The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery

First time accepted submitter evidencebase writes "How can an airliner simply disappear, leaving no clues? And why do we have to wait until the black boxes are found to learn what happened to Flight MH370? As this article explains, there's no good reason that flight data needs to go down with the plane, because the technology to stream it to ground, from the moment things start to go wrong, is already on the market. It can be fitted to a commercial airliner for less than $100,000. But the industry has decided that it's not worth the expense. Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370."

Comments

Does it really cost $100k?

[jonwil]

Or does it cost $100k PLUS the cost of labor and maintanence to install the device PLUS the huge cost of taking the plane out of service for x amount of time while the device is being installed (even if its installed at the same time as other maintanence is done, its still a non-zero cost)

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[amicusNYCL]

the huge cost of taking the plane out of service for x amount of time while the device is being installed (even if its installed at the same time as other maintanence is done, its still a non-zero cost)

I'm confused, is it a "huge" cost, or a "non-zero" cost?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Spazmania]

Yeah, it really costs $100k. Custom Iridium devices of this character aren't terribly expensive, on the order of $500k to $1M to design and $5k-$10k each to manufacture in small quantities. The rest is the cost of putting it on the plane, maintaining it and paying for satellite service.

Iridium is an LEO satellite constellation. You only send the radio signal a few hundred miles, you you can basically point an antenna generically at the sky and talk. It doesn't require the kind of complex engineering that talking to a geostationary satellite from a moving vehicle would.

The report didn't say, but a device of this nature is most likely what was on he air france flight, sending in the maintenance reports.

Nevertheless, $100k is a lot of money. Would the passengers have been willing to pay more for the tickets so that their loved ones would have a slightly better idea where they crashed? Probably not.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Prime Mover]

per plane! All that times number of planes in the air, to solve a very limited problem. Black boxes work most of the time. There are very few entirely missing flights.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell THAT to the families!

If only the entire airline industry had bought 1 per plane, those people would still be.. well they'd still be dead.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[khallow]

It's also another thing to break which will keep the plane from flying. Also, what happens if the network goes down? Do we keep planes from flying until it comes back up?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Frobnicator]

I'm confused, is it a "huge" cost, or a "non-zero" cost?

Both, because you need to multiply it by planes in service.

A few seconds on Google shows there are around 20,000 registered commercial airliners, and around 145,000 registered aircraft (including commercial aircraft, corporate jets, personal airplanes, military aircraft, and so on.) It doesn't include non-registered aircraft, of which there are many.

But the costs multiply. So when you start with $100K for the device plus installation, you are looking at $14B for the first pass. Then your small annual fee multiplies to perhaps fifty million every year in upkeep and service fees.

If you are talking about a major aircraft like a commercial B777 passenger craft, the installation and upkeep is relatively small. These massive aircraft are expensive to buy and maintain. The amortized cost per passenger over a year's flights is going to be a fraction of a cent.

When you are talking about smaller craft like the super common Cessna 172, the device is going to be about 1/4 of the cost of the airplane. All the little utility aircraft are the most common type of aircraft, even though most of us only associate airplanes with the giant cargo jets and passenger flights.

Ultimately let's assume they are looking around $14B initial investment plus $50M/year continuous cost. All of that money to get a little information once every few years when an airplane gets lost over the ocean. Is it worth it? Perhaps it is worth it for the large commercial passenger airlines, but not for all aircraft.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

100K? no, it's not a lot of money when looking at the cost of an airplane.
Ticket increase might have been pennies.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[PrimaryConsult]

The cost is because it is "on an airplane" meaning it needs to be certified by FAA and other alphabet soup agencies around the world. And forget about firmware updates...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[mythosaz]

I had wanted to say just that. ...for only 100k, they'd still be dead, but, well, perhaps not.

Knowing exactly where a plane lands in the water might give an opportunity for an at-sea rescue of possible survivors -- should a giant plane smacking into the water allow for such a thing.

Of course, the cost versus lives always reminds me of this:

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

How much are those boxes? What's the cost to install them everywhere? What's our likelihood of a lawsuit?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[mythosaz]

Should we remove radios and radar and GPS from the planes too? After all, they're just another thing that can break.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[CapOblivious2010]

If you are talking about a major aircraft like a commercial B777 passenger craft, the installation and upkeep is relatively small. These massive aircraft are expensive to buy and maintain. The amortized cost per passenger over a year's flights is going to be a fraction of a cent.

Come on, let's do some math instead of just guessing at the answer: if a plane seats 200 people, flies 4 segments/day, 300 days/year, and the device has a useful life of 10 years, that's $100K / 10 / 300 / 4 / 200 = about 4 cents per passenger segment. An order of magnitude more than "a fraction of a cent", but still pretty close to negligible.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[icebike]

Wait, the sat service is already in place. You are simply talking about another data channel interleaved on the existing data channels these planes already stream back to the airlines and to Boeing/Airbus.

If airlines are going to start feeding passengers internet access they surely have time to insert a few OOB packets for event recording. I believe some of this is part of ACAS data streams.

The flight in question had GPS tracking for flight arrival information.
It went dead the same time as everything else. (EMP pulse?)

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[gnupun]

Nevertheless, $100k is a lot of money. Would the passengers have been willing to pay more for the tickets so that their loved ones would have a slightly better idea where they crashed? Probably not.

No, $100k is not a lot of money. Consider just the fuel cost: 10 hours flying time by a Boeing 747 consumes 36,000 gallons of fuel. That's around $100k or more.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern passenger aircraft have very frequent maintenance, fitting it then would be simple and relatively cheap with no extra downtime.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[LeeRyman]

I disagree,

Maintenance schedules are already extremely tight, and there is a great deal of engineering change procedures that would need to go into fitting something like this to ensure it actually works without making the aircraft fall out of the sky (would kind of make the device redundant). Mods are made, but not without extensive rigour and testing.

(And yes, I have worked in an aircraft through-life support industry)

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[khallow]

Should we remove radios and radar and GPS from the planes too?

Some planes in the US don't fly with any of that stuff. But in cases where those items are mandatory (which I gather is the case for commercial flight), then you don't fly when that equipment is broken.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[hey!]

What does it matter, on a plane like the 777 that costs $260 to $377 *million* dollars to acquire? That's less than 4 hundreths of a percent of the acquisition cost. 100K$ is peanuts on the scale of costs it takes to acquire and operate a large airliner.

And since it is not, strictly speaking, a piece of *safety* equipment, there's no need to take planes out of service to install it. Just require it on new planes, and maybe retrofit existing large airliners when they're down for major maintenance.

It seems likely to me that the probably reason this device isn't required is engineering conservatism. Before something like this is required, you have to convince people that (a) it's a good idea, and (b) this is a good implementation of that good idea.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

NO, black box recovery is a huge pain in the ass and it's dangerous.

However many planes have a system ALREADY INSTALLED, it's just used for maintenance.

And 100K really isn't much for an item that will be paid off over 30 years and 10's of thousands of passengers.

How many gallons of fuels does a 747 hold?
How much do you think it costs to fill up a 747?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
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just about 50,000 gallon, at about 6 bucks a gallon.
so 300K to fill it.
I used 747 to illistrate how little you know about airline numbers. Also, I happen to know a lot them.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[amicusNYCL]

Ultimately let's assume they are looking around $14B initial investment plus $50M/year continuous cost.

Why are we assuming that? A Cessna 172 has a maximum takeoff weight of 2400 pounds, while cockpit voice recorders are required on aircraft with a MTOW of over 12,500 pounds (5700kg). Why are we assuming that this technology to supplement a black box is going to be required on aircraft where a black box is not currently required?

This is aside from my initial point of calling out the parent because he sounds like a black box manufacturing shill opposed to any technology that might some day replace a black box, using easily-fungible terms like "huge cost" followed up by, well, it's at least a non-zero cost.

This is also aside from the fact that a private aircraft owner does not lose anything when his aircraft is "out of service". He's not losing passenger dollars. If I open up my Cessna or Piper for maintenance it doesn't cost me anything other than the parts. In short, exclude aircraft with a MTOW of less than 5700kg from your calculation and it will be much more realistic. Figure out how many aircraft are currently flying around with black boxes and you'll at least be in the neighborhood.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[mythosaz]

Great.

Should we remove that equipment, or are we better off with it?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Cederic]

How much are those boxes? What's the cost to install them everywhere? What's our likelihood of a lawsuit?

Multiply by the 78 other devices that might save a life one flight in 400 million.

Or just accept that airline travel is already exceedingly safe, and surprisingly cheap, and choose to fly or not.

should a giant plane smacking into the water allow for such a thing.

Technically, yes - see the Hudson river landing for a fine example. But see my point above, and accept that sometimes you hit the sea so hard you die from the impact, sometimes you drown, and sometimes - if you're lucky, just like 28 million other people that day - you land safely at your destination.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[cpotoso]

Your posting is close to non-sense. Who is saying that every Cessna 172 should have this device? We are talking about AIRLINERS, and in particular those that go transoceanic routes where radar tracking is not possible. On a 767-sized plane (and above) the $100k cost IS negligible when compared to other operational costs (fuel, crew, maintenance, insurance).

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[khallow]

Should we remove that equipment, or are we better off with it?

That's the question that should be asked about any such equipment. We have both costs and benefits more or less laid out. The benefit is that it provides better information for the times that planes are lost - when it works. And costs are that it's another critical piece of gear that has to work in order for the plane to fly. That's not just a $100k one time cost.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[rnturn]

How many of the ground stations that are supposed to be receiving this data will be reachable while flying over the open seas? Has the global network of receiving stations already been installed and merely awaiting the airlines to get off the dime and install the transmitters in the planes? Oh, maybe the airliners simply just switch to transmitting to satellites when they're over an ocean. Are those SVs in place yet? I don't think this system has been very well thought out yet. This proposal is a major, major overhaul to worldwide air travel and is going to cost a heck of a lot more than just $100K/commercial airliner.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[diamondmagic]

Also note that shifting the supply curve by $0.04 doesn't imply prices will go up by that much. While the cost virtually always means higher prices, if it's less than or more than four cents is entirely dependent on the dynamics of the particular market.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[AK Marc]

When you are talking about smaller craft like the super common Cessna 172, the device is going to be about 1/4 of the cost of the airplane.

Why would you install a black-box suppliment on a craft with no black box?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[westlake]

This is also aside from the fact that a private aircraft owner does not lose anything when his aircraft is "out of service".He's not losing passenger dollars.

"Privately owned" doesn't mean "recreational use only."

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[mjwx]

What does it matter, on a plane like the 777 that costs $260 to $377 *million* dollars to acquire? That's less than 4 hundreths of a percent of the acquisition cost. 100K$ is peanuts on the scale of costs it takes to acquire and operate a large airliner.

Costs to acquire are often not the highest costs. Same with this, it may cost $100K to purchase, but how much to keep running?

I read the article, the technology is flawed in two ways.
1, it depends on the instrumentation or pilots detecting something going wrong. One of the leading theories in the AF447 accident was that an instrument was reporting incorrectly.
2. it depends on satellite communication (which isn't cheap) and MH370 disappeared from RADAR and radio communications. What makes you think a dial on demand satellite connection would work.

Besides this, much like the summary the article is full of half baked assumptions, attacks on the aviation industry, emotive language and thought terminating cliche's in the place of fact or at least tests and results. The aviation industry rejected their devices before because they dont add any real value due to the flaws I mentioned above. They are essentially trying to use a tragedy to sell something of dubious value whilst people are too emotional to think critically. I think FLYHT are scum.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[jhol13]

I am willing to bet it costs $10'000 plus certification & type approval for aviation use.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[sunderland56]

United Air Lines: 700 planes, $100K each, that's $70 million. Their total profit last year was $400 million; so you're asking them to fork over 18% of their total profit, for *zero* additional revenue, and virtually zero benefit.

I'd rather them spend $100k per plane on safety improvements to help prevent planes from crashing in the first place.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Truth_Quark]

It is possible to be both. In fact a huge cost must be non-zero.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[El Puerco Loco]

Right, because lessons learned investigating an incident never have any safety implications for future operations.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[viperidaenz]

The people on the plan benefit.
The emergency responders know exactly what happened when things started going wrong. They'll know exactly what to look for and where to look.
They may be able to tell the pilot what they're doing is the wrong procedure to handle the emergency and save the plane and passengers.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Alex Zepeda]

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.

Re: Does it really cost $100k?

