Hi Alexander,
 
ak> There is a main reason why it was not a terror attack -- nobody
ak> claimed anything. A terror attack always implies publicity and some
ak> claiming.
 
Such a claim is usually made "after" the deed, not during or prior.
 
ak> The most strange is the fact that when the plane was crossing
ak> Malaysia nobody from its passengers tried to use their cell phones. When
ak> you are at high altitude, the distance at which a cell phone can connect
ak> with its ground base is increased significantly. If a passenger looks at
ak> his phone he can tell that communication is available and he can send at
ak> least SMS.
 
That is nonsense.
 
I fly a lot, I really mean "a lot" and until my retirement worked
for a company which among other things provides cellular service.
 
Cellular antennas do not point upwards and their signal is a beam, not a
general domed broadcast. as a result it is impossible to make unassisted
cellular calls from an airplane above certain altitudes. I've lost the
exact figures but it's like 1000-feet or something, maybe 1500. I've tried
it numerous times while flying and after years and years I finally managed
to send an SMS last February 28 from about 400-500ft just before landing.
 
Also, the speed of such an aircraft is so high that the switching equipment
on the ground goes crazy as there will be a tower/antenna switch every
couple of seconds.
 
Several in the industry have claimed that the alleged cellphone calls from
airplanes during 9-11 did not happen for that matter. Probably they were
credit card calls from onboard satellite phones which at the times were
pretty successful... and expensive.
 
Plus, for about an hour the plane went northbound, eventually over sea
which was the normal flight path. Nothing wrong. Plus of course no
cellphone antennas in the middle of a big sea.
 
When the plane turned west, that was a deliberate action. Suppose something
went wrone with the cabin presure and there 'was' decompression, then the
plane would have continued on autopilot to its intended destination and
lacking pilot-input would go on a standard ICAO holding pattern once it
approached Beijing until it ran out of fuel, the engines flamed-out and it
stalled.
 
That didn't happen, the westward course was deliberate. Theoretically it
would have come across cellphone antennas again when crossing the Malaysian
peninsula, but it did so at a place which was fairly uninhabited and with
barely any military radar-vectoring, nothing civilian.
 
Its eventual final heading of approximately 180ø south was also deliberate,
it turned to a destination with no known landing-strip which screams
"suicide".
 
ak> There was something like a blow, the plane lost electric
ak> power and airtightness.
 
The power in-flight comes from the engines and the plane kept pinging for
up to 4 hrs after turning south. No electrical power was lost.
 
I also assume the cabin occupants died of asfyxation, and quick. But not at
least one person in the cockpit who survived to input those heading
changes.
 
Finding the black boxes would really be interesting and remembering what
effort and cost went into finding the black boxes of Air France 427, I hope
they'll go through the same effort in this particular case.
 
 \%/{at}rd
 
BTW, I'm crossposting this to the AVIATION-echo.

--- D'Bridge 3.99