboard the missing flight called out for help when the plane had clearly diverted.

The flight path over the peninsula would have put the plane over the cellular transmission towers on the ground, allowing any who suspected that something was amiss with the flight to use their cellphones to communicate their distress.

But according to Malaysia Airline chief executive officer Ahmad Jauhari Yahya yesterday, investigators have found no signs of communication from 239 aboard the plane that was now missing for 10 days.

“Investigators have so far found no evidence of numbers they have tried to contact,” Ahmad Jauhari told reporters at the Sama Sama Hotel in Sepang yesterday, but conceded that “millions of records” remain to be vetted.

The scenario was the direct opposite of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when four US domestic flights were hijacked and three of them turned into weapons against ground targets, including the World Trade Center in New York.

Then, those onboard began sending out a flurry of calls and messages — some for help, some of despair, some to say farewell — to any that they could reach as soon as they realised the planes had been taken over.

While suspicion is beginning to hone in on the pilots and crew, the complete absence of communications would have required unanimous participation from all 12 staff members, an unlikely conclusion.

One sliver of information has led to possible hypotheses for the silence from those onboard: MH370 at one point climbed as high as 45,000 ft — beyond the plane’s operating ceiling — before descending erratically to 25,000ft.

Speculation exists that the plane was flown to that altitude and depressurised to cause hypoxia among those not involved in the “deliberate action” to reroute the plane.

A medical professor from the Hong Kong University, Dr James Ho, told the New York Times that direct exposure to the outside air at that altitude would be quickly fatal, but said it would be difficult to tell how long it would take to render those on MH370 unconscious without knowing conditions onboard.

Pilots are trained that they only have a maximum of 15 seconds of conscious control at that height if deprived of air supply.

But a less conspiratorial explanation also exists.

In its report today, a specialist told the NYT the plane’s distance from the ground may simply have been too much for the phones onboard.

Vincent Lau, an electronics professor specialising in wireless communications at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told the newspaper that the altitude was higher than those typically flown in the shorter distance flights involved in 9/11.

Disabling the satellite phones onboard was also trivial in comparison to the technical knowledge needed to shutdown both the plane’s Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and transponders.

Some relatives of the 153 Chinese passengers onboard have insisted that they have managed to get through to their cellphones, and that they get a ring tone when they try to call.

But the phenomenon was explained away by telecommunications effort as an audio cue to keep those initiating the calls on the line while the networks attempt to locate the specific phone they are trying to reach.