every flight we have what s called the pilot flying the pf and the pnf, the pilot flying and the pilot not flying. it is customary for the captain to be flighting left seat. if he was flying pf, he would be making sure that the plan is on track, flying, mentally engaged. first officer, pnf, pilot not flying, checking the weather, talking to air traffic control. remaining engaged. what s interesting is if there is not an input by somebody, a pilot, in this airplane, every ten minutes, the airplane sends off an alarm to make sure that, hey, you guys didn t fall asleep? there is an alarm. if you don t push a button or do something, that way, the plane keeps the pilot and co-pilot engaged. they aren t up here playing video games. they have to stay very focused.
there is no account that signal was ever sent. at 1:07 on saturday, the data reporting system was shut down and 14 minutes later, that trance ponder was turned off. tell us about the data responding system. there are a lot of things on this airplane that are sending out data. that can be a little broad in that term. sometimes it has been confusing. we are not sure what it is. mitchell, explain, what are the various things transmitting out information. you have acar to send short but vicele messages to a ground. we use that the same way you would use a text on the phone. the ground wants to let you know, we have a problem. maybe a volcano has erupted. you need to deviate 20, 30 miles around the course. maybe we need to tell them we
pilots love, love to fly. they love their airplanes and they love their cockpits and all the toys that they have to play with. you know, we haven t really heard anything about the flight crew onboard, as in the flight attendants. why do you think that is? i don t know the answer to that and it really comes back to, i mean, the flight attendants don t ordinarily have access to the cockpit of the airplane. unless they re going in to be there when one of the pilots leaves. so, i just, i think that there are so many things that should be doing, happening during this investigation, i think that you ve got to kind of prioritize where, particularly under the leadership of the malaysian
communication, what does that tell you about what might have been happening in the sky, mitchell? if a plane is flying, if it was off course and it was flying for four hours after last contact, someone s flying that airplane. someone turned it off. of course, someone was flying that airplane. if it was the pilots, if the pilots were flying when they were supposed to be, they would have been communicating with air traffic control. there s weather, volcanoes erupt and we have to go around it, but you re always talking to somebody. we have that saying, navigate and then communicate with air traffic control. always. always communicating. the fact that they didn t communicate, that s the big red flag. that s the compelling factor here. why didn t they do that? pilot mitchell, martin savidge, thank you, that was fascinating. we really appreciate that. made so many things so much more
is, we are always flying that airplane. always fly the airplane, afate, navigate, communicate. communicate is a little lower on the totem pole of concern. it could be if you have the points going out an there is something happening in the plane and the pilots are focused on a v afating and navigating. the pilots have the most time to communication at this point. if it was landing or takeoff, i could see they wouldn t communicate. that flight that went into the hudson river, no time to talk. it just said, unable. if you are higher up, 35,000 feet, there is plenty of time unless something happened dramatically, a catastrophic explosion, anything like that. by now, i think we would have seen evidence of that. of course, the other