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... It's agenda driven, you can be sure.

Could also just be rarity driven. Airplane hijackings used to be a weekly affair; now a hijacking would be a week's-worth of headlines.

Good points. Not all wave flights are so smooth:
http://www.aviationtoday.com/r...
http://www.paul.moggach.yorkso...
No one knows how high these waves travel, much less the edges of the rising, mid and falling air. You can't see rising air. There might be a cloud at the top. If it is there at 90,000 feet, I doubt it will be of much help when you are 20,000 feet below it. Instruments (total energy compensated variometer) can tell you if you are going up or down. Bumping into the edges tells you where the edge is.

That pretty much leaves one other semi-realistic scenario, which is that a repair made a long time ago has failed. Again, that is very unlikely, because a structural failure of that kind would happen when the plane is under maximum stress - during the take off and climb. Not when the plane is at altitude and cruising along with very, very little stress on the airframe.

When the plane hits cruising altitude is when the maximum pressure differential between cabin and outside occurs, hence when an explosive depressurization is most likely to occur.

From the excellent Aviation Today article on CAL Flight CI-611:

In this case, maintaining the pressure differential of 8.6 psi for flight at 35,000 feet may also have put a final decisive strain on the cracks in that tail strike repair.

A fascinating, if slightly morbid at times, read at the quoted link.

Normal disclaimer(s) apply: I Am Not An Aeronautical Engineer, etc. ad nauseam.

It's was due to ADA

http://www.aviationtoday.com/a...
http://www.iaeng.org/publicati...
http://www.disca.upv.es/jorge/...

Here is what is also true: greenpeace and other "green" organizations have been found to be taking millions of dollars in money from Russian oil interests, through shell corporations

Hey, you left out your link to a reliable source for this claim.

According to the GAO, $106 billion was spent by US government on climate research by 2010.

A total over an unstated number of years is meaningless. According to Forbes -- hardly a lefty source, and this is a denialist article -- the U.S. Government spent $32.5 billion on climate studies over 20 years between 1989 and 2009. That's $1.6 billion a year. About $5 per American per year. Accoridng to the GAO (notice the hyperlink, please starting using them, thanks) federal climate change acivities in 2010 were $8.8 billion, but that includes "technology to reduce emissions, science to better understand climate change, international assistance for developing countries, and wildlife adaptation to respond to actual or expected changes" -- so climate research is only a small part of that. Figure a quarter to a third of it is climate research. So we're looking at something on the order of $2 or $3 billion a year spent by the federal government on climate change research.

For comparison, the Iraq war was is estimated to have cost $1,100 billion in total.

Exxon Mobills's profits -- not revenues, profits -- last year were $32.5 billion. And that's just one company.

The Army's R&D budget -- not the whole military, just the Army -- is around $21 - 32 billion.Climate research funding is chump change. I kind of liked this line of bullshit better when it was "those scientists telling us smoking causes cancer are just riding the research gravy train!" At least it was a fresh and audacious sort of intellectual dishonesty then. Now it's just pathetic.

It took 2 years of searching before the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 were found, and during that period there was a massive amount of speculation and doubt about what happened, leading to total uncertainty about how to prevent another crash. Airbus took a beating as everyone assumed it was an aircraft fault which led to the crash.

When they found the black boxes, the real problem turned out to not be a systems fault (although there was a momentary loss of air speed data due to icing, it didn't cause the crash) but a crew training problem so spending the time and money to find and recover them after 2 years has lead to small systems changes but significant pilot training changes.

So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide, there is always that element of doubt because we really don't know what transpired until we have evidence - so what happens if that assumed 0.001% chance of this particular crash being caused by something else, something mechanical or systems related, comes real and it causes another crash?

The cause of the crash of AF 447 was pitot tubes that froze up, causing loss of airspeed indication.

If there were no "aircraft fault[s]", why did Airbus replace the pitot tubes on its planes after AF 447 crashed?

More Pitot Tube Incidents Revealed

New reports of Pitot tube malfunctions on Airbus jetliners during severe weather have prompted additional safety concerns about their reliability.

...

