This is yet another incident where it seems there must be more to the story.
NBC News had the story as the lead on Nightly News and stated that they were lost comm for over an hour and twenty minutes. I could see twenty minutes maybe but over the U.S. I just can't imagine that someone wasn't wondering why it was so quiet for that long.
Were these guys maybe watching a movie on a notebook computer with the sound plugged into the interphone with one of those homemade plugs? I've seen this act while jumpseating, I don't like it. Wonder if the CVR was mysteriously erased after landing? Most of them now record a couple of hours it seems.
I went lost comm in Yangoon's airspace for half an hour a while back. Other aircraft were also unable to contact the controller. Maybe they had a power failure, I don't know. I mused how lucky I was to be over some third world communist dictatorship (not that there's anything wrong with that
) instead of the U.S. of A. where I might be shot down by now.
Over the U.S. post 9-11, we now monitor guard even domestically. At least we mean to. If you fly late at night over middle America you'll always hear a couple of FedEx freighters getting yelled at on 121.5 for calling ops. I assume there are some radios left on ops freq that should be on guard but I'm sure I've never done that myself.
Here's the NBC News link, hope it works after the 15 second commercial, some of these links seem to be user specific:
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: News and videos from the evening broadcast- msnbc.com