Page 15 - Acars System News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Originating? we don't have any real answers with all of this, but we have a lot of ideas that are worth talking about here because it is such a mystery. every plane that's in the sky is emanating a tremendous amount of information about itself. largely through the acars system. most of the time that's going out through vhf radio when it's over land it goes through a radio tower. if it moves out over the water, if it's further out where it can't quite reach those land stations, then this plane will connect through a satellite and that satellite in turn will send that signal down to a ground sta...

Back to malaysia's east coast, instead of its intended destination in china. at 1:07 a.m., the plane's data communication system the acars system, sent out its last automated message, they are programmed to fire off every 30 minutes, what we did not know until moments ago is at that time the plane had already changed course, heading west away from the intended destination of beijing, all without a word from the co pilot to control. he spoke with them at 1:19 said nothing about it. again, this is a full 12 minutes before the person sent out the last calm message. all right, good night. . scott ...

At 1:07 a.m., the acars communication system was transmitting data that this plane had already made its turn, is that our information? >> that's what i understand as well, megyn. >> had already made its turn then that would suggest that this co pilot knew a lot more than he was communicating to ground control and places a whole new spotlight on him. >> no, absolutely. this was programmed, in we don't know when it was programmed in, if it was before the flight took off. but at 1:07 we have a new flight path. it's clear whoever put this in, had plans to take this aircraft west very early on in t...

Different how you shut them down. >> martin, and maybe this is more of a question for your pilot there, mitchell, but why is it possible -- because i've gotten this question a lot from viewers. why is it possible to even shut down the transponder. why can pilots have that ability? >> the only reason that we have an off switch, anderson, is when we're on the ground. after you're on the ground and land and taxi off the runway, you're no longer a factor for any traffic so there's no point in you being on the screen, you turn it off and save the air traffic controllers the hassle of trying to decl...

System, same acars, but this is a different backup unit, is to go in through this, what do i call this mitchell again? >> control display unit. >> control display unit. i hit this and you can see acars comes up. i punch this and i can get into the system this way. there's one here, one here, one here. that's three. with this there's four systems that are all part of acars. so four backups, if you will. i can get into the menu and begin to shut things off. think of like your iphone where you turn off the wi-fi and maybe turn off the bluetooth, eventually maybe turn off the cellular. but that ph...