[AndrewBoos]

Yes it does. Privately owned planes that are not used commercially are governed by seperate rules versus the exact same plane that is going to be used commercially

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[nedlohs]

Sure, if you just ignore that when a plane you aren't on crashes that information can then be used to make the plane you fly on in the future safer. Which some people would consider a benefit of greater than ZERO.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[rnturn]

Yeah... Iridium. (Does it not suck now?) Yeah, the FAA says it can be used for aircraft communications though I'd bet they were thinking about voice communications. I rather doubt it'll be all that useful for emergencies unless the planes manage to keep the satellites in view while they're crashing. Doable, I suppose, if you had antennas on multiple points on the plane and a means of figuring out which one is "up" and can reach an Iridium satellite. (Maybe that's why the cost is $100K/plane.) A coworker was required to take an Iridium phone with him once while on travel to N. Canada -- where coverage is supposed to be great. For whatever reason, calls were limited to a window of availability and got dropped more than once. So aircraft dynamics and maybe the Iridium system itself could cause the data to be lost. A brief outage that would minimally affect voice communications would be a disaster if it occurred in the middle of the data stream containing all the crap that's going on while a plane is going down. Whoops! There's probably not going to be a second chance when the plane's in trouble so "poof" there goes that emergency data. Better not rip out all those black boxes just yet.

BTW, it looks like my mistake was to take the OP literally: that the data was going to be transmitted to the ground. (Note to self: don't submit a reply to a post and hit Return while you're still reading the crappy article linked to; over-caffeinated ACs will totally lose it.)

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

Most people involved in an airplane crash survive the accident.

are you high? did you just drink some sizzurp? why would you think that most people in an airplane crash survive the accident? Note that the only planes that could benefit from this locator are planes that disappear in mid-flight, because if they have a crash on the ground or in take-off/landing, then everybody already knows where it is.

I assure you that when a plane falls out of the sky somewhere over the ocean, the survival rate is not high.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

we're missing the obvious solution to the communication problem. why not make it illegal for planes to fly over water? then they'll always be in contact with land. sometimes the problem is right in front of you!

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[tlhIngan]

It seems likely to me that the probably reason this device isn't required is engineering conservatism. Before something like this is required, you have to convince people that (a) it's a good idea, and (b) this is a good implementation of that good idea.

Don't forget the politics.

First off - that device presumably transmits to a satellite. Who owns the satellite? Very important question - is it owned by an American company? Russian? etc. etc. etc.

Secondly, the satellite beams data back to the ground. Who owns that ground station? The company? Is it run by a country?

Thirdly, who owns the data? Is it stored on an American server? Russian server? Malaysian server?

It's very easy to say that every plane should be equipped with this. But the politics are what are likely to derail it first.

If it's an American satellite going to an American owned ground station and American servers, well, the US government might use it as a "right" to know the passenger details of every flight it records. The US does it for every flight that overflies its airspace, even if it doesn't stop in the US. Boeing and others actually start designing their planes to have enough range to go from Canada to Mexico AROUND US airspace so those flights don't have to give the US any information at all.

Then there are the countries that distrust the US. Snowden, anyone?

Then there are questions about data longevity, whether it reports voice (i.e., it does cockpit voice recording) which brings up its OWN can of worms (why do you think we have fligth data recorders with thousands of channels of information and storage for tens, if not hundreds, of flights, and CVRs haven't gone beyond 30 minutes of recording? (Granted, the modern CVR now has around 6+ channels of audio recorded simultaneously on solid state media)

In fact, it's the whole politics that makes ICAO move so slowly - it takes many years to implement rules across the board.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

if we're going to spend money on airplane safety why don't we actually spend it on something that makes passengers safer???

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

listen up. there's no doubt that this plane will be found. unknown when, but it will be found and the black boxes recovered and we will learn all sorts of best practices. This whole conversation is about spending money to find planes faster than we currently do. which is a waste of money.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[reub2000]

why would you think that most people in an airplane crash survive the accident?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=airplane+...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

but the subset of crashes in question are those in which planes fall out of the sky. You know, from 30,000ft. Into the ocean. can you google survival statistics for those?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[reub2000]

How do you know the plane is in the ocean? It's certainly possible that it crashed into one of the islands in the area.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Joce640k]

Can't we just get the copilot to throw the black box out of the window before they hit the sea?

Much cheaper...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[bugnuts]

No, it does not. It might cost $5M to develop, but $100k per unit is over the top if adopted by most major airlines.

I've done black box programming for military aircraft among other things. A flight data recorder might cost that much, possibly more. Remember, they not only have to record data, but have to be able to SURVIVE a crash, including salt water, acid, fire, pressure, and impact. But the added tech to stream it would be nowhere near $100k per device. It could be added on easily to the next generation of flight data recorders. This tech would NOT have to survive a crash, and that makes it a lot easier to build and prove/verify.

There are a *lot* of hurdles to jump through for doing commercial airline embedded systems which adds to the cost tremendously (and fortunately I was working on military craft), but I still think it could easily be added onto the next generation of FDR at far less than $100k per plane.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[invictusvoyd]

I propose a $100 radio beacon installed in the blackbox . And a $100 sonar beacon to be auto activated if the blackbox is under water .

total cost : $200 + $100 ( fitting , maint .etc )

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[hax4bux]

"Privately owned" damn sure does not mean "scheduled carrier" either.

The mandatory equipment lists are different for turbine aircraft and they are also different for type of service. If all you know is based on your Mom's Cessna then you need more quality time w/the FAR/AIM.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[JeremyWH]

Or... if you can only fly over land, then make it illegal for them to take off and they can taxi all the way

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[quintesse]

Ehm sorry? I would definitely *not* pay another $100 dollars on the off chance that *if* my plane crashes (very very unlikely) my remains will *perhaps* get found a little bit sooner. Really, I'm dead already, I won't care. And my family isn't going to pay that $100 either. "Hey you want to pay $100 for my flight so you can rest assured that if I die you'll know exactly where?". I'm sure they'll be thrilled.

The plane won't be any *safer* for that $100, not one bit.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[peragrin]

that's just installation.

What about ongoing data fees?

your cell phone costs $500.
You monthly data plan costs $100 a month. Satellite communications is far more expensive than a simple cell service.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[N1AK]

Nevertheless, $100k is a lot of money. Would the passengers have been willing to pay more for the tickets so that their loved ones would have a slightly better idea where they crashed? Probably not.

The solution being proposed here is that all black box data is constantly sent back from the plane. What I think you've highlighted is that 99% of the real benefit is just knowing where the fuck it was, getting the black box data a little faster really isn't that important. So the question is really is it worth playing that much for all the data if there is a cheaper solution that would just provide location information?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[N1AK]

This tech would NOT have to survive a crash, and that makes it a lot easier to build and prove/verify.

That's a big assumption and one I'm certain won't be accurate if this tech did get implemented. Unless the data transfer tech is 100% accurate until the planes complete destruction then investigators are going to want a crash resistant unit so that they can recover it if the transfer fails or is incomplete.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[dave420]

Are you being this obtuse on purpose? The leading method of improving passenger safety is investigation of crashes. This has been the case since the very first crash was investigated. Any device which gets information from a plane in distress has a very strong possibility of directly leading to saved lives, simply due to the very obvious fact that what we learn from one crash helps prevent others of a similar nature.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[dave420]

Planes are not always found in a reasonable amount of time, and each second a plane is flying with a defect which could be fixed by knowing what's in the missing black boxes is a second of risk that otherwise would not exist. This really isn't difficult to grasp, and at a cost of a ~1/3rd of a tank (for a 747) to install, it seems bizarre you're so angry about them. It's not as if these devices come with axe-heads installed in the back of each seat, or need to be installed using burning bags of puppies over the course of 75,000 years. Did one of these boxes smack your mother around or something??

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Alioth]

You're not going to fit it to a C172, though. Small GA planes don't have a requirement for a flight data recorder and many other things a large airliner must carry.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Alioth]

GPS tracking of the flight? Unlikely. Flight arrival information was likely taken off an ATC feed from secondary surveillance radar.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[DerPflanz]

That's like saying "yeah, but of the crashes in which nobody survives, what are are the odss then, huh!?"

It is about the amount of money you have to spend to save lives. And yes, there is a price for a human life. You have to outfit *all* planes for this system to work, so you have to take *all* crashes into consideration.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[wagnerrp]

Presumably this device would only supplement the "black box", while the original hardened storage device would remain in the aircraft.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Skater]

They have those already - at least the sonar one. It pings for up to 30 days once it hits the water. The issue is that you have to be relatively close to the plane to hear the pinging. Even with Air France 447 when the ACARS data told us where the plane was as it was crashing, it still took almost two years and several searches to find the hull of the plane. In this case, it appears everyone spent the last several days looking in the wrong place, because the military either didn't report or no one listened to their report of spotting the plane in a very different, unexpected location over an hour after it disappeared off the civilian radar. I hope someone in charge wrote down that lesson.

As for the cost of the devices: How much is this search costing the countries involved? It's probably enough to pay for installation on quite a few airliners at this point...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[CapOblivious2010]

Just for the record, I'm not suggesting that the 4 cent (or 9 cent) cost makes it worthwhile - I just got tired of reading wild speculation about the costs, and decided to do a little math and come up with a better answer. You're right about the 2 segments per day - short-haul flights do more, but when those crash it's over land, so they tend to be found pretty quickly. Only those flying over water would benefit from this system.

And I do think it's fair (and helpful) to bring it down to a per-passenger level. Sure, the airlines operate at a large scale, so any fleet-wide investment will cost zillions, and any fleet-wide savings will save zillions. But that's compared to overall costs in the mega-zillions, so the numbers are almost meaningless to most people. Suppose someone wanted to eliminate the padding on the seats, and just have you sit on bare metal, and quoted a large dollar figure savings - the first thing I'd do is estimate the per-passenger savings: if it's $50-$100 per pax, then it could make a big difference in ticket prices (PLEASE let's not go off on a tangent about how the greedy bastards at the airline would just keep the difference!) ... if it's $0.05 per pax, then no, even the meager comfort of the standard seat cushion is worth a nickle to me (besides, your metal seat couldn't be used as a flotation device)

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[wagnerrp]

Considering these investigations take months or even years to conclude, and usually identify the pilot or ground crew doing something stupid rather than following their training, and even if they do find some engineering or procedural fault that they develop a recommendation to fix, it takes years for the FAA and ICAO to adopt and implement, will the few extra weeks spent trying to discover the black box of the highly uncommon crash at sea with no transponder or RADAR data really make that much of a difference?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[wagnerrp]

I think some of the deep space data protocols would be more appropriate for use than TCP, or even IP in general.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[wagnerrp]

What for? We already have the FDR for recovery after the crash. Why would a transmitter which streams a duplicate copy of the data through a satellite also need to survive the crash intact and functional?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[JumboMessiah]

I agree. The submitter doesn't know the industry. It's also a rather dubious claim becuase ACARS is fitted to every 777 that rolls off the line from Boeing. This includes ACARS with SATCOM, VHF, and HF capability. There's no need to "install" it.

The only argument is did Malaysian airlines fully utilize the service. To receive ACARS data remotely requires a subscription service to SITA, which can be rather expensive. No go and force this on an airline that's been on the verge of bankruptcy for quite some time.

There's no mandate that airlines use remote ACARS and I don't believe that they should be. Locating the aircraft sooner will not bring those people back. The submitter also forgets that it took 2 years to recover the FDR and CVR from AF447 and that plane sent loads of ACARS data via SATCOM link prior to the crash.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[bingoUV]

But then market economics isn't a great way to popularize these devices. The person who pays (passenger) is not the one who benefits (passenger in following years). Making the devices mandatory appears to be the only way.

Though the airline does say this particular aircraft had 4 independent ELT devices, of 2 different types each, at least one of which should have croaked.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[bingoUV]

Possibly they are American. Cellphone doesn't cost anything, monthly data plan costs $300.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Joce640k]

Why stop there?

I'm sure there's a $200,000 device which is even better than this, and a $500,000 device which is even better than that. After they're installed we can rip them out and install the $1,000,000 device that somebody else just invented.

Best of all: Give each passenger their very own aircraft so that if one of them fails then all the other passengers will be perfectly safe, even in the case of a terrorist attack!!

Or...we can be sensible.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[bingoUV]

But if you make it illegal for planes to fly on water, only illegal planes will fly on water!!

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[coofercat]

No no no. Just make the plane go up into the sky and wait for the earth to rotate to the correct location and then come back down again. No flying involved - in fact, you could just use helicopters and then no planes would need to be involved either. How many people die in trans-continental helicopter trips? None, that's how many. Clearly they've got to be better than all these flying coffins we call 'aeroplanes'.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[LoRdTAW]

Most jet fuel supplied to large municipal airports is piped in directly from refineries so the cost is much lower, about half of your $6. Source: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refoth_dcu_nus_m.htm

Small airports that cater to private planes, charter airlines and private jets have more expensive fuel as they have the fuel trucked in.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[snsh]

Most people are never involved in an airplane crash. Making air travel more expensive makes travel a tiny bit less safe, because more people will drive instead of fly.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Shortguy881]

Thank you. If only I had mod points. Its seems most people on this thread have $100,000 to throw around.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Stargoat]

Most people on this thread understand that a cheap Boeing 737 costs about 60 million USD. For $100,000, knowing that an jetliner could not be lost, that is a sum the public may demand that the airlines pay. That is to say, for about 1/10 of 1% of the cost of a very cheap jetliner, this sort of massive charlie foxtrot would likely not take place again.

