Why Didn't Flight 370's Passengers Make Any Phone Calls?

As we all know, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is one of the strangest mysteries in the news. And yet another question has been raised — namely, why didn’t the passengers make any calls?

The New York Times published a lengthy technical breakout today, but two things are clear: One, so far, no one has been able to find a single record of anything from Flight 370. Not a selfie, not a phone call, not a text message, not a Twitter posting, and that’s fairly bizarre in of itself. Secondly, it might be because the pilot knocked out everybody on the plane:

Investigators do not know if anyone aboard the plane even tried to make a call. Passengers would have quickly become unconscious if the plane depressurized as it soared to an unusually high altitude right after the turnaround, pilots said. Whoever diverted the plane could have disabled the release of oxygen masks.

The bad news is that flying at that height, with the cabin depressurized, means everybody on board is likely dead. But it’s also worth noting that, well, we have no idea what actually happened. The plane might have landed somewhere and we’re about to start getting ransom demands, or for all we know, it’s been sent to the Twilight Zone. It’s also true that pilots can do a lot to disable communications: Cell phones are little more than radios, and putting a radio in a metal tube, far away from any reception, means there isn’t much that can get out. Similarly, if the pilot disabled the in-flight entertainment system, you wouldn’t be able to use those annoying phones in the back of your seat.

It’s another layer of mystery added to an already bizarre case. Hopefully we find some answers, soon; Flight 370 has already broken the record for a missing flight as it’s been gone for ten days.

Via The New York Times

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