Boeing offers a satellite service that can receive a stream of data during flight on how the aircraft is functioning and relay the information to the planes home base. The idea is to provide information before the plane lands on whether maintenance work or repairs are needed. Malaysia Airlines didnt subscribe to that service, but the plane still had the capability to connect with the satellite and was automatically sending pings, the official said. Its like when your cellphone is off but it still sends out a little Im here message to the cellphone network, the official said. Thats how sometimes they can triangulate your position even though youre not calling because the phone every so often sends out a little bleep. Thats sort of what this thing was doing. Messages involving a different, more rudimentary data service also were received from the airliner for a short time after the planes transponder — a device used to identify the plane to radar — went silent, the U.S. official said. A pilot rather than a hijacker is more likely to be able to switch off the communications equipment, Glynn said. The last thing that I, as a pilot, want is suspicion to fall on the crew, but its happened twice before. Glynn said a pilot may have sought to fly the plane into the Indian Ocean to reduce the chances of recovering data recorders, and to conceal the cause of the disaster. Experts said that if the plane crashed into the ocean, some debris should be floating even if most of the jet is submerged. abcnews.go/International/wireStory/missing-malaysian-airlines-plane-search-expands-22907782?page=2
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 13:11:14 +0000
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