Well said GarageYears, and sort of how I feel too when people here give Teso yet more stupid publicity ! :ugh:

As others have noted above - what you describe largely exists - at least as far as flight tracking - it is comparatively low cost to install and to operate. It is standalone, unconnected to aircraft systems, which should make it largely tamper-proof.

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Regarding the pilot suicide theory: 5 instances in 30 years is statistically equivalent to none at all.

Say there are 100,000 or so pilots working for all the airlines on the planet at any given time. The average suicide rate in countries developed enough to have airlines of any size is, at best, a guess, but 10 per 100,000 would seem reasonable based on this chart (which is based on World Health Organization data from 2011). Given that a large majority of pilots are men, and male suicide rates are generally higher, 10 per 100,000 may even be low.

So, over a 30-year period, there would have been approximately, and at least, 3,000 suicides by airline pilots. 5 of those might have been suicide-by-loaded-aircraft. Statistically that's zero plus noise. And none of those five seem to have involved the kind of advance planning and convoluted thinking that would be required in this case.

No, that's not dispositive. Yes, pilot suicide has to be considered as a possibility, based on what's known to date. But I suspect we would have heard days ago if there was any real evidence to suggest that pilot suicide was really plausible, as opposed to simply one of many possibilities.

It's worth noting, by the way, that Malaysia has the third-lowest suicide rate of the 192 countries listed.

This plane flies west over the populated land of a relatively sophisticated country. Yet no-one with any recollection of UA 93 makes a call from a concealed phone.

Either the passengers are dead, unconscious or unaware what is happening.

Perhaps not constantly but ACARS on some planes it definitely sends out a periodic position report.

Here is hobbyist software that will plot those ACARS position reports:

PlanePlotter from COAA

Also, see:

avionics - What data does ACARS send back to base? Can it be used to track a plane? - Aviation Stack Exchange

Looking at VHF ACARS logs, some carriers seem to still spit out a periodic position on ACARS, others don't, perhaps like the engine data, depending on the avionics, service providers and level of service purchased.

Commercial versions of ADS-B tracking software may have already rendered this ACARS position reporting obsolete but there is a lot of legacy stuff at a money losing national carrier from my past experience.

@Trackdiamond: Have you EVER worked with ANY aircraft avionics, especially a T7s? Well I have. I worked for many months on a Level D T7 flight sim, which happened to use the AIMS avionics boxes... and a complete bastard they were to integrate. I won't expand on this, except to say that even with access to the source code and all interface diagrams, etc, all that was possible was to stimulate the system. There was absolutely no way to back-door into the system to allow the injection of simulated malfunctions, and other simulator behaviors. So, I'm bloody sure some Johnny with an Android phone is out of luck.

Various
 

Apparently according to MAS here was nothing hazardous in the cargo hold. We have no other information, no cargo manifest, rien, nada!

The ping is initiated by the satellite asking the aircraft if it is still active - the aircraft replies to ping only with the statement 'I am live' however that maybe configured in satellite speak. NO DATA is passed. The satellite continues to ask the aircraft on an hourly basis in order to keep the communication line open 'in case' the aircraft wishes to pass data.

There is no confirmation that the last 'reply' from the aircraft was from the ground; However we do know that if the aircraft had landed and the engines were still powered it would 'reply' with an 'I am live'.

The passengers have not responded because why bother taking mobile phones at gun point when you can just 'dump' the cabin and then take the aircraft up to 45000 feet or so (I say or so because primary radar cannot confirm with the parameters it has it was exactly 45000 feet) to make the process faster!

I think the answer is going to be a combination of several scenarios already mentioned on here - amongst the more literate responses. Which ones who knows - but my personal opinion is Murexway at #5488 was pretty close together with a previous poster who also mentioned cabin dumping and once dumped surely the cockpit is going to get pretty cold! Something not even a SIM can prepare you for!

Heli-phile, again that does not make sense to me because it would not be 'logical' in the minds of the beancounters... it also assumes that particular slide/raft makes it off the airframe.

Are they any actual, documented airlines who have this setup? I'm just really curious now... as I said I have flown on more than 10 aircraft types and have never seen/heard of this setup...

Hacking
 

I have some experience as an ethical hacker, starting in the 1970s.

1995 era code on an aircraft is perfectly hackable; quite easy in fact.

Now I am not saying this happened. I have no idea what happened. But hacking is not out of the question, even if the code is not accessible over a network.

by oldoberon

that quote is of one of my post and your response is fair point

That's a good summary that's consistent with everything I know on the subject.

north
 

Unnamed "top officials" close to investigation team:


''While the ongoing search is divided into two massive areas, the data that the investigating team is collating is leading us more towards the north"


(Published by SMH)

Keep in mind that on 9/11 much of the US still had AMPS cellular service, and there were many dual mode AMPS phones about. AMPS is now completely deactivated in the US. Some countries never had AMPS, and began service with GSM. AMPS had longer range and better coverage than GSM.

If people were able to actually place cell phone calls from UA 93, it may have been over AMPS (although one mention way back in this thread suggested they used a special aircraft phone service).

View inside the EE compartment
 

HawkEye Media Boeing 777 Avionics Compartment VR Panoramic Photography

The EE bay is not accessible from the cockpit. It is accessed via a door in the floor in the vicinity of the forward entry door.

Boeing-777 - Warbird Photo Album

Do try not to get too excited. :)

The ACARS reported the Waypoint Change so it was contracted to do so, which shows that the ACARS was logged in on a contract with Sebang. There were also routine health monitoring reports every 30 minutes as the expected one after 1:37am local was not received.

I'd advise people to disregard the above quoted. It is wholly wrong on several points. I speak from years of experience operating several different types of medium / long range air defence radars,associated command systems and datalinks. The bread & butter is in the "blips" - the track idents come afterwards in many cases. I could go on but that would be a bit naughty.

That's an amazing room. But don't tell O'Leary as he'll want a few more seats down there.

I mentioned earlier that the geometric problem still would be symetrical (to the axis satellite position projected to the ground <-> LKP). For determining if it's the northern or southern arc it wouldn't help.

Doppler is no use in this case.
For a start Sputnik was moving about 7km/sec relative the ground and because it was in low-earth orbit the motion relative to a ground observer was very high.

A Geostationary satellite has no motion relative to a fixed point on earth, and the only motion relative to the aircraft is the component of its velocity moving toward or away from the satellite. If the a/c is moving at say 290m/s parallel to the satellite which is 35,786,000 meters away and the earth curves at about 12 cm per km, then the motion relative to the satellite directly overhead is about 3.5cm/sec. Of course at the far end of the satellite's range the relative motion will higher, but only a couple of m/s at the maximum edge of the satellite footprint. To measure a speed that small using doppler is very difficult and I doubt very much that Inmarsat is set up for that.

I accept this, but one is not looking for a connection long enough to make a meaningful phone call, just a connection long enough register on the network (not even with the recipient) that a call had been made. Certainly, and obviously this is in a horizontal rather than a vertical plane,there are problems in the Dover, England area where callers connect to French mobile networks in error where the French signal is at least 22 miles away. Yet there is no suggestion any calls were made.