Malaysia Airliner Communications Shut Down Separately: US Officials Say

[Yo_Mama]

35. No, that makes no sense at all

Because the pilot was very experienced, and if there was a mechanical problem serious enough to shut down ACARS, the pilot would have reacted before the transponder signal went. Instead, they seem to be saying they got the ACARS shutdown long before they had a radio handover communication with the pilot, after which the transponder was shut off or failed. Plus the ACARS system never failed, but pinged for hours afterwards.

Subang ATC (if I have that correct) gave handover at 1:21. Around 1:30 another pilot reported that he had radioed the plane to tell it to contact Ho Chi Minh ATC, which was the "mumbling/static report":
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/08/pilot-on-way-to-japan-says-he-made-contact-with-missing-malaysian-flight/

That's because the Vietnamese ATC hadn't established contact.

This doesn't fit with the mechanical failure theory. It's also hard to make it fit into the hypoxia/accidental transponder shutoff theory, because of the time frame.

Of course this report could be false, but it does not now seem that it is false. The very precise timing of the ACARS shutdown given either means that they received a shutdown packet or that they have a radar track still at that point that shows that ACARS should have transmitted but it didn't. And that really fits into the "intentional action" scenario, because ACARS was shut down in order to prevent the transmission which would give information about a diversion from flight plan, but the transponder was shut down later to buy a few minutes of ATC dead time (during the handover from Subang to Ho Chi Minh).