Further, there is a long tradition of government interference being required in the transportation industry to force changes that benefit overall public safety. Railroad history is rife with them, including entire political parties (The Grange) put together in an effort to boost regulation of a necessary industry. If the government is going to give away airports and airspace, allow jetliners to dump pollutants into the air, and provide gaterape security, then it is not unreasonable to ask airline companies to pony up 1/10th of 1% of the cost of an airplane to improve security.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Talderas]

According to that link there's an article which helps break data down.

One thing to note is that I didn't get a good definition for what constitutes an accident so the only thing I have to go off of is "fatal accident".

40% of fatal accidents occur during landing. Survival rates were 18% in 1970s and 20% in 2000-2009.
En route accidents result with survival rates of 11% in 1970s and 7% In 2000-2009.

What the data does show is that if you have a serious accident during a flight, your chances of survival are greatly diminished. That makes sense because the forces involved during en route accidents are going to be far greater than takeoff or landing when the plane is travelling at a much slower speed.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Strider-]

GPS tracking of the flight? Unlikely. Flight arrival information was likely taken off an ATC feed from secondary surveillance radar.

Actually, most flight tracking at least over land, is done via ACARS, which is a VHF radio system that beacons the aircraft position, altitude, etc... as well as allows sending of short messages. This is in addition to the radar transponder system.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Strider-]

Most jet fuel supplied to large municipal airports is piped in directly from refineries so the cost is much lower, about half of your $6. Source: http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pe... [eia.gov]

Uhmm, not necessarily true. YVR, the second busiest airport in Canada, has all of its jet fuel trucked in from the Cherry Point refinery in Washington State. There is a proposal to lay a pipeline, but NIMBY is proving a pain to overcome. I'm sure this is the case for many other airports as well.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

Sine there are device that d this, and many, if not all, new large aircraft use them for maintenance, I don't think it's a large an issue as you seem to think.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Immerman]

If prices rise less than $0.04 then the airline has a disincentive to install the device - after all it's not like planes get lost very often, and if you can find the plane the black box does pretty much the same job.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[tlhIngan]

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?

ACARS is pretty standard nowadays for airliners as a way to communicate with crews beyond radio range, especially to warn them about sudden changing weather and other things.

Heck, I would be surprised if the 777 didn't already have it built into the FMS avionics by default - the value alone for not having to physically get a Quick Access Recorder (QAR - basically a flight data recorder meant for quick access to flight data for maintenance crews) every flight is often worth it.

Of course, if Malaysia Airlines is really in financial trouble that they've stopped paying service providers, then the caginess is probably expected - it's Malaysian Airlines. The pride and joy of Malaysia and its national airline. If it gets revealed it's in trouble it would be very embarrassing to the people who run it, and to the Malaysian government. Enough so that heads may literally roll over it (while Malaysia doesn't have the guillotine, they may decide the embarrassment is worth the sentence).

It's part of what makes this case so fascinating. I mean even the reports of the Malaysian military tracking its flight after it left radar is interesting (standard protocol worldwide is to intercept UFOs - a fighter escort to at least identify and potentially shoot down unknown aircraft). Or that it turned around - when the seatbelt sign goes off, the airplane is being flown by autopilot (because only it can really maintain the flight profile - the window of airspeed is really small - 10 kts or less - too slow you stall, too fast you overspeed, and only the autopilot can maintain safe flight) which is programmed by the flight management system on the ground per the flight plan. It was the reason why that Greek flight a number of years back (everyone incapacitated by pressurization problems) simply flew to its holding position until it ran out of fuel.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Russ1642]

And a 10% "shop supply" surcharge, just like a Ford auto shop.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[X0563511]

Have you been over the ocean often? There's hardly an island to trip over every few miles...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Immerman]

Actually, I would suspect an ocean landing to generally have a higher initial survival rate than an overland one. After all you're presumably gliding in at speed, and the ocean tends to be a lots smoother,softer, and less obstacle-filled than land. If both wings fall off and you literally fall out of the sky on the other hand, well then yeah, survival rates are likely extremely low no matter what's underneath you, but that's an *extremely* rare case. Far more likely that you partially lose engines, control systems, or cabin pressure and have to attempt an emergency landing.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

300-400 people, and a life of 30+ years.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[deadweight]

Well I kind of did that. I fly my family myself with no one I don't know on the plane.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

sigh. Those costs ARE the costs at the airport.
I know they are piped. If not you would never get to the airport to do all the tankers haul fuel.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Immerman]

That's why we have black boxes. This device would only help in the *exceedingly rare* case where the black box is never recovered. In this particular instance all communication was lost with the plane without warning. The obvious options seem to be sudden massive electrical fault, sabotage, or hijacking with pilot collusion. All of which would presumably have severed the datalink with the $100,000 "glass box" as well. All early-warning benefits could as easily be gained from an on-board expert system monitoring the feed to the black box.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[deadweight]

Remember, "accident" includes the time I hit the "no parking" sign with my wing and knocked it over The number of crashes where the passengers died because no one could find them is fairly small and almost nonexistant with commercial jet airplanes. If the people were alive the emergency beacons on the plane would also have survived and would have been picked upo by now. The new 406 MHZ beacons work very well.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Phil-14]

"The flight in question had GPS tracking for flight arrival information.
It went dead the same time as everything else. (EMP pulse?)"

Based on the reports I read yesterday, the pilot turned off the location transponder and took a right angle turn on a course that's roughly headed towards Bandar Aceh. (I think that's how it's spelled). The initial post's idea would work well if the plane only had mechanical difficulties and crashed. This does not seem to be the case; it was on the other side of the Malay Peninsula from where it was supposed to be when the military radar lost it; that wasn't something it did because of mechanical difficulties or engine failure.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

If it cost 1 cent, would it be a waste of money?
No? well then we agree and we are only discussing what cost is a waste of money. and less 1 cent per passenger per segment is about what the cost of this device will be when spread over it's life time; which is how business handle costs.

This device exists, and most, if not all, new commercial aircraft can hove one put in as part of regular aircraft, assuming they don't already have an ACARS system installed.

  I assume that if you are bleeding heavily after an accident, but people don't want to help you becasue it might ruin there 20 dollar shirt, you would be fine dying.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

"and usually identify the pilot or ground crew doing something stupid rather than following their training,"
false.

" data really make that much of a difference?"
IF their are survivors, yes, yes it makes a difference. See "Alive!" for one example.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[dysmal]

Better yet, make it illegal for planes to crash. That'll solve everything!

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[geekoid]

So tired of your, and peoples like you, ignorance. You talk like you know something, but you are pretty clueless.

start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

And try to understand that these systems are already used for maintenance. The actual discussion by people at the grown up table is about expanding the protocol beyond maintenance into constant use.
Among other issues you don't have the background to grasp at this time.
Yes, we should way costs and benefits, but since a large portion of these costs are already sunk, and we are talking about a device that is already used, and spreading that costs for 10+ years, it's a few pennies per ticket, in the worst cost case.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[icebike]

The military is now denying those reports, and there's no confirmation of any changes in course. Further, all electronic signals were lost simultaneously.
There's no evidence the pilot turned off anything.

Pays to keep up with the news.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[marcosdumay]

There is already equipment available to guide rescue people, and they work on about any place where the passengers have hope of surviving.

Dead people don't care how long the rescue takes.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[MrNaz]

Some cheap android device + sat phone. Duct tape those two devices anywhere on the plane where you can feed then 5V.

Problem solved. I understand the safety precautions etc, but streaming critical data would not be a huge data stream, and we solved that problem with very small devices a long time ago. Building a device with a GPS module, accelerometer and satphone chipset would be enough to give basic positional and attitudinal data and would be completely isolated from the rest of the plane's systems except for the 5V feed.

You do NOT need a $100k contractor sourced device to add "tracking of last resort" functionality t a plane.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[chfriley]

You are right, kind of like Critter 592 (ValuJet). Went into the Everglades in Florida like a lawn dart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[noh8rz10]

Why don't we let the businessmen make the business decisions, huh? Instead of being back seat QBs?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[mythosaz]

That's the question that should be asked about any such equipment.

Which is why I asked it. Are you ever going to answer?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[khallow]

What value does this add? Glancing through your posts, here's what I get - correct me if I missed anything:

1) It can save lives, if there are any survivors and they crashed in a remote area (see Alive).

2) It would lower the cost by not requiring us to recover black boxes.

But let's look at those claims. For the first one, the example is in 1972. Things have changed since. Why do we need to try so hard to solve an already solved 40 year old problem?

For the second claim, we would still need to recover black boxes and other parts of the aircraft - especially if the telemetry wasn't working at the time of the crash.

Then you have a couple of arguments claiming the costs aren't that high such as it being "pennies" per passenger. As I already noted, it becomes another item to break and delay the plane flight - that puts it well beyond pennies per passenger right there. Second, there are costs per flight above just buying the system such as the maintenance check of the system and any licensing fees.

Then you argue that the system is already in use for maintenance reporting. The difference there is that it doesn't have to work. They can fly a plane with a broken system in that case.

Finally, there is the opportunity for a large scale mess, if the system for receiving this telemetry stops working. Then you have not just one plane but hundreds or thousands. Do you ground all of them, especially if they don't have black boxes?

So tired of your, and peoples like you, ignorance.

Then stop being part of the problem. Do you seriously believe that airlines are resisting this proposal merely because they want to save perhaps as much as a few million dollars over 30 years? That's nothing compared to the costs that you ignore.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[wagnerrp]

" data really make that much of a difference?" IF their are survivors, yes, yes it makes a difference. See "Alive!" for one example.

There's no transponder data. There's no radio communications of any sort. When all those other systems have failed, what makes you think this data logger would magically continue working?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[camperdave]

The only way they'll always be in contact with land is to forbid the planes from taking off in the first place. Just have them travel along the autobahns, the interstates, and freeways of the world.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Spazmania]

Well, no, it isn't. Iridium data channels don't have the capacity for that. RUDICS data streams take a long time to establish (on the order of a minute), move only a couple hundred bytes per second and drop frequently under good conditions. SBD shots are more likely to work, but you can only deliver a 2000 byte packet once every minute or two.

I don't know which one the advertiser's device uses but either way it's only enough for periodic snapshots of the data not a continuous send.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Patch86]

Put it another way- can you name a single instance, in the long history of aviation, where a fault has taken down first one plane, and then another before the black box was recovered? Just one?

If the answer is "no", then this probably isn't a problem. Most faults do not take down multiple planes because planes are operated under excruciating quality control which remove most "frequent" faults long before they occur. And black boxes are almost always recovered quickly (via conventional means) in any case. So this would only be useful in an extreme minority of crashes- ones with an extremely specific (and rare) variety of fault and where the black box cannot be recovered using its transponder or just by looking for the wreckage.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[luther349]

it all depends on how it went down and what failed and if it led to lose of control. in the case of engine failed related crashes yes in most cases most or all are still alive but fire gets to them. in the case of the one that ditched in the Hudson everyone lived. in this crash being they cant find the craft or only bits of it that tells you they hit the water near terminal velocity meaning nobody lived.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[Alex Zepeda]

The latest I've seen was this:

http://www.themalaysianinsider... ... which claims that Rolls did indeed get some engine data, and that MH does pay for ACARS. If MH 370 did turn around, that seems a bit unlike the ZU 522 because the intended flight path was nowhere near the Malacca Straits.

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[luther349]

not all accident end with nobody living. in most cases the failer is not enough to bring down the craft suddenly and they make it back to the airport. but those story's don't make good headlines. in most cases you have like a pan pan pan incident basically meaning hes having some problems and would like to land to get it fixed right away like instrument malfunction or failed engine. .

Re: Does it really cost $100k?

[dcw3]

Please correct me if I'm wrong (I only worked up to instrument rating), but I thought that it was based upon the pilot, not the aircraft. Can't a commercially rated pilot utilize a private aircraft for commercial purposes?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[SanitaryFather]

What does the cost matter when the transponder was cut off or suddenly lost power? If someone disabled the device, the same would have happened to whatever device they install. How much data can a computer transmit when it is turned off, broken, or disabled?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[CapOblivious2010]

Technically the device might last 30 years, but come on - it's electronics! If electronic gadgets last a decade before they get replaced by newer versions, they're doing pretty good How many electronic gadgets do you have from 1984 that are still in use?

Re:Does it really cost $100k?

[belmolis]

The other issue is, though, how much would such a system contribute to flight safety. Information about what went wrong may contribute in the long term to flight safety, but in the short term such systems won't prevent crashes. They will just tell us where to look for the bodies.

not worth it

[rcarsey]

black boxes are almost always recovered. the only thing it would save is a big oceanic search -- how often does that happen?

Re:not worth it

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I also wonder what prevented the COSPAS-SARSAT system from helping in this case. Or is it just that they don't equip the planes with these beacons? That would seem strange to me.

Re:not worth it

[quenda]

Yeah, that $100k is per aircraft. So two billion dollars for the world's commercial fleets. (around 20,000 jetliners)
That's makes the search and recovery of black boxes look cheap. Very rarely is one lost permanently.

Re:not worth it

[CohibaVancouver]

how often does that happen?

