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Like most people, I read the news, and the news this week has all been about flight 93 and the terrible fate of its passengers.
But one thing bothers me. Cell phones don't work in planes. Here is part of a report done in 2003 (flight 93 crashed in 2001 - so even earlier) Read it and see if anyone can explain how the passengers allegedly called their families on their phones...
I don't believe they could have called. So what really happened? Unless people start asking real questions and demanding straight answers - we'll never know.
"...It cannot be said that the Faraday attenuation experiment (Part Three) was complete, in the sense that the operator normally held the phone to his ear, seated in a normal position. This meant that the signals from the test phones were only partially attenuated because the operator was surrounded by windows that are themselves radio-transparent.
Although we cannot say yet to what degree the heavier aluminum skin on a Boeing 700-series aircraft would affect cellphone calls made from within the aircraft, they would not be without some effect as windows take up a much smaller solid angle at the cellphone antenna. Signals have a much smaller window area to escape through, in general.
As was shown above, the chance of a typical cellphone call from cruising altitude making it to ground and engaging a cellsite there is less than one in a hundred. To calculate the probability that two such calls will succeed involves elementary probability theory. The resultant probability is the product of the two probabilities, taken separately. In other words, the probability that two callers will succeed is less than one in ten thousand. In the case of a hundred such calls, even if a large majority fail, the chance of, say 13 calls getting through can only be described as infinitesimal. In operational terms, this means "impossible."
At lower altitudes the probability of connection changes from impossible to varying degrees of "unlikely." But here, a different phenomenon asserts itself, a phenomenon that cannot be tested in a propellor-driven light aircraft. At 500 miles per hour, a low-flying aircraft passes over each cell in a very short time. For example if a cell (area serviced by a given cellsite) were a mile in diameter, the aircraft would be in it for one to eight seconds. Before a cellphone call can go through, the device must complete an electronic "handshake" with the cellsite servicing the call. This handshake can hardly be completed in eight seconds. When the aircraft comes into the next cell, the call must be "handed off" to the new cellsite. This process also absorbs seconds of time. Together, the two requirements for a successful and continuous call would appear to absorb too much time for a speaking connection to be established. Sooner or later, the call is "dropped."
This assessment is borne out by both earwitness testimony and by expert opinion, as found in Appendix B, below. Taking the consistency of theoretical prediction and expert opinion at face value, it seems fair to conclude that cellphone calls (at any altitude) from fast-flying aircraft are no more likely to get through than cellphone calls from high-flying slow aircraft."
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