In my experience on US networks, the ring that you hear is completely artificial and the network will have it start before the phone is actually found. That's

In my experience on US networks, the ring that you hear is completely artificial and the network will have it start before the phone is actually found. That's how you can get a minute or so of ringing followed by the "cannot be found" message. Seriously, what is the thesis here, that the phones are still 1) intact, 2) charged, 3) on the network, 4) cannot or are not answered, 5) cannot be located? How would those things even make sense, several days after the planes disappearance? That plane sure as shit isn't still flying... People are identifying something that they consider weird (phones of people on a lost plane ringing) and are using it to justify their pet theories on what happened (involving the phones actually legitimately ringing), without explaining why their pet theory makes anything less weird.