About every five years, apparently.

Re:not worth it

[ron_ivi]

black boxes are almost always recovered

Except when planes crash?

Seems the 9/11 planes' were lost too. http://911research.wtc7.net/pl...

Re:not worth it

[GumphMaster]

COSPAS-SARSAT is not useful unless the aircraft ELT is activated (manually or automatically), intact, and and above ground/water. The aircraft ELT is not active/visible and the crew never called mayday, squawked 7500 (hijacked), 7600 (radio failure) or 7700 (emergency). That's why this is quite a mystery.

Re:not worth it

[mythosaz]

Those boxes might have been lost, but you couldn't possibly have picked a less credible site.

Re:not worth it

[geekoid]

The cost of recovery is more then the cost of one of these. Here is a novel idea, what is it was live and we didn't need to recover, faulty, black boxes anymore?

Re:not worth it

[geekoid]

NO IT DOES NOT. Does no one here have a grasp of basic business accounting, and large numbers?

It cost 500K to fill at 747 with fuel.
This devices would be a 1 time 100k cost spread out of 30 years, and be paid for by millins and million of tickets.

Re:not worth it

[amicusNYCL]

Seems the 9/11 planes' were lost too.

Damnit. Just think, if we would have recovered that equipment then we could have figured out why the planes crashed.

Re:not worth it

[Cederic]

Plus, technically they weren't lost. We know where they ended up. In landfill.

I mean, in the wreckage of the two-towers.

Re:not worth it

[GumphMaster]

Flight data and cockpit voice recorders are only ever recovered when the plane crashes. "Recovering" them before then is called "maintenance."

Re:not worth it

[uncqual]

The systems will require maintenance, periodic testing, and failure diagnosis. Also, it's likely that some sort of upgrades would be required over a 30 year service period.

Deploying these widely would also require maintaining the Iridium system indefinitely (rarely is a "safety feature" eliminated once instituted).

Characterizing it as "one time only" cost is not accurate although I have no idea what recurring costs would be.

Re:not worth it

[quenda]

We are not saying it is unaffordable.
We say the cost exceeds the very rare benefits.

Re:not worth it

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, I do understand that the beacons often need to be activated automatically, for example, on ships where a "distress situation" is not easily detected by simple sensors. But why airplanes - machines which often don't give their crews much time to think about stuff - should require any such device to be activated automatically is a mystery to me. Also, I assumed that unlike many other things (in airplanes especially), the C-S beacons are reasonably simple specifically to be reliable.

Re:not worth it

[GumphMaster]

But why airplanes - machines which often don't give their crews much time to think about stuff - should require any such device to be activated automatically is a mystery to me.

I think you mean manually. The devices fitted to commercial airliners (like the Artex B406) do not require manual activation, but they do allow it (and the ability to manually activate is a requirement under TSO C91a). Manual activation is useful for a controlled aircraft in immanent danger of loss, e.g. out of fuel mid-Pacific, because it ensures the signal gets out before the crash could impair the device. G-load triggered activation is useful when the event is, as you say, quick. Automatic activation is not certain though.

Re:not worth it

[smhsmh]

The costs of maintenance and testing of new "black box" systems ought not be different in magnitude to the current costs of maintenance and testing for current 1960's black box systems. Probably less.

Let's start thinking outside the box. What else could be improved in black box machinery? Two things occur to me right off.

(1) If I understand current practice, there are two independent black boxes. One collects a large amount instrument readings from the plane, and the other records sounds (voice) in the cockpit. This separation might have made sense in the '60s, but any trash piece of hardware ought be capable of recording both. By all means planes should have two independent recording black boxes, but if they each collect _all_ the data, then it would only be necessary to recover one after an incident.

(2) Black boxes are necessarily designed to survive serious impact and submersion in salt water under extreme pressure for nearly indefinite time. But if both are both securely attached (to the airframe?) somewhere in back (where they are most likely to survive impact) in a sea crash they will be somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Perhaps some system could be devised so that one black box (or perhaps a third) could be external to the plane, attached in a way that would quickly disintegrate in salt water, or upon severe impact, and furthermore, have positive buoyancy (it floats).

Item (2) could turn a difficult retrieval problem into an easier retrieval problem, but I recognize that anything that makes an external black box easy to separate from a plane would create a danger of unintended separation. Obviously, separation can't be dependent on water, since planes must taxi and fly through rainstorms. But perhaps a modern flight recorder with its independent power and sonar beepers could be constructed inside a box less than a pound, such that a rare separation from the host aircraft would be less of a hazard to those on the ground, and an insignificant detriment to the plane's aerodynamics. I believe we humans can currently design and launch satellites with similar performance/weight ratios.

(Just thinking --- thinking isn't in my job description.)

Re:not worth it

[smhsmh]

A little more thinking outside current boxes.

Continuous position and status reporting to a satellite communication system doesn't seem to hugely costly compared to pumping fuel into those engines, but let's consider whether there are alternatives to satellite telemetry.

Supplose planes could redundantly record the black-box data stream for one another. At an average altitude of 30,000 feet, direct-sight transmissions carry about 300 miles. If planes transmitted promiscuously to one another, and every plane recorded what it received, then the black-box data for every plane would usually be available within hours after an incident. Commercial airliners travel well under 600 MPH, so it is exceedingly rare that an airliner at cruise altitude is not within 300 miles of any other airliner.

Re:not worth it

[Jack Griffin]

Firstly $100k seems awfully expensive for what is effectively basic satellite telemetry that you can buy from you local electronic shop for $1000. I'm pretty sure someone else could make the same thing for $10k-$20k. Secondly you don't need the expensive model for all 20k planes. Most of those jets do domestic short haul runs overland and can use existing cellular. I would imagine the requirement would only be for the thousand or so intercontinental jets flying over the 3 major oceans. So your $2Bil turns into only a few million dollars over the entire industry, or chump change to people who are used to writing out cheques in hundreds of millions of dollars. And the requirement doesn't have to be immediate, like most sensible things, you phase them in over time to make the overall cost near zero over the long term.

Re:not worth it

[Jack Griffin]

Recurring costs would be near zero. You already have qualified people doing regular maintenance on similar equipment they merely have to add one more item to the list. Another 10 minutes per plane every year wouldn't even show up on the ledger.

Re:not worth it

[wagnerrp]

Commercial airliners travel well under 600 MPH

A few months ago, flying eastbound out of SLC in a 737, we had a ground track of well over 700MPH. Tail winds are fun.

Re:not worth it

[wagnerrp]

You don't simply recover the FDR. You recover each and every piece of the aircraft you possibly can, so the investigators can attempt to rebuild the aircraft. The cost would be incurred even if there was no FDR to search for.

Re:not worth it

[quenda]

I would imagine the requirement would only be for the thousand or so intercontinental jets flying over the 3 major oceans.

MH370 is not intercontinental, or over ocean, but it was out of cellular range when it was lost.

Re:not worth it

[azadrozny]

I do think this technology make sense, but I am sure this would not be a one-for-one replacement of the the traditional black box. The black box would need to kept as a backup in case the transmitter fails. That also means that investigators will inevitably want to recover the physical device, to verify what was transmitted via wireless, even in cases where there was no interruption in the feed from the aircraft. That being said, you would likely be able to narrow your search area in cases like these since you would have some telemetry up to the point of a catastrophic failure.

Re:not worth it

[camperdave]

How exactly does one squawk a radio failure? It's like that WKRP episode when terrorists blew up the transmitter. Bailey Quarters says [on the phone] "Now how can we announce that we are off the air when we are off the air?"

Re:not worth it

[GumphMaster]

There is more than one radio on an aircraft. Your transponder should be set to squawk 7600 if your normal voice communications have ceased functioning, i.e. ATC cannot reach you, or you them, through normal channels. Typically if the aircraft is in controlled airspace they would switch to visual flight rules and land at the earliest opportunity (unless VFR is not possible in which case the last approved route is followed to a suitable landing). Attempts to regain communication from the ground may use emergency frequencies, voice features of NAVAIDs, light signals, or commands to change the aircraft state to acknowledge receipt (in case of transmit only failure). This would be a very unlikely event on a commercial jet given the redundancy on board (typically 3 x VHF radio, 2 x HF, 2 x Sat,even the transponders are redundant).

Here is a typical B777 audio control panel and radio control panel. Any pilot can use any radio or listen to audio components of the redundant navigation aid receivers.

Re:not worth it

[rpstrong]

Squawking comes from the transponder (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T..., a device that transmits a four digit code. Setting the transponder to 7600 means that your communications radios are out of service, not that your transponder radio is broken.

Lat / Long?

[CohibaVancouver]

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of -

- Flight Number
- Lat / Long
- Airspeed
- Groundspeed
- Altitude
- Compass heeding

...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

Re:Lat / Long?

[dbarron]

That's very doable and could probably be put in one or maybe a couple of packets of data. Given that I know nothing specifically about airplane systems, still one would expect you could install a stand alone black box that gathers and transmits this data w/o even integrating it into any systems besides onboard power. Relative compass heading and airspeed are easily derivable from last GPS positions. I can't understand why it would REQUIRE 100K per plane to do this.

Re:Lat / Long?

[lesincompetent]

Couldn't simply ACARS be adapted to do this?

Re:Lat / Long?

[amicusNYCL]

Something like that already exists.

Re:Lat / Long?

[manu144x]

Don't they already have that recorded by all radars the aircraft goes through?

Re:Lat / Long?

[Overzeetop]

They already do that. That system failed for an unknown reason.

Also, at 900fps, a jet travels in the neighborhood of 50 miles just between 5 minute beacons. It's better than nothing, but a 50 mi x N mi grid search of the ocean floor is pretty much a non-starter in most areas of the globe.

Re:Lat / Long?

[x0ra]

Because it already exist. That's how you can follow a plane travel from sitting comfortably in your couch surfing the internet. The real problem appears where the uplink to the ground is broken and the plane "crash".

Re:Lat / Long?

[DriedClexler]

Fine, as long as we don't make it a *general* policy to adopt Steve Ballmer's jargon.

Re:Lat / Long?

[TWX]

One could even integrate this kind of thing into the mesh network concept, where aircraft and ground stations simply routinely exchange their data as a sort of near-field-communication thing for the skies.

It could work along the same lines as the early shared-bandwidth ethernet model:

• Plane, on takeoff and once away from range of the airport (which could be a predetermined value and could even be unique to any given airport) starts listening, and starts a random count to transmit (like the CSMA/CD negotiation for Ethernet). The aircraft is listening for basic data such as grandparent post outlined.
• If aircraft detects a transmission from another, it simply notes the sender ID and checks if it has previous data on that sender. If it does it simply appends to the log on the sender, otherwise it starts a new log with that sender's ID.
• If there's no one transmitting, the aircraft transmits.
• If the aircraft detects a special node, like a ground-based node, and if no one is transmitting, the aircraft transmits its flight history information, and then transmits the collected information on other aircraft. This could be on a different frequency so to avoid interrupting the real-time data from aircraft.
• When the aircraft lands, it uploads all of the history on itself and on other aircraft to the airport. Depending on the airline or nation, it may then delete the logs of other aircraft or it may hold on to them, but it holds on to its own logs until maintenance clears them. Once it takes off, the process repeats itself.

To me this isn't all that difficult of a concept, though it would require mandatory participation among commercial jets to be most effective. It would also require that the system couldn't readily be turned off either, so that a hijacker can't disable it.

Re:Lat / Long?

[quarterbuck]

This is standard on all commercial flights and all airplanes outside US.It is called ADS-B . In addition all aircrafts in US (except homebuilts) have transponders which transmit atleast part of the information (altitude, speed). You can even watch airplanes fly pretty much live on a webpage (These guys were the first to figure out that Asiana flight crashed in California).
The problem is not transmitting, it is tracking all of them real-time with accuracy. A minute delay in receiving/processing signals mean a 60 mile error in location, similarly a few feet error in altitude means big error in speed etc. In this particular case, atleast two radars had the airplane on their screens. They just disagree on where it was. Not to mention that the signal did vanish at some point when the aircraft shut down/disintegrated. The parts of the aircraft could well have continued flying after that. From the surface of the sea, there is nothing to be seen if the wings disintegrated in air (vaporizing all fuel and not forming slicks on the surface).

Re:Lat / Long?

[mjwx]

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of -

- Flight Number
- Lat / Long
- Airspeed
- Groundspeed
- Altitude
- Compass heeding

...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

Because we get all that from RADAR.

The problem the aviation industry has is that you, the customer want to pay less for flights, not more.

If an aircraft disappears from RADAR and you cant raise the pilots on the radio, such a system would in all likelihood be out of commission as well.

Re:Lat / Long?

[cyn1c77]

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of -

- Flight Number

- Lat / Long

- Airspeed

- Groundspeed

- Altitude

- Compass heeding ...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

They already have something like this. It's called a transponder. But when it stops transmitting or is turned off, you are back to the current problem.