The slashvertisement did mention the technology used in AF 447: ACARS. MH 370 may have been equipped with ACARS as well, but if it was, it would not be transmitting via satellite as there is no sat antenna on the vanished plane (9M-MRO). In fact, Malaysia Air has been pretty cagey about whether or not 9M-MRO had ACARS. If 9M-MRO *did* have ACARS installed, and the information *could have been* received/recorded there's still the question of whether or not Malaysia Air was paying for upkeep. If Malaysia Air (who's been in financial trouble for a while now) was too cheap to pay for ACARS, why would they pay for the slashvertised product?

Hell, 9M-MRO has Rolls Royce engines. Rolls Royce (and likely other engine manufacturers) offers remote health monitoring of their engines. You don't need an additional $100,000 device for basic tracking.

Let's not forget this salient point from the slashvertisement:

Of course, that wouldn’t yield much information if a plane is blown out of the sky by a bomb, or suffers a sudden catastrophic structural failure at cruising altitude. But in those rare cases, conventional black boxes are really the only viable technology.

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/military/Will-Projection-Displays-Give-F-35-an-Edge_922.html says F-35 doesn't use LCD, it uses projection displays for avionics.

Hmmm -- a quick bing search for "aviation grade connector" shows lots and lots of connectors. There are even magazine articles about them.

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product-Focus-Connectors_18865.html

"Stray signals causing loss of altitude control is some serious crapola."

Yes it is, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

The power required to overcome the distance to the
aircraft makes any 'death ray' problematic.

Far easier to get a SAM.

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cse574-06/ftp/aircraft_wireless.pdf

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commercial/12776.html

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/Research/Rvs/Article/EMI.html

Well good, you go on believing that becasue we don't want people making decisions on facts and studies~

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cse574-06/ftp/aircraft_wireless.pdf

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commercial/12776.html

There are many results..if only you were interested enough to spend 90 seconds using google.

Yes.
A) Consumer device PEDs are not design or rated for air travel.

B) You can't completly harden against all EMR

C) the shape of Aircraft can cause you signal to change.

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commercial/12776.html

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/Research/Rvs/Article/EMI.html

http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200012/000020001200A0261018.php

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~jain/cse574-06/ftp/aircraft_wireless.pdf

While they due do 'bench test' with equipment Avionic equipment against devices that are done as individual units, not as the whole Avionics package. Adding to this, the same devices manufactured in two different locations may bleed AMI differently due to manufacturing difference.
For example someone decides to use cheaper capacitors. This results in 'spurious' EMI.

repeates cases where :PEDsa cause in flight 'incidents'.
Most of them don't result in a crash do to redundancy. If a PED, or series of PEDs interferes with the redundant system as well, then the plane may very well change course.

http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commercial/12776.html

http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/Research/Rvs/Article/EMI.html

There are many more. I just googled for PED Study.

Repeatable studies have shown interference to the Aircraft from PEDs.

My guess is this - the "common core system" designed by Honeywell

The 787 common core system is designed by Smith's Areospace, not Honeywell. Honeywell performed so badly on the 777 program that they were relegated to the 2nd tier. I have heard that their FMS is late for the 787 as well.

Why can you remotely control aircraft systems at all? There should be no network equipment to compromise in the first place!

The 787 is fly by wire, like most new aircraft designs. It's all computer controlled, not mechanical.

My guess is this - the "common core system" designed by Honeywell - has something to do with the various systems being connected. This is a system designed to simplify the airplane's various systems and reduce the number of separate systems (which means fewer failure points - usually a good thing in engineering). I do believe Boeing when they say that there are built-in separations and that the two systems are not completely tied together, but obviously it wasn't enough for the FAA. So they're fixing it. Nothing really all that unusual about a new airplane design; there are always various issues that need to be addressed before first flight.

An interesting application of ADS-B is the ACSS SafeRoute program, currently used by UPS in their Class 3 Flight Bag based CDTI (Cockpit Display of Traffic Information) application (produced by Astronautics Corp of America).

It allows for efficient merging and spacing of incoming aircraft to reduce airtime- and subsequently costs.

