mobile phones on missing malaysian airlines flight reported to be ringing?

[Robert J]

If a phone is destroyed while switched on (or the battery taken out without switching it off first), it never 'tells' the network it has shut down so the phone network still thinks its active.

Simply flying out of range of all cell towers (ie. over the ocean) would have a similar effect - no 'shutdown' info to the phone network.

(Phones should have been turned off before takeoff so that should not happen, but a lot of people do not bother..)


On a technical note, any implication that phones are genuinely still working is a scam or deliberately misleading.

If any phones were actually still in contact with the mobile phone network, the phone locations can be found to within a few metres in a matter of minutes - the plane would not be lost..


Passengers phones CAN NOT be working.