Re:Lat / Long?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could already do it. But the radar transponder is what should be used for it - it should simply be made impossible to turn off. Every ACARS message costs money and thus the system is configured to only send them when it detects an anomaly. That's what the system is designed for, it's supposed to give airline maintenance information in advance so that schedules can be kept because they'll know in advance what they'll have to fix. In the AF447 case it simply turned out to be a convenient first lead.

In this case, though, it seems to me that the Malaysian military has known about the complete diversion all the time but disclosing it has simply taken some time. A fucking 777 doesn't fly over their territory without being seen on radar. I suspect that there are some face-saving issues higher up and or low-level radar operators that have been sleeping on the job and not noticing how one of a gazillion commercial airliner blobs on the primary radar is not showing a transponder signal on the secondary radar. Based on what I've read elsewhere, they reviewed some radar recordings so probably they also wanted to be 100 % sure before redirecting search and rescue even if it meant that the initial SAR that were based on the last "civilian known" position were completely wrong.

That said, even though terrorism is now a slightly more plausible hypothesis, there are also plausible technical problems. The airworthiness directive below:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-09-26/html/2013-23456.htm
would explain how a 777 can lose almost all communications suddenly and if the reports of some other aircraft hearing a "muffled" mayday on VHF, which would still work, they might indeed have had a related technical problem and turned around but then been overcome by hypoxia leaving the plane to fly until it ran out of fuel (like Helios 522). The problem I have with the terrorism hypothesis is that nobody has claimed credit and based on my - admittedly limited - knowledge of regional politics, I have no idea who would want to target Malaysian Airlines. The terrorist "trial run" for a more targeted strike later also makes no sense. 9/11 showed what can be done if you hijack a commercial aircraft so what do you need to test? And if you have an actual target, why would you jeopardize hitting that with (1) wasting two (trained?) suicide operatives on a trial run and (2) risk having whatever security loophole you've discovered being closed when the trial run is investigated?

Re:Lat / Long?

[AchilleTalon]

The radar and transponder already provide this data. They have a last seen location on the radar. I don't see what such a device would add. I understand many people and families are anxious about the flight, however if it crashed, there is not much more that could have been done than what is already done.

Re:Lat / Long?

[CRC'99]

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of -
  - Flight Number
- Lat / Long
- Airspeed
- Groundspeed
- Altitude
- Compass heeding ...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

Congratulations - You've just described ADS-B [1] - however its MUCH more often than every 5 minutes - and more airliners already have it. In fact, look at the tracking info from flightradar24.com for the flight in question [2] - then it disappeared... Having yet another bit of tech to combat this is stupid.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... - Bonus: How it works - http://www.airservicesaustrali...
[2] http://theaviationist.com/wp-c...

Re:Lat / Long?

[StripedCow]

I don't understand one thing. The US DoD is supposed to be monitoring the earth 24/7 for missile launches, and they can't even track a plane?

Re:Lat / Long?

[N1AK]

It's better than nothing, but a 50 mi x N mi grid search of the ocean floor is pretty much a non-starter in most areas of the globe.

Compared to the current situation of searching the length of a country and huge areas off both coasts that's a considerably easier task. Finding some wreckage within an area that size would be a comparative breeze. His point is that considerably less information, shared considerably less often would give the vast majority of the benefit and it's a good one.

Re:Lat / Long?

[coinreturn]

I can see how a constant stream of telemetry might be cost-prohibitive, but what about a squirt of data consisting of - - Flight Number - Lat / Long - Airspeed - Groundspeed - Altitude - Compass heeding ...sent every five minutes? At least that would give a 'last known' location.

While you're at it, why not have it put this data out as twitter feed?

Re:Lat / Long?

[RNLockwood]

That's already inexpensively available; it's called Automatic Flight Following (AFF). It's small, easily installed, and inexpensive to operate . Those that I am familiar with send a GPS position, including altitude, every 2 minutes via satellite to a ground station. I believe that track, not heading, and ground speed are calculated using the previous datum. The data are available for display on a digital aviation chart, map, Google Earth, etc. It's been available for many years. All of the US Federal fire fighting aircraft have them and that includes contractor's aircraft. I suspect that most US Federal aircraft have them no matter what their use.

The system that I've used will tag the last datum received if it has been more than 10 minutes since the last one and the icon on the display will be red. Probably the system could send alter text messages and emails, too. The display allows for viewing the last position of many aircraft or the track of a single one from an arbitrary time to the most recent datum.

This certainly helps discovery of a problem and provides a good starting point for SAR efforts.

Re:Lat / Long?

[dcw3]

I think there are vast areas of the ocean that are not covered by RADAR. At least non-military versions of it.

Re:Lat / Long?

[dcw3]

Let's make one thing clear about transponders. They don't always clearly work. I say this from personal experience, when on my first solo "cross-country" flight, I was at ~1800ft ASL, and had a close call with an A10 in Korea. I had requested flight following for the flight. When I recovered from nearly wetting my pants, I got on the radio, and complained to ATC. The response?... you're flying a little low for us to see you well.

snark

[DoofusOfDeath]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

Why, would that somehow bring them back to life?

Re:snark

[Cryacin]

You obviously don't know about the concept of closure, or care enough about someone else to care about it.

Re:snark

[Zontar The Mindless]

Dammit, kids, some of us have to get up in the morning and go to work.

Any more noise from the basement and I'm coming down there to knock your heads together.

Re:snark

[mjwx]

You obviously don't know about the concept of closure, or care enough about someone else to care about it.

Because some company using a tragedy to peddle their wares that have dubious value and are not even remotely guaranteed to work is closer.

Pot, meed kettle.

FLYHT are scum. Their products have been rejected by the aviation industry because they don't add value but add additional cost (satellite data connections aren't cheap), are just as prone to failure as current methods (relies on instrumentation or manual activation) and have additional points of failure (a dial on demand satellite connection, when a flight disappears from radar and the pilots cannot be raised on the radio and the transponder is gone... WTF makes me think a dial on demand satellite connection will work). And now they're using a tragedy to try to peddle their crud.

I read the article, it's nothing but attacks on the aviation industry and badly used thought terminating cliche's like "tell that to the families". Its the kind of thing an angry pre-pubescent child would write when their parents ground them.

Re:snark

[cyn1c77]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

Why, would that somehow bring them back to life?

Why do you think that they are dead?

Didn't you watch Lost?

Re:snark

[Oligonicella]

How pompous and self-righteous. As if you're going to throw your own earnings at this issue you find yourself on the morally superior side of. Unless you do that, you were just posing.

Re:snark

[Bazman]

You don't know they're dead. They could be halfway up a mountain deciding who to eat first.

Re:snark

[giorgist]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

Why, would that somehow bring them back to life?

Did the families die as well !!

Re:snark

[Jack Griffin]

Who said they are dead? For all we know they could all be living it up on a tropical island somewhere (sure it sounds far fetched but so does every other hypothesis I've heard so far)

Re:snark

[hcs_$reboot]

Why, would that somehow bring [the passengers] back to life?

For the time being, no crash has been reported, and nobody offically died. Satellites past footage indicate no explosion in the area. Since the plane cannot be found anywhere around its last known position, where sea is 100 meters deep at most, some scenarii suggest that the pilot(s) went mad and drove the plane away from its planned route. Who knows where it actually is now?

Be careful

[Anonymous Coward]

Posts like this are exactly why we have the TSA in all our airports.

Re:Be careful

[BronsCon]

No, people who buy into the bullshit in posts like this are why we have the TSA. Don't blame the salespeople, blame the suckers. Well, blame both, but until the suckers have to face their own actions head-on, we're just going to keep breeding more and more of them; once we solve that problem, the salespeople will fix themselves.

"Tell the families"? Really?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As much as penny-pinching on safety systems is a bad habit, is the emotive "zOMG, Tell the Families!!!" really the best argument that there is for these systems?

It's been what, over three days now, with an aircraft that disappeared from radar at commercial cruising altitude without so much as a burst of garbled obscenities from the flight crew. Do you think that your family is clinging to those little flotation-device pillows, awaiting a rescue that would have come in time if only for upgraded real-time blackbox transmission?

If anybody derives some sort of comfort from whatever they do manage to find, all the better; but this is all trying to recover data for failure analysis, not survivors.

Now, if you want to justify real-time transmission, check out the amount of (incidentally not paid for by the airline) search gear that has been diverted from Malaysian, Chinese, and other sources to looking for the debris. Whole bunch of ships, airplane and helicopter overflights, diversion of what, 10 satellites? That starts to make the $100k look like savings.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[i.r.id10t]

Part of these resources are being provided by people or organizations or governments who just want to Do The Right Thing.

Some more of these resources are being provided by those who see others Doing The Right Thing and thinking to themselves that "gee, if A can do it I should do it to show I'm just as good at DTRT as them".

And the last little bit are doing it for a positive karma, so they can get away with Something Bad later on...

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[jittles]

Part of these resources are being provided by people or organizations or governments who just want to Do The Right Thing.

Some more of these resources are being provided by those who see others Doing The Right Thing and thinking to themselves that "gee, if A can do it I should do it to show I'm just as good at DTRT as them".

And the last little bit are doing it for a positive karma, so they can get away with Something Bad later on...

A positive motivation for "doing the right thing" is the fact that these military crews have to stay proficient at their job. These emergency situations give them practice for the real world without having the dull feeling of a drill. Not to mention the fact that they would have spent the money flying those helicopters, planes, and sailing those ships regardless. The real question of cost is whether they were diverted from another mission of value, or whether they were just sitting in the south China sea practicing their ELINT skills?

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[Solandri]

Now, if you want to justify real-time transmission, check out the amount of (incidentally not paid for by the airline) search gear that has been diverted from Malaysian, Chinese, and other sources to looking for the debris. Whole bunch of ships, airplane and helicopter overflights, diversion of what, 10 satellites? That starts to make the $100k look like savings.

Well, the cost is $100k if you know ahead of time exactly which plane is going to go missing and outfit the device on just that single plane.

Obviously the real world doesn't work like that. You don't know ahead of time which plane will go missing, so you have to outfit all of them with this device. The best estimates I could find on Google were that there are about 15,000 commercial airliners in operation globally, so you're looking at a total cost of $1.5 billion.

Suddenly all the ships, airplane and helicopter overflight, diversion of 10 satellites seems like an absolute bargain. For reference, the multi-year search for AF447 and recovery cost about $40 million.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[phantomfive]

It is possible, if the black box data were transmitted in real-time, that it would remove most of the incentive to actually go down and get the plane. If this thing catches on, the family might not ever get the remains.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At least for the ones where you don't have to send down the fanciest in research ROVs to scour multiple square miles of deep ocean floor, I suspect that the materials science and structural engineering people probably have a wish-list of Very Important Bits that they'd like to examine in detail; but it certainly wouldn't increase the motivation to go hunting.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[drinkypoo]

As much as penny-pinching on safety systems is a bad habit, is the emotive "zOMG, Tell the Families!!!" really the best argument that there is for these systems?

Is there a better argument? We typically eventually find the black box, which serves the need of improving planes. But having the data in realtime would help us find planes, find possible survivors in a timely fashion (if not in this incident then in others) and so on. It is in fact kind of inexplicable that we don't do this already. It shouldn't have to cost $100,000 to hook a satellite phone up to a transponder, either.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

A low-altitude controlled flight into terrain(especially the 'clip multiple bits of it' kind, rather than the 'squish. into the mountainside' kind) is a hell of a lot more survivable than just about anything at cruising altitude and almost definitely over water.

It's a pity that they apparently didn't have the tools to distinguish the wreckage of a white aircraft from snowcap at that time (or in that place); but their odds of having something worth finding were a lot better.

Re:"Tell the families"? Really?

[Paradise Pete]

Except multiply that by the number of planes out there... approx 7185. So it's actually over 7 billion dollars.

Give or take an order of magnitude.
100k * 7000 = 0.7 Billion.

It ONLY costs NNNNN, but could have saved Y lives.

[brian.stinar]

I think an American is now only worth 6.9 million (according to Fox News...)
          http://www.foxnews.com/story/2...

I couldn't find how much a Malasian life was worth. I think both of these numbers, the mix of people on the plane, and the probability of the crash, are what you'd need to compute if it's "worth" it.

If you think it's "worth" it, then install those devices in airplanes you own. Personally, I'd rather not have to pay more for tickets, or taxes, to have them installed in every plane, flying everywhere, in the world.

Higher prices

[canadiannomad]

Knowing the airlines it would somehow be permanently added to the plane ticket price....
Given the number of unrecovered flight recorders and the amount of time that list has been growing and the risks of being involved in a plane crash vs a car crash(no black box)
Since prices are already seem pretty high for me for those cramped seats, I think I side with "the industry" on this one.

Re:Higher prices

[Carnildo]

The number of unrecovered black boxes is pretty damn low: in the past 25 years, only one airplane's recorders were lost. The rest were either destroyed in the crash, or deliberately not recovered.

Re:Higher prices

[canadiannomad]

True enough :/ Though I doubt a personal boycott would really slow them down either, and I'm not about to be the one to change careers to flight price activist any time soon. So I'll have to live with any increases they try to shove down my throat anyway :(
Though the other point still stands, it just plain doesn't make sense anyway, esp just to retrieve an "after the fact" diagnostics tool.

