Do you still get cell signal seven miles up? I remember one time accidentally leaving my phone not in airplane mode and I had no signal. YMMV.

Or maybe, the passengers didn't yet know anything was wrong. They were only a small fraction into a very long overnight flight.

There are very few cellphone towers in the middle of the ocean.

>There are very few cellphone towers in the middle of the ocean.

And who said there are?

If you read the story, you will see that the plane flew back across land. If you look at a map, you'll see there's no other way it could get to the Indian Ocean

Which leads to the question of what the quality of cell service is like over/in that area. It may be land, but if there aren't any cell towers they may be SOL.

Malaysia and Thailand are relatively densely populated. Coverage is very heavy along both coasts of the countries, but much less complete inland.

This is a coverage map for one of 4 Malaysian mobile operators.

http://opensignal.com/networks/malaysia/my-celcom-coverage

Thanks. I haven't been following this closely enough to have an idea of the (presumed) flight path and thought the land travelled over was Indonesia, which seems to be not so dense on that western island.