Originally Posted by
rubberband2
1 This very interesting pprune blog has informed us many times that all forms of communications from the missing B777 were shut down at about the time that the aircraft left the airways leading to China.
2 But several pprune posts have also told us that there were hourly pings from the B777 until shortly before the time that it was estimated to have run out of fuel (7 hours or so).
I'm probably being picky, but the 'pings' weren't really communication. No data was transferred. And they were actually initiated by the satellite rather than MH370. One of the satellite communications specialists would explain it far better than me, but basically the satellite routinely 'pings' the Satcom system on the aircraft to verify that it is still active, and the aircraft pings back to verify this.