Misunderstanding of risk

[DriedClexler]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370."

Oy gevalt! This again? When minimizing risk, you have to invest where you get the best returns in lives saved. Obviously, in retrospect, after an accident, you'll wish you had spent infinity on having more safety, but that's the wrong way to think about it.

You should instead:

1) figure out how much you're willing to spend per statistical life saved

2) deploy safety measures up to that point

It's not always going to make sense to keep throwing on all kinds of safety equipment simply to handle every black swan event you can think of -- remember, they do log airplane location remotely and continuously; it's just that that still wasn't enough in this case.

You might as well advocate that planes start giving everyone a parachute, without realizing it makes flight so unaffordable as to push people to less safe modes of transportation.

Comments like these promote a worse understanding of the issues.

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[mrbene]

I came here to harp on the same things as many other posters have already said. DriedClexler says it best so far.

There are at minimum 20k planes, but possibly up to 100k. Let's estimate that half of 20k planes have this installed, at an expenditure of one trillion dollars.

This would result in this particular flight having a 50% chance of having a bit of extra information about where it crashed.

Sounds like a pretty expensive method for retrieving dead bodies. But then, I've always wanted to be buried at sea.

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[glasshole]

Let's estimate that half of 20k planes have this installed, at an expenditure of one trillion dollars.

Too many zeros, I believe it would be one billion dollars.

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[aardvarkjoe]

There are at minimum 20k planes, but possibly up to 100k. Let's estimate that half of 20k planes have this installed, at an expenditure of one trillion dollars.

You're off by a factor of a thousand here -- 10k * $100k is $1 billion, not $1 trillion. According to the article, ongoing costs would be in the hundreds of millions per year per airline, so a rough order-of-magnitude estimate might be $1 billion per year.

Worth it? Maybe. I'd like to see some examples of where a system like this would have actually saved some lives first -- the article doesn't give any. After all, there's an awful lot of things you can do for $1 billion a year that are more likely to save lives than betting it on the off chance of an airliner crash.

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[Anonymous Coward]

You might as well advocate that planes start giving everyone a parachute, without realizing it makes flight so unaffordable as to push people to less safe modes of transportation.

A parachute isn't expensive compared to the cost of a plane, and I don't think maintenance is expensive either. By a placebo effect I guess the first airline to put parachutes on flights would be able to get customers to pay more, so there's even an incentive.

On the other hand, a parachute isn't really useful in these kinds plane troubles. It requires proper training. When a plane crashes it happens very suddenly, you won't even have time to blink. If there are signs that things are going wrong, the best bet is to let the pilot to do an emergency landing at a safe place, which should happen in minutes after a decision is made, and it's tough to decide whether you should use a parachute during that time. If you land in the middle of an ocean, you'll still die, if people can't track your position (they'd following the plane that few away).

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[Oligonicella]

What should one take from a fictitious quote from a B movie?

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[phantomfive]

You might as well advocate that planes start giving everyone a parachute, without realizing it makes flight so unaffordable as to push people to less safe modes of transportation.

There is research into making parachutes for entire planes, which is similar to that. Honestly, I think they would give everyone a parachute if it would make a difference in safety. But it's hard to imagine a scenario where trying to get everyone to jump out of the plane with a parachute (without training!) would improve safety.

Re:Misunderstanding of risk

[KingOfBLASH]

You might as well advocate that planes start giving everyone a parachute, without realizing it makes flight so unaffordable as to push people to less safe modes of transportation.

Comments like these promote a worse understanding of the issues.

Giving everyone a parachute doesn't help. People need significant training to use a parachute and most accidents don't happen with the ability to give everyone a "OK guys put on your parachutes and JUMP"

also..

[rcarsey]

i WILL say that oceanic flights (or flights going over water more than 50 miles or so) should be equipped with a device to send their GPS coordinates via Iridium. that is very cheap to do (they make handheld devices that do this for a few hunded USD).

At least then you'll get the search started in the right area.

Rollroyce

[sycodon]

Rolls Royce does this with their engines. They get real time telemetry whenever the engine is running.

Re:Rollroyce

[nojayuk]

The ACARS only transmits in bursts while the plane is in flight, usually when there's been a change to the engine settings or operating conditions. Data transmission to satellites necessary for trans-oceanic flights costs money on a per-packet basis so there's no continuous data streaming. I think they log more data and dump it at the end of the flight once the plane's on the ground.

Re:Rollroyce

[sycodon]

Are you sure?

It starts transmitting when something goes wrong

[innocent_white_lamb]

This $100,000 gadget doesn't do continuous data transmission. It starts transmitting when something goes wrong, and that's it.

If something does go wrong and there's time for this thing to start transmitting, then wouldn't there also be time for the pilot (copilot, navigator, stewardess) to get on the radio and say "Hello, chaps on the ground. Something has gone wrong."

If it blows up in mid-air or something like that, you won't get anything more with this device than you get without it.

What do you gain for $100,000, then?

Airline Ticket Prices

[sdoca]

How many people could afford the cost of a plane ticket after all the aircraft have this device installed? The cost will be passed on to the customers.

Re: Airline Ticket Prices

[sycodon]

The plane costs $270 million dollars. $100k is a rounding error.

$100 grand? Try $300 Million/yr

[Overzeetop]

The fine article states that L-3 (who has a bit of a conflict of interest) says that streaming all data real-time would cost $300M/yr. The mfr of the "glass box" says it wouldn't stream data until there was an anomalous event, and so it wouldn't cost nearly that much.

Who's right? Well, TFA states "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."

So you either stream data all the time, or you miss the really crazy disappearances. Which is exactly the ones you WANT this data from. So to the families of passengers of MH370 - we don't know where your plane is because we didn't spend billions of dollars to equip every plane and then spend an extra $300Million a year to run the system.

Oh, and since the transponder that relays back basic information failed on this flight, there's a chance that whatever took it out would have also taken out the full-data relay, and after spending all those billions of dollars we might *still* not be able to find it.

Re:$100 grand? Try $300 Million/yr

[mysidia]

That's pretty much the size of it. The plane had ADS-B, ACARS, etc... all of it (apparently) just went "dead" (or was shut off), all at the same time - no mayday call, no nothing.

This may be what the Malaysian airlines get for flying their planes into airspace where North Korea has missiles in the air testing Electro Magnetic Pulse technology.

Re:$100 grand? Try $300 Million/yr

[sycodon]

Aliens.

Wasn't there an airliner in V'Ger?

Re:$100 grand? Try $300 Million/yr

[dcw3]

Missed Geography class, huh?

Dumb author...

[I kan Spl]

The author failed to account for the increased cost required to launch more satellites...

"It transmits data via Iridium satellitesâSâ"âSwhich also allow people to use a satellite phone from anywhere in the worldâSâ"âSand can be programmed to start streaming flight data when a plane deviates from its flight plan, or instruments suggest something is going wrong."

I've looked into an Iridium sat phone for use while camping in the middle of nowhere. The thing is that their network is near or at capacity much of the time. Many times their phones can get signal but can't get a channel clear to make a call.

A quick google search says a cheap satellite is $300 million. I'm not sure how many we would need, but it would not be a small number.

Re:Dumb author...

[Megane]

It also doesn't help that the Iridium network is completely and totally analog. That means good ol' 9600 baud modem tones. The new generation of sats starting next year will support digital communications.

Re:Dumb author...

[Cederic]

A quick google search says a cheap satellite is $300 million. I'm not sure how many we would need, but it would not be a small number.

Nah. A cheap satellite is £50k, maybe £80k including deployment into orbit.

For $300m you can build a fucking big, fucking complex satellite and it's fucking expensive.

Re:Dumb author...

[phantomfive]

Really? It only costs $50k USD to launch a satellite into orbit??

Re:Dumb author...

[dcw3]

http://curiosity.discovery.com...

Re:Dumb author...

[Cederic]

Sorry, no. Prices have come down a lot since I last checked.

The price per kilogram to Low Earth Orbit varies from $4,000 to $12,500 per kilogram

-- http://www.interorbital.com/in...

Re:Dumb author...

[Cederic]

Or skip NASA and go with someone cheaper.

Re:Dumb author...

[phantomfive]

wow nice.

Subcontractor Application

[rmdingler]

US $100,000 per plane x how many planes?

I think I could just barely provide a water-tight homing beacon with redundant power sources at, say, a million a dozen.... which leaves room for campaign contributions to secure the contracts.

can it be disabled?

[fermion]

Right now it seems that the plane might have been flown off course and the transponder was shut down. The thing about the black box is that apparently is hard if not impossible to shut down. Anything that transmits can be disabled. There is reason to believe that such a device would have done any good in this case, This is just another effort by some corporation to try to sell a movie plot security measure. Like arming pilots when locking the cockpit door would do or naked scanners instead of trained surveillance. The plane will be found, if it was a crash the bodies will be recovered, and the cost will be lower than the 3 billion needed to equip the next 15 years of commercial aircraft. Such a device might be good, but we can't assume some conspiracy of evil greedy airlines. There may be good reasons, such as the fact it doesn't really work as well as the PR suggests.

Re:can it be disabled?

[PPH]

Many aircraft of this class are equipped with an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). These are difficult, if not impossible to disable in flight, as they are mounted remotely from the cockpit and are self powered. They can fail under certain circumstances. They may not activate if the aircraft impacts the ground. Or if it sinks immediately, carrying the ELT down with it.

I am wondering about the current status of ELTs following the fire in a parked 787 caused by a wiring fault in one. Was there an order put out to remove suspect units pending inspection? Has the inspection been completed or are airlines flying around without these?

How would this have helped with MH370?

[tipo159]

"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."

MH370 was sending data when it disappeared. The ADS-B data can be found on FlightRadar 24. Rolls Royce indicated that it was receiving ACARS data from the engines.

All of this stuff was either switched off or stopped working because of a sudden catastrophic failure.

Re:How would this have helped with MH370?

[Neo-Rio-101]

It's starting to look as if the pilot went suicidal and took his plane and passengers with him. Not the first time this has happened unfortunately.

Re:How would this have helped with MH370?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why fly so far with communications off instead of crashing it as soon as the other pilot was out? And terrorism also seems implausible since unless they had a huge gang of hijackers, I don't see how they could've prevented passengers from disobeying flight crew or terrorist orders not to use their phones. Based on new information, it flew quite a distance over land with cellular coverage. Land with enough lights to make it evident to anyone looking out the windows so no need for the IFE map to realize it. Wouldn't at least one of 200+ pax attempt calling?

I suspect a major technical flaw which also ruptured the hull and for one reason or another, the crew oxygen masks didn't work (long enough, at least) so they were able to turn back but then lost consciousness. There have been reports of some other aircraft in the vicinity hearing a distress call and VHF would most likely still have worked so that would be consistent with such a scenario.

A few more good articles on the topic

[yurik]

Current:
* http://online.wsj.com/news/art...

Older (after AirFrance disaster)
* http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
* http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07...

An appeal to emotion?

[Raven42rac]

An appeal to emotion? On my slashdot?

-1 Flamebait

[Alomex]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

-1 Flamebait

Re:-1 Flamebait

[Guppy]

Flamebait

Right, it's the sort of schmaltzy emotion-based argument I expect from some politician or tabloid rag. Timothy, I am disappoint.

Re:Well it isn't

[Anubis IV]

Yup, and that was the conclusion in the article as well. Planes simply don't kill enough people to justify the added expense. That said, we could avoid situations like these by simply supplementing the black box with some low-tech options that are available for cheap. For instance, send the location, heading, speed, and altitude back to the ground each minute. Over the course of an hour, that should take up less than a megabyte of bandwidth, keeping data costs over the satellite low, and it'd help search parties locate the black box.

More or less, let the black box do its job, but add a device that makes it easier for it to do its job, rather than trying to replace it with an expensive and unnecessary retrofit.

Re:It ONLY costs NNNNN, but could have saved Y liv

[Megane]

Wait a minute, how many lives could this have saved, exactly? Sounds to me like all it would do is say THE DEAD PEOPLE ARE RIGHT HERE.

$100,000?

[jtownatpunk.net]

It shouldn't cost that much. Many planes already have data service (run thru satellites) that they sell to passengers. Shouldn't be that hard to tap into the available instrument data and send out a blurp every 10-15 seconds. Doesn't even need fancy 2-way handshaking. Just send the encrypted packets and grab them as they arrive at the NOC. Not a big deal if the occasional blurp gets missed. But, if they never get another blurp from a plane, at least they got the data right up to the point of disaster.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering number of people per flight and number of flights per plane, the extra cost is negligible.

But it would mean slightly less profit for the airline company.

Once again, the free market fails where regulation would succeed - the former can only correct for the future AFTER everyone's dead and un-buried.

Re:Yes.

[CapOblivious2010]

Once again, the free market fails where regulation would succeed - the former can only correct for the future AFTER everyone's dead and un-buried.

