Communications:Telephone Calls

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Communications - Telephone Calls

MH370 Communications

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Telephone Calls

Telephone Calls and Flight MH370

• 1 Malaysia Airlines to MH370 via Satcom

  Malaysia Airlines made two attempts to contact flight MH370 by phone:-

  1. At 0239:52 MYT - unknown to Malaysia Airlines, MH370 had crossed peninsula Malaysia, flown northwest towards the Andaman Sea and may already have turned south. See Timeline article Andaman Sea to North Indian Ocean.
  2. At 0713:58 MYT - about 45 minutes after MH370 was due to land in Beijing.

  Each telephone call was routed through the Satcom system to the aircraft cockpit. Both events are recorded as 'unanswered Ground-to-Air telephony calls.

  Two Ground-to-Air Telephony Calls were placed to the cockpit from the MAS Airline Operations Centre at Airline Operational Communications (AOC) Q10 priority level at 1839 and at 2313 on 07 March 2014. Neither of the calls was answered.

  Source: Safety Investigation Report MH370/01/2018 2.5.1 Summary of Key Observations of the SATCOM Ground Station Logs




• 2 First Officer Mobile Phone

  At 0152:27 MYT the mobile phone belonging to the First Officer made a (brief) connection with a phone tower at Bandar Baru Farlim Penang. This was investigated by attempting to reconstruct the flight path of MH370 using a King Air 350 aircraft but found that it was difficult to maintain call connectivity above 8,000 feet.

  This event was only a connection - there is no evidence of an attempt to make a phone call.

  Source: Safety Investigation Report MH370/01/2018 1.1.5 Detection of Hand Phone Signal.




• 3 Malaysia Airlines Calls to Crew Mobile Phones

  From about 3am, attempts were made to contact MH370 crew by calling their mobile phones. The last attempt was made after 9am. None of the calls were answered.

  It is now known that MH370 was headed south towards the southern Indian Ocean, beyond any mobile phone range.




• 4 Two-minute Phone Call (False News)

  A British tabloid alleged that the Captain of flight MH370 made a two-minute phone call just prior to take-off. This was dismissed by the Royal malaysia Police as 'mere speculation'.

  The story is discussed in the article False News/Two-Minute Phone Call.

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Malaysia Airline Systems

The Safety Investigation Report MH370/01/2018 was released by the Malaysian ICAO Annex 13 Safety Investigation Team for MH370 in July 2018. More Info

Malaysian Time (MYT) is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) + 8 hours

Royal Malaysian Police.