Missing Boeing 777 mystery: why were missing passengers' phones ringing for several hours after mishap?

New Delhi: The mystery of the Malaysia Airlines aircraft Boeing 777 has been deepening like an interesting suspense flick.According to the Washington Post, family of some of the 239 people on board the vanished Boeing 777 claimed that they were getting ring tones and could see them active online through a Chinese social networking service called QQ.The Chinese relatives told Malaysian Airlines officials about the QQ accounts and about the ringing telephone calls, and said, modern technology could simply log on to the GPS signal of the phones and locate their relatives.According to a China.org.cn report, 19 families signed a statement saying that dialing their loved ones' phones leads to a ring, rather than going straight to voicemail, as one would expect of a phone in airplane mode or otherwise unable to be reached.According to a China.org.cn report, 19 families signed a statement saying that dialing their loved ones' phones leads to a ring, rather than going straight to voicemail, as one would expect of a phone in airplane mode or otherwise unable to be reached.According to Devin Coldewey of NBC News, "however eerie this seems, it may have more to do with how mobile phones and networks operate than any deeper mystery."Coldewey writes: "When you hit the call button on some phones, a ringing tone begins immediately... "The search for the party on the receiving end may be nearly instantaneous, or take a few seconds - during which time the phone (depending on model, network and other variables) may or may not make a ringing noise to indicate to the caller that it is attempting to make the cell connection."So while it may ring four times for you, the person you're calling may only hear it ring once -- or not at all."The relatives of the passengers on board have been calling their near and dear ones for the last four days, and to their surprise their phones are ringing. Grieving relatives are wondering how the cellphones are ringings if the aircraft is presumed to be sunk in deep water. The plane took off from Kuala Lumpur on the west coast of Malaysia en route to Beijing.It flew overland across Malaysia and crossed the eastern coast into the Gulf of Thailand at 35,000 feet. Then it disappeared from radar screens and all contacts were lost. The airline says the pilots did not send any distress signals, suggesting a sudden and possibly catastrophic incident. The search and rescue operations have been on beyond the flight path to the West Peninsula of Malaysia at the Straits of Malacca, with many countries including the US, China, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia participating.The Strait of Malacca, one of the world's busiest shipping channels, runs along Malaysia's west coast. A military official said, the plane changed the course after Kota Bharu and took a lower altitude. It made it into the Malacca Strait.The time given by Rodzali was an hour and 10 minutes after the plane vanished from air traffic control screens over Igari waypoint, midway between Malaysia and Vietnam. There was no word on what happened to the plane thereafter.For the last three days, the search mission is on and nine aircrafts, 24 ships from nine countries have been going from If these reports from the military are verified then it would mean that the plane was able to maintain a cruising altitude and flew for about 500 km (350 miles) with its transponder and other tracking systems apparently switched off. There have been many speculations about the missing aircraft- pilot error, plane malfunction, hijacking and terrorism. The suspended terror role of the two men who were found carrying stolen passports and alleged to have terror links has been ruled out as one of them was an Iranian asylum seeker.