Why do you say that? What makes YOU the authority on the "correct" answer? Maybe people are perfectly comfortable with the status quo - after all, it's not like this box would save anyone, it would just help to find their corpses a little sooner. Considering only a few hundred people a year die in commercial plane crashes (vs around 100 million total deaths per year), and the vast majority of those are found very quickly, it's not really that big of a deal. There are probably better ways to spend $100K per plane to improve the flying experience (safer, more comfortable, less TSA, whatever), yet you've suddenly decided that the best thing to do would have been to bump this box (which you never even heard of until today) to the top of the list!

Re:Yes.

[Cederic]

Once again, the free market fails where regulation would succeed - the former can only correct for the future AFTER everyone's dead and un-buried.

They'd be just as fucking dead even if you knew where to find the bodies.

Re:Yes.

[Kjella]

Maybe people are perfectly comfortable with the status quo - after all, it's not like this box would save anyone, it would just help to find their corpses a little sooner.

And assuming the plane has more or less disintegrated mid-air or in a catastrophic ocean impact, probably not even that. Here's the final statistics from Air France Flight 447:

Between 5 May and 3 June 2011, 104 bodies were recovered from the wreckage, bringing the total number of bodies found to 154. 50 bodies had been previously recovered from the sea. The search ended with the remaining 74 bodies still unrecovered.

Re:Yes.

[AK Marc]

The information from previous crashes has saved future lives. More information could save more lives.

yet you've suddenly decided that the best thing to do would have been to bump this box (which you never even heard of until today) to the top of the list!

This box is common and already widely installed.

Though what would work better (cheaper and get to planes faster) is to have the civil aviation send broader military alerts when a transponder disappears. This one was "lost" for a long time because it wasn't acted on the moment contact was lost. If military radar was officially requested at that point, we'd likely be recovering bodies right now, rather than discussing what could be done to make airplanes more trackable. But the military doesn't run with radar on, except for known defensive positions, because it gives away too much information, but turning it on for an "emergency" would likely be acceptable, so long as it was like the plane lost at see once in every 5-10 years or less.

Re:Yes.

[noh8rz10]

yesterday I was in a meeting at work and my iPhone made a horrible loud screech. i silenced it immediately and didn't look at it until after the meeting. it was an amber alert for a city 50 mi away.

Re:Yes.

[dave420]

Yes, they would be, but the people on the next flight which would have crashed in the same circumstances are alive, as the problem was identified from the data received from the crashed plane. That's why every single flight crash is investigated - so the industry learns from failures and does what it can to ensure they don't happen again. Ignoring or not trying to get some information is certain to cost lives in the future.

Just 100K? don't believe it.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They reel you in with that el-cheapo 100K offer, but then you have to sign a 24 month contract. The "unlimited" streaming plan streams at high speed only for 2GB, then it crawls at 128 Kbps. Want really really unlimited, then you pay per GB. Then there are roaming charges. International roaming charges. Then international texting charges. You have to root the device to install WhatsApp. When the contract is up they will do employ high pressure sales tactics to sign on for another two years for marginal upgrades. Original "free" equipment is designed to crap out in 24 months. Stay away from these data streaming companies.

$100K is a lot of money if ...

[Taco Cowboy]

Nevertheless, $100k is a lot of money...

True, $100K may be a lot of money, if it's the price you pay to put a device into your $10K car.

But we are talking about a jet plane that is worth $100M and up.

What is the ratio of $100K to the original plane pricetag of $100M ? 1: 1000

Allow me to put it in the context of your car - Let's say your car's price tag is $10K, What will that device cost you, if it's 1000th of your car ? $10 ??

Re:$100K is a lot of money if ...

[viperidaenz]

You haven't flown with JetStar before, have you?

Re:$100K is a lot of money if ...

[Spazmania]

Do you have Onstar service for your car? Same difference. Most people choose not to buy it. The device is only present in new vehicles because Onstar pays manufacturers to include it.

Cost per use

[spasm]

Ok, according to the FAA there's ~3,739 U.S. registered passenger jets which carry more than 90 passengers (http://atwonline.com/aircraft-amp-engines/faa-us-commercial-aircraft-fleet-shrank-2011). Cost to fit just U.S. registered aircraft with this device would therefore be just under $374 million.

Number of U.S. registered passenger jets which can carry > 90 passengers that have crashed with any fatalities since 2000 is maybe 5 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_commercial_aircraft#2000), and the number of those where it wasn't immediately obvious where the wreckage was was zero.

So in the US alone, we're talking close to $374 million dollars to fit out just aircraft that carry more than 90 people, for a return of nothing. I couldn't find a reliable estimate of the number of commercial passenger aircraft currently flying and capable of carrying > 90 passengers globally, but I did see a number of guestimates in the 15,000-20,000 range. Assuming there's only 10,000 currently active passenger planes in the world capable of carrying >90, that's $1,000,000,000 to fit them with this gadget. The number of planes since 2000 which went down with passengers on board which couldn't be immediately located is what? Two? The Malaysian Airlines one now and the Air France one a few years back?

So if every passenger plane in the world capable of carrying more than 90 people had been fitted with this gadget since 2000 we'd currently be running at half a billion dollars per actual use. I can think of a *lot* of uses for half a billion dollars which would actually save tens of thousands of lives. There isn't a single case in the last 20 years where this gadget would have saved a single life - all it can do, at best, is provide slightly faster confirmation to grieving families that their loved ones were indeed dead and here's how it happened. Which is not trivial - I don't mean to invalidate what such news might mean to someone with a loved one who was on that flight - but oh, my, that's a staggering bill to just provide speedy confirmation of a loved one's death for a few hundred people.

Let's NOT tell that to the families

[whistlingtony]

"Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370"....

Would this device have stopped the plane from crashing? No. It would have told us what happened... So, in other words, it wouldn't have helped at all. We'd still be telling the families that their loved ones died. We'd just be able to tell them what happened. Which we'll be able to do once we recover the plane (and we will, be patient, sheesh) and find the black box.

In other words, this device does nothing that we need. It just tells what happend in time for the news cycle to remember there was this plane crash.

Re:Let's NOT tell that to the families

[gavron]

No, it would not transmit more than the flight data recorders. Those things store everything.
If there's something they don't store, it's added so they do.

To maintain a bitstream of sufficient width and density to share what the FDRs do for an
entire flight is beyond our available satellite uplink capacity even if cost were no factor.
Which it is.

At the end of all this the expenditure would save zero lives. It would prevent zero crashes.
It would just make investigations go quicker.

E

Re:Let's NOT tell that to the families

[david_thornley]

The plane went down over water, so it's possible that there were survivors using flotation devices. I don't know one way or another, and we won't know until we find the plane. By now, they're probably all dead, if there were any. It might well have been possible to rescue them given prompt information, or maybe not.

The situation is a lot less certain than you seem to think.

Re:It ONLY costs NNNNN, but could have saved Y liv

[brian.stinar]

Good point. I didn't see how much it was worth to find a dead American, Malaysian, or a dead airplane either...

Actually, it doesn't

[frovingslosh]

"It starts transmitting when something goes wrong"

In theory it might start transmitting when something goes wrong, but clearly things can "go wrong" that would also prevent the start of the transmission. For example, if a couple of hijackers steal a plane and fly it to Thailand, they will turn off the device around the same time that they turn off the transponder. And just diverting the plane to a different location isn't likely to be detected as "something going wrong" to start the data transmission anyway.

Re:Actually, it doesn't

[mysidia]

For example, if a couple of hijackers steal a plane and fly it to Thailand, they will turn off the device around the same time that they turn off the transponder.

OK... then make it a device that can't be turned off, that automatically switches on if the transponder goes off or an emergency is signalled.

Place multiple ones on the plane with independent radios in hidden locations -- mostly accessible only through maintenance compartments and only when the aircraft is on the ground.

They don't need to be $100,000 boxes that tie in with the official flight instruments. A simple GPS reading will do, with an accelerometer and a gyroscope reading -- should be possible to assemble one of these for less than $1000.

I would suggest each one have two radios, and even under normal operating conditions -- send a non-emergency position update once every 3 minutes; with aircraft identifier, latitude, longitude, altitude; in event of an emergency, 15-second updates on both emerg and non-emerg radios of all the multiple radiobeacon boxes ---- the expensive bit is the ground listening stations to record all this data!

Re:Actually, it doesn't

[dcw3]

You'll never get a box certified for aircraft at $1000.

Re:Aircraft that fly in V formation like ducks

[Cederic]

Two aircraft flying in V formation are more efficient than two aircraft flying 500 metres apart side-by-side.

One larger aircraft is more efficient than two aircraft.

But feel free to construct a model, build a wind tunnel and do some testing - if you're right, there's an entire industry interested in buying your idea from you.

This is a stupid argument.

[TsuruchiBrian]

"It can be fitted to a commercial airliner for less than $100,000. But the industry has decided that it's not worth the expense. Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370."

Commercial airplane crashes are extremely rare. Even in these rare instances, it is even more rare not to find the aircraft that crashed.

It's NOT worth the extra expense. Should we really believe that *anything* is worth doing at *any* cost if it saves *any* lives? I would say no. But you don't have to take my word for it. People risk their own lives everyday to save money. It doesn't take a big greedy corporation to do it. If you offered people the option to pay $100 extra for their plane ticket so that in the event of a crash, their dead body could be located a bit more quickly, I think most people would say "fuck that".

It's easy to scream "Tell that to the families" after a catastrophe involving loss of life.

Why not ground all air traffic forever so that this kind of thing never happens again?. Is that too extreme? Well if you think it's too extreme, why don't you TELL THAT TO THE FAMILIES that you would rather their loved ones DIE than be inconvenienced.

Re:This is a stupid argument.

[mjwx]

"It can be fitted to a commercial airliner for less than $100,000. But the industry has decided that it's not worth the expense. Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370."

Commercial airplane crashes are extremely rare. Even in these rare instances, it is even more rare not to find the aircraft that crashed.

This, aircraft fatalities are so rare that any single crash is international news, 300+ people die on Western Australian roads each year, there was a fatal truck crash near Yangebup last week... I doubt half the people in Perth, Western Australia would be aware of it.

$100,000? Try $0 and some competence.

[VortexCortex]

"We're tracking every flying object in the sky." -- Bullshit. I guess that was just grandstanding from NORAD and also demonstrates the futility of the NRO. How many billions have Americans alone spent to ensure this can never happen already? I mean, was every bit of that post 9/11 "security" just posturing and scaremongering?

Egg meet face, world. If you ask me, having a large passenger jet disappear in mid air just goes to show how much we've squandered in the guise of security when without actually getting any safety at all.

Re:$100,000? Try $0 and some competence.

[Imazalil]

First line in your NORAD link is "North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD, /nræd/) is a combined organization of the United States and Canada that provides aerospace warning, air sovereignty, and defense for North America."

Please do tell which state or province/territory Malaysia falls under?

Re:Aircraft that fly in V formation like ducks

[Patent Lover]

How can two aircraft fly in a V formation?

Except that

[sunking2]

What really matters is the total number of units sold / by the number of times it's needed. 10s of thousands of planes at 100k a whack for something that happens to 1 or 2 of them. That's a pretty pricey usage.

Hey EvidenceBase, did you even read your article?

[rubycodez]

article admits in cases when plane suddenly crashes the system is useless, the black box is only useful source of data

reality is a system such as Next Gen that would have sufficient satellite coverage and bandwidth will cost billions and take years to implement (including launching satellites). that's the only way the tens of thousands of daily flights could have their data recorded.

So we'll tell the families of the presumed dead of the Malaysian airlines flights not to listen to technically ignorant assholes like you, the technology to track flights that end in sudden disaster over the open sea just don't exist in 2014.

Installed on new-build planes?

[MtViewGuy]

I wonder is this device being installed on new-build airliners? A large, well-funded airline like Emirates would certainly want it installed on their large A380 and 777 fleet, especially given the distance of many flights out of Dubai.

Re:Well it isn't

[petermgreen]

Most of the time, when a plane goes down we know where it went.

And since we don't know why or how this plane went down surely we don't really know whether some fancy new system would have helped or not.

Dear families of passengers on Flight MH370:

[gavron]

It would be nice to know where the plane is and why. However, crashes happen so infrequently
that spending billions of dollars and not preventing a single one -- merely accelerating the speed
at which we get the "black box" data is not worth it.

Everyone involved including the airline industry has decided that it's not worth the expense
to spend $100,000 per airplane as well as untold costs to maintain that, and pass the costs
onto your relatives.

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

I just did.

E

Why airlines won't install this device

[mendax]

Well, more specifically, why airlines won't install this device unless they're made to do it... and they won't.

If you were Malaysian Airlines right now you might wish you had one of these devices installed on the plane because it would resolve much of the public relations headache they are currently facing by letting them know NOW what was happening to that plane before it disappeared.. But that's about all it would save them. It won't save them anything else.

An airline is only going to want to install such a device if it directly benefits them financially and this device offers very little.

