Communications: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 - at 0239:52 MYT and 0713:58 MYT. Each telephone call was routed through the Satcom system and these 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 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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Whilst there is no record of telephone calls from MH370 there were attempts by Malaysia Airlines to make calls to MH370. These calls were unanswered.
Malaysia Airlines also attempted to call members of the crew using the mobile phone network, also without success.
But there is a confirmed event where the mobile phone registered to the First Officer briefly connected to the network as MH370 was flying towards the Straits of Malacca. This was not an attempted phone call. And attempts to replicate the conditions for the momentary connection were not successful.
Another item for this section is a telephone call allegedly received by Captain Shah pre-flight but at a time when the cockpit should have been 'sterile', with all mobile devices turned off. This event gained media publicity but is most likely false news: it didn't happen.