According to the Daily Express on June 28, experts said that passengers on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may not be able to use their mobile phones to contact the authorities or relatives. Flight
MH370 left Kuala Lumpur Airport on March 8, 2014 and flew to Beijing, China, with 239 passengers on board. However, the last time the Boeing 777 aircraft was contacted by air traffic control was at 1:19 a.m. before disappearing mysteriously in the South China Sea. Over the years, many people questioned why no passengers on board were using their cell phones if an emergency occurred.
Many people mentioned the 911 attacks, when people were in a hurry to make phone calls when they were in danger. However, experts reveal why they may not be able to do the same on the MH370.
According to radar analysis, the aircraft is believed to fly at an altitude of up to 45,000 feet and as low as 23,000 feet. However, even at the lowest possible estimates, the aircraft altitude is too high to establish a connection with the mobile launch tower. "If you look at these data, you will know that the altitude of the plane is too high. It may be difficult to have signals in remote areas on the ground, let alone at high altitudes." Bill Rojas, head of telecommunications research at
Asia-Pacific, said in an interview in 2014. The plane can only receive signals when flying at lower altitudes.
He said in the same interview: "In terms of altitude, it must be no more than 10,000 feet, and any higher places are problematic. If the plane flies over Malaysia north or southern Thailand, it is basically in rural areas. Then, assuming the phone is on, the cell phone tower will most likely be recorded. Technically, this is possible."
However, Rojas admits that there are flaws in the theory. He detailed that the plane must fly at a speed below 150 mph to allow passengers to make or answer calls. Most aircraft have a speed of between 450 and 500 mph, which is impossible to make a call.
However, there may be another reason passengers cannot use their phones. Some experts say that after the fire on board, passengers' brains were deficient in oxygen.
This was supported by an investigation team appointed by the Malaysian government in 2015. They found that the emergency oxygen system on the deck of the MH370 flight was repaired shortly before departure.
The team said that the morning before the plane took off, maintenance personnel received eight failure reports, one of which was a supercharged fault.
This has led the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which leads the search for flight MH370, to suggest that catastrophic events such as hypoxia on the plane may cause the onboard personnel to lose their ability to work.
However, this idea is just one of hundreds of theories proposed in the past 5 years. Some say the plane was hijacked, either by terrorists on board, or by remote cyber hackers.
The more outrageous statement is that this aircraft is a "flight bomb" because it carries 5 tons of mangosteen and 221 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries. Over the years, all kinds of people, from Maldives Islanders to oil drillers in Vietnam, have claimed that they may have seen this.
However, we are still not close to the truth.
