Page 29 - Acars System News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Traffic control or others on the ground where the plane was? >> the transponder's very easy because of the fact that when you're on the ground you are supposed to turn it off. you're no longer needing radar. so that's why the on/off switch is so accessible. the other equipment you talk about, whether it be the radios, and there are many frequencies that they could be using, whether they use the acars system, that's the system that basically transmits what the airplane is do, even the engines are reporting in without necessarily the pilots input. to disable those, that's something far more comp...

Practice to bring that airplane that low in that kind of altitude to skirt around and go where he's going. let me quickly also say something about the pings. yes, absolutely right. i'm glad that somebody mentioned that. the ping is a sound that was designed to give you the indication that you have something underwater. the thing that we've been calling pings here today really are like text messages that come out of the acars system in a completely different kind of thing. i don't know why they call tha ping as a matter of fact. >> let me go to henry hughes, retired ntsb senior accident investi...

Out of the acars system in a completely different kind of thing. i don't know why they call a ping as a matter of fact. >> let me go to henry hughes, retired ntsb senior accident investigator. you deal in facts, henry hughes. there are pressing few facts that even the few scraps of facts we've been given through the week have been completely contradicted the very next day in most cases. what is your take on where this investigation is right now? >> i think the folks from malaysia are a little bit new at this. fortunately they haven't had many major accidents. as a result, i don't know that the...

Ground and is on land. well, that didn't go off. and also i wonder where it is. just like everybody else. >> okay. let me turn now to david suse, former faa safety inspector. we don't have the answers here. this is one of the great mysteries in aviation history and gets more mysterious by the day. having said that we have more information than we seem to have had at any stage in this week. if you take the assumption that these pings -- it's interesting i thought what jim tillman just said, the pings themselves, is that correct? do you know when they are supposed to go off? do they go off when ...

It makes sense to me that the pings are still occurring for one reason. if you're going to -- the average pilot would know how to disconnect all the communications equipment on that airplane except for one thing and that's the acars system. because there's a circuit breaker. when you pull the circuit breaker that says acars on it, it doesn't turn off the transmitter. it's like not turning off the wi-fi but turning off the computer. it stops the data stream from coming. it stops the computer which stores the data. but yet there's another circuit breaker that's much more hidden to turn off the a...