Transponder and Communications Systems Manually Shut off on Missing Plane

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

Following up on my last post, we now know the transmission on the jet was disabled by someone on board. ABC is reporting that two different communication systems were shut down manually at different times — one was shut off at 1:07 am and one at 1:21 am.

Two U.S. officials tell ABC News the U.S. believes that the shutdown of two communication systems happened separately on Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. One source said this indicates the plane did not come out of the sky because of a catastrophic failure.

The data reporting system, they believe, was shut down at 1:07 a.m. The transponder — which transmits location and altitude — shut down at 1:21 a.m.

This indicates it may well have been a deliberate act, ABC News aviation consultant John Nance said.

U.S. investigators told ABC News that the two modes of communication were “systematically shut down.”

That means the U.S. team “is convinced that there was manual intervention,” a source said, which means it was likely not an accident or catastrophic malfunction that took the plane out of the sky.

A number of people who had been briefed said the transmissions were information that had been relayed from onboard monitoring systems embedded in the two Rolls-Royce PLC Trent 800 engines, not the idling satellite communications system.