Reply #16: Bingham

[Kevin Fenton]

may have hung up because he was distraught and didn't want to alarm his mother. He may have been thinking he would call her back later. As he seems to have been upset, it is no wonder that his actions were illogical. There are a million reasons he may have hung up.

"Can in the best circumstances a cellphone manage a phone call of 90 seconds at cruising altitude and crusing speed? The rest of the paramter you can chose as you want."
I don't know. I've looked into it and it seems to me that it's not impossible. It depends where the plane is - it obviously wouldn't work over the Atlantic Ocean, for example. The distance is a few miles and is well within the range of a BTS. I've never used a mobile phone on a plane myself. It's hard to say how the speed would affect them, although the "fix" to make cell phones work on planes addresses different problems, so I guess speed isn't the main barrier to cell phone use on planes.
The real question is whether there were suitably positioned BTS on the route, but we don't know that.
I think it is more likely that the calls were genuine than they were faked by a bunch of incompetents without the slightest clue about mobile phones.