A summary of the technology and the players: http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commerc ial/11666.html

Certification flight on June 19th, 2007: http://www.aviationtoday.com/categories/bga/13101. html

An interesting application of ADS-B is the ACSS SafeRoute program, currently used by UPS in their Class 3 Flight Bag based CDTI (Cockpit Display of Traffic Information) application (produced by Astronautics Corp of America).

It allows for efficient merging and spacing of incoming aircraft to reduce airtime- and subsequently costs.

A summary of the technology and the players: http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/categories/commerc ial/11666.html

Certification flight on June 19th, 2007: http://www.aviationtoday.com/categories/bga/13101. html

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, the FAA is quite reluctant to accept any significant changes in GA because, you know the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, there has been multiple leaps in the technology implemented in small airplanes over the past few years.

For example, instead of carburetors, most new planes now come with a FADEC system that handles the fuel injection into each individual cylinder, increasing performance and ridding the pilot of that pesky mixture control lever. Also, this system gives you real time status information on each cylinder so you can monitor their performance and detect a problem before it becomes too serious. About the mags, I can't really see why you'd want to get rid of them, they really are a pilot's best friend because even a total electrical failure (well almost anyways) cannot stop the magneto from sparking the engine. You have to always remember that aviation is practically married to redundancy, and for good reason.

While you did mention GPS being added into planes now, that's really only half the story. Glass cockpits are literally revolutionizing how we fly. Take a look at the good 'ol 152 cockpit then and now, there's a pretty big difference, no? The GPS is also going to make traveling to smaller airports in IMC a much greater experience when WASS/LAAS and TLS approaches become implemented around airports in the upcoming years.

Besides the GPS, ideas such as 'live' radar via XM radio, as well as a much more affordable radar dish are making storm traversal a much easier, safer thing for light airplanes, while Mode S transponders are finally bringing collision avoidance systems down from the major airlines to general aviation which I'm sure you'll agree is a major advantage.

Going outside the cockpit, we find that airplanes are beginning to be made with composite materials which are both lighter and stronger. However the high cost associated with manufacturing them, as well its unknown safety factor, are keeping it from being too widely accepted. The cirrus even designed a parachute for the entire plane. Overall, while the major design of airplanes have basically remained the same, I would say that there has been many great innovative improvements in general aviation that are changing the way pilot's fly.

And yes, I'm an expert on Navigation systems in Aircraft. Or at least I was throughout the late 80's and early 90's. I don't think anything has really changed in the last decade though.

Tilt-rotor aircraft aren't gliders. Anyways, the X-Wing's been mentioned, but there have been other canard rotor wing (CRW) designs. The concept's been around since the 70s, though more recently has Boeing started to re-investigate it. One of the main problems with it is that efficient rotors and efficient fixed-wings have some contradictory requirements, like blade/wing size and blade twist. The blade/wing doesn't make a good rotor nor a very good wing. But they're working on it.

I was in agreement with you, until you laid down the challenge and I remembered an FAA site. In searching for it, I found some other interesting stuff.

Interference and model jets Ironic?
2002 CAA Omega interference PDF
Did Personal Electronic Devices(PEDs) cause TWA 800 to explode??
US House Commitee
2001 NASA Report PDF
2002 NASA Report PDF

I never could find the FAA listing of aircraft incidents. It showed several cases of problems with avionics that the cockpit crew attributed to PEDs

The big question is, does it include an Electronic Flight Bag that runs the Linux operating system as described in this Aviation Today article?

At least the cockpit electronics have been upgraded - to 32 bit computers (among others 386). I'd guess that that's just the part the pilots/astronauts interact with, the avionics is probably still the old hardware, which was not 8 bit, but something derived from IBM's S/360 line with 32 bit, but only 104k of proper core memory. If you want to know more, I suggest you read at least chapter four of Computers in Spaceflight: The NASA Experience

Oh. He stole it from here.. Give credit next time, dude.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, there are somewhere around 300 private helicopters that those who can afford them use to avoid traffic and crime. They use them just like the plebes use cars. The best article I found on the topic is at aviation today (here).
Of course, having 300 'copters in a city of unpteen million isn't exactly what the man predicted, but the patter of use is consistent.