Why are the missing Malaysian Airlines passengers’ phones still ringing? Relatives’ agony as search zone now switches to entirely new area and Iranian man on missing passport traced and ‘isn’t terrorist’
- Smartphones of the missing aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 are still ringing according to reports
- As many as 19 families of missing passengers have claimed to be connected – and airline says they have rung crew’s phones
- Growing frustration among relatives who have received no information on their missing friends and relatives
- Malaysian police say one of the two men on stolen passports was Iranian asylum seeker, 19, and ‘not a terrorist’ as his mother was waiting for him
- Fate of the Boeing 777 remains a mystery and search now concentrates on different sea at least 200 miles from where it was last recorded .
Shift of focus: Azharuddin Abdul Rahman (R), director general of the Department of Civil Aviation of Malaysia, speaks during a press conference on March 10, 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
The ‘unprecedented mystery’ behind the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 deepened on Monday when relatives claimed they were able to call the cellphones of their missing loved ones.
According to the Washington Post, family of some of the 239 people on board the vanished Boeing 777 said that they were getting ring tones and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.
One man said that the QQ account of his brother-in-law showed him as online, but frustratingly for those waiting desperately for any news, messages sent have gone unanswered and the calls have not been picked up.
This new eerie development comes as the Malaysian authorities said they had identified one of the men on two stolen European passports who were on the flight – and that he was not considered likely to be a terrorist
He was a 19-year-old Iranian asylum seeker called Pouiria Nur Mohammad Mehrdad who was trying to meet his mother in Germany.
WHY ARE THE PASSENGERS’ PHONES STILL RINGING?
After three days, wouldn’t the phone batteries be dead by now?
Not necessarily. Smartphones are renowned for their poor battery life and will typically last up to around 24 hours. But the batteries of older phones can last considerably longer.
For example, the Nokia 100 boasts a standby battery life of a staggering 35 days. Smartphone batteries can also last longer if the handset isn’t being used, and especially if the phone is in Flight Mode.
However, if the phone is in Flight Mode, it switches off all wireless activity meaning calls wouldn’t be able to connect, effectively ruling out this theory.
If the phone batteries are dead, wouldn’t the call go straight to voicemail?
In a word, yes. However, the process of sending the call to voicemail can differ depending on the service provider.
For example, the majority of phones will go straight to voicemail, or callers will get an out of service message if voicemail hasn’t been set up.
This will occur even if the phone is underwater, or not near a cell signal.
However, some service providers will ring once or twice before the phone goes to voicemail, or cut off. This may explain the reports that claimed phones rang before seeming to hang up.
Some reports claim the phones are just ringing and ringing though. How is this possible?
Telecoms expert Alan Spencer told MailOnline that if the phones are really ringing, they can categorically not be under the sea.
He added that the phones will only be ringing if they are ‘switched on, not in water, the battery is charged, and [they are] near a mobile cell site.’
This means that if the phones are genuinely ringing, the plane needs to have landed on land – not in the sea – and be in a location where there is cell service, rather than landing in the middle of a jungle, for example.
Why can’t network operators locate the phones?
A number of family members have asked the network operators why they can’t use the phone’s signal to locate the missing people.
Professor William Webb, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, told MailOnline: ‘The phones definitely won’t be working. They’ll be underwater, out of coverage and by this time out of battery.
‘So there’s absolutely no way they could be used for triangulation.
‘As to why they are ‘ringing’ it’ll be the same as if they were out of coverage – in some cases it may ring before going to voicemail.’
What about the T3212 timer I’ve read about?
The T3212 is a timer that causes a phone to periodically send a message to the network saying where it is.
But Professor Webb said this only works when the phone is turned on and it is in coverage. It won’t work when the battery is dead.
What about reports that passengers are appearing online, on the QQ social network?
When people sign into social networks including QQ, as well as Facebook, they appear online.
This is the case whether they’ve signed in on a phone, tablet, PC, and laptop.
if missing passengers are shown as online, they may not be using the service on their phone. Instead they may still be logged in on another device.
If this other device shuts down or goes into standby, however, or there is a long period of inactivity, the social network will log them out, which may explain why some accounts went from online to offline over a period of three days
By John Chola/James NYE, Guardian Online, March 11, 2014
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