I doubt the FAA is going to require US carriers to install it because it offers very little the black boxes don't offer. It doesn't happen very often that a black box is unreadable or unrecoverable after a crash. It happens, but probably not often enough for installation of this device to be worth the cost and the trouble, especially that when those boxes are unavailable investigators have almost always been able to figure out what went wrong by using other evidence.

Nothing new here

[fustakrakich]

How many airlines had to be hijacked before they fortified the cockpit door? Or are they still made out of paper?

To be fair

[morgauxo]

To be fair, had they made that investment all those people would still be no less dead.

Would it have made a difference?

[Dereck1701]

Would such a device have really made a difference? Currently it looks like one of two scenarios, either someone commandeered the plane (growing increasingly unlikely) and disabled all of the communications systems or there was a sudden catastrophic failure that either destroyed the plane in midair or crippled all of its systems. I find it highly unlikely that this system could upload a meaningful amount of data through a satellite connection (not known for their reliability) in such a short time if it was a catastrophic failure or if it was a failure of all systems who's to say that it wouldn't have taken out such a device as well.

Ok

[jon3k]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

Ok, I'll tell them: Sorry we're too cheap to foot the bill and this is an obvious puff piece by a PR company to convince us all we need to spend millions (billions over time) to outfit every commercial plane with this device.

Radar

[ruiner13]

I don't understand the reliance on active communication from the plane. Aren't all flights tracked by ground radar? Surely there were military craft or bases in the area that were tracking it?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Umm, why not have one of the black boxes float?

[Marrow]

A telemetry buoy would serve to preserve the data and mark where the plane went down.

Re:Wrong.

[CapOblivious2010]

Worldwide, thousands (probably millions) of people turn up missing every year - it's sad, but true. The number of people who would be found significantly sooner by this device probably averages around a couple dozen per year. What makes those people worth spending billions of dollars on?

It's more likely you could use that same money to find a lot more than a couple dozen people by spending it more intelligently. The only thing that makes these people special is that they were rich enough to afford trans-pacific plane tickets, and they're in the news. If you think that makes them more important than other people, then YOU are the one barely attached to human reality.

The plane effectively already had such a device

[Jeremi]

The only really key piece of information we're missing is the plane's location. Once we have that, we can retrieve the black box(es) and we'll have all the rest of the information that there is to be had, as well.

The plane (like all commercial planes) had a device installed that effectively "uploaded" that key piece of information at regular intervals: its transponder. For some reason, the transponder failed; is there any reason to think that this device would not have failed as well, given the same circumstances?

Maybe all we really need is a more robust transponder.

what the hell

[slashmydots]

What the could have used was a $0.50 device called a radio and a $10 device called a GPS. I mean seriously, what the fuck.

Re:Maybe Copilot Fariq Abdul Hamid disabled transp

[ledow]

Or maybe, like the last Air France airliner to go down, there isn't even time to put out a proper mayday as they're fighting to control the plane (through their own fault or others), but it only breaks up when it hits the floor.

That particular plane had three experienced crew on board, and crashed because someone was holding a control stick back for ages and nobody ever noticed. But it didn't get to put out a mayday, the onboard systems weren't transmitting enough data to highlight the problem to anyone else, and even when the blackboxes were recovered (how long later?), it still wasn't 100% clear quite WHY what happened happened.

Rather than turn everything into a terrorist story, which is just boring when you live in a country that's suffered terrorism for a long longer than the US latest overblown episode, how about we don't pot-shot at people's reputations?

And, to be honest, the whole link you post is really a non-story. Wow. I can remember going to a cabin on an aircraft and getting photos when I was a kid. Back then you could smoke on planes (probably still can in many countries - malaysia's laws? I'm not sure off-hand). But, no, fuck it, he has to be a terrorist to you?

Maybe it was a fucking crash.

Sad. Unfortunate. Unpredictable.

But doesn't do precisely what terrorism is supposed to do - PUT SO MUCH TERROR INTO YOU THAT YOU THINK EVERYTHING IS MORE TERRORISM.

Re:Maybe Copilot Fariq Abdul Hamid disabled transp

[Qzukk]

The copilot, Fariq Abdul Hamid, seems less than professional

When I was a kid, that's what all the cool captains did. And the cool kids got to go up there and watch.

Some data is streamed

[cyberfringe]

I have a friend at Pratt Whitney who consults for Korea Air. Quite a bit of engine-related maintenance data is already streamed from the plane to the arrival airport, but I'm not sure at what point this starts. Sometime during descent I think. The idea is to give ground maintenance people a heads up on any issues needing attention before the next take-off.

Bunch of liars and thieves

[NetNinja]

I remember when our Marine Corps KC-130's had such outdated radar, Our Naviguesser who was an enlisted person had to plot everything by paper.
Then they retrofitted several of our KC-130's with new GPS devices. WOW 100 times more accurate and several years latter got rid of the Navigator.

Very little was done to the aircraft to implement it and in fact I believe we reused the existing wiring from our Radar unit and spliced different connectors to plug in the GPS device.

It was 4 times smaller took up less space and it was so freaking reliable they never broke.

Just strap a fucking Go Pro on the damn Airplanes they seem just as indestructible as a Black box and they float!

These are the same airlines who were told in the late 1970's to install reinforced cockpit doors due to increased hijackings.

It's too expensive! They all exclaimed. 4 aircraft destroyed during 9/11 and I don't remember the number of lives.
But they have the audacity to charge extra for baggage fees and whatever else they feel like tacking on.
Now we all pay for the high school push out TSA Grope agents feeling up your wife and taking X-rays pics of your kids.

Fucking airlines When they invent transporter technology I am going to beam a fucking dildo up each CEO's ass! and all the TSA agents.

No it does not.

[aepervius]

Firstly the airline industry tend to be very conservative. Secondely, I seriously doubt we are speaking of a 100K$ TOC. They say 100K$ to fit the device, which does not take into account potential downtime due to retrofitting. Also count that some airlines have fleets of 100 of flights, we are speaking of 10 of millions of dollar *just installing* not even infrastructure to receive data, tests, and so forth. In an industry quite strapped for cash. To catch data more conveniently in case of plane falling. When there is already a functionning *robust*, *tested*, technology, the BB. But even if you did it at the next maintenance, if you read the RTFA it states the streaming would only starts at abnormal events. Well woopy doo. It is far too late at that point you want to know what led to the abnormal event, because this is what you want to avoid in the future.

Re:Wrong.

[Joce640k]

How can anybody "turn up missing"?

Reminds me of a guy that sold bus reflectors

[Karmashock]

Guy was pitching them in my city recently. Said "put these reflectors on buses and save lives" they were nothing special. Just bits of shiny plastic.

His game was ambulance chasing people that got hit by buses and then demanding that the city install HIS little bits of shiny plastic. Anyone that disagreed clearly wanted everyone to be killed by undetectable buses because they didn't have his shiny reflectors.

It was a scam. As to this air plane thing... if they installed everything someone pitched at them the planes would be too heavy to fly. Lets be reasonable. These crashes are unusual and crashes you can't find quickly are extremely unusual. Just deal with it. the world isn't a perfect place.

Solution: Duct tape one of these on top

[Rob Simpson]

That'll be $99880.00

Re:Solution: Duct tape one of these on top

[Neil Boekend]

1. That works with GSM signals. Aint gonna work over the ocean.
2. It only sends position. No information about the state of the aircraft.
3. That device is not rated for use in an aircraft. That means it's not allowed.

Re:Solution: Duct tape one of these on top

[Strider-]

1. That works with GSM signals. Aint gonna work over the ocean.

Actually, the SPOT uses the Iridium Short Burst Data system, so it goes out via satellite, and will work anywhere on the planet, other than those where it's explicitly prohibited by local laws.

pfff...

[SuperDre]

it's easy to say, 'only $100K', but having to fit a complete fleet of planes makes it a very expensive extra, especially with the financial problems the sector already has..
But then again, why would a system like that cost a $100K, I can't believe a 'simple' satelite telephone would be sufficient to stream the data to a basestation, hell it also can be used then to monitor the plane when it goes off the radar..
But people making claims that it 'only' costs $100K are OR selling the device OR are really ignorant in what it actually costs to outfit a whole fleet of planes with those..

Why don't they

[niw3]

drop very small, cheap, floating beacons off planes if everything else goes wrong? They can place these things through out everywhere in the plane. They can even record data with these until the very last minute. One can even construct something like this with less than 100 bucks with rPi or similar stuff.

help find the plane

[Zurd3]

If you want to help find the missing plane, head over to http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014?source=malaysia

Given that even the transponder stopped responding

[AC-x]

Given that even the transponder stopped responding, I suspect this device would have also stopped transmitting at the same time...

Re:Aircraft that fly in V formation like ducks

[higuita]

simple ... a V have at least 3 points... now take one out on the ends... you get a \ or a /
It's not a Literal V, but it is still a V formation! :)

Re:Wrong.

[dave420]

When someone can't English very good.

I'd Tell them its too expensive.

[Infestedkudzu]

how often does this happen .... like once every 10 years? 100k per plane is alot.

Re:Wrong.

[Alioth]

When they are Welsh. It's a common idiom amongst the Welsh to say things like "And there it was! Gone!"

Re:Nice Advertisement

[coinreturn]

Fuck slashdot and their Slashvertisements. Head over to AltSlashdot.org

You're complaining about advertising and giving your own advertisement. Irony meter pegged at 11.

Best answer

[ThatsNotPudding]

The best answer I've seen as to what happened: this was a failed take-over of the plane (suicide attack, not high-jacking). It didn't work, so no one is going to claim responsibility (along with not tipping their hand at future attempts). And as it went into the sea at speed nearly perpendicular, not much of a debris field, just like the Airbus out of South America a few years ago.

Pilot resistance

[The Cornishman]

Nobody seems to have mentioned that *pilots* would/might resist the streaming of flight data to the ground. As I understand it, there's a button in the cockpit which erases the flight deck voice recordings, and that button is one of the first things that the captain presses when the plane has landed.

What's said on the flight deck, stays on the flight deck!

Re:Pilot resistance

[Lumpy]

"As I understand it, "

what movie did you get that from? no, they cant erase anything.

Re:Pilot resistance

[The Cornishman]

what movie did you get that from?

You get to my age, some things in movies are almost as real as what really happened :)

However, this discussion on PPRuNe suggests that I didn't make it up. Several professional pilots are on there saying that it's their normal practice. Before anyone points it out, I can see that the thread is ten years old, and it may very well be that modern CVRs aren't using 30 minute magnetic tape loops.

Re:Wrong.

[CapOblivious2010]

No, I've lived in america all my life. I thought it was a common phrase, like saying you could "wake up dead" tomorrow.

why do we have to wait?

[ewenix]

Well, you seem to have made the assumption that the data would have continued to stream. There's already a radio, a transponder, and and emergency transponder that automatically gets activated in a crash. These other devices all stopped functioning for some reason, yet this data stream is going to continue? Honestly, I'd be in favor of streaming the data as well as storing it in the black box, but unless we ever find out for sure what happened to this plane we'll never really know if streaming that data would have helped. What is amazing is that the title makes the claim that we'd already know what happened, but the article referenced even admits that we may not.

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.

Re:Wrong.

[AmiMoJo]

What makes those people worth spending billions of dollars on?

Ask the TSA.

Re:Wrong.

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

It's more likely you could use that same money to find a lot more than a couple dozen people by spending it more intelligently. The only thing that makes these people special is that they were rich enough to afford trans-pacific plane tickets, and they're in the news. If you think that makes them more important than other people, then YOU are the one barely attached to human reality.

I enjoy class warfare at times, but you are just dead wrong here in two ways. First of all, the flight was going from Malaysia (I assume Kuala Lumpur) to Beijing. This is not a "trans-pacific" flight. Second, as someone who is hardly rich and has actually flown trans-pacific, the flights are expensive but not insanely so. It is possible for average people to afford to fly such routes.

No suprise....

[Lumpy]

This is the industry that barely pays Best BUY wages to the pilots. They will not spend money on something like a black box transmitter. Although $100K is outrageous for a simple satellite phone data link. How about a simple iridium phone + GPS that simply sends the gps coordinates of the plane every 30 seconds? this would have been far more useful and can be build for $1500 even with FAA certification and hardening.

Re:That Slashvertisement forgot something

[TheCarp]

> A device will work only if it's well maintained.

This much is true. And now look what has happened, without proper maintenance we sit here now before this disaster.

> We are talking about a plane that is owned by Malaysia

what plane? You replied to a post about the hawking of a product using some of the most "tell that to the families" scumbag tactics.

It doesn't matter

[Neil Boekend]

Statistically speaking planes do not crash, with only a small margin of error.
To improve human safety new cars should have a black box type feature. Just loop the last few minutes of speed+brake+steering+blinker status through a storage. It would help point out culprits faster which would force people to drive better.
Cars crash all the time, but because it is not newsworthy nobody notices. The number of deaths per passenger mile for cars is far more than for planes, so why invest at all to make the planes safer? That's like investing in a lightning rod to protect your electronics while there is no front door in the frame to protect against theft.

Re:It doesn't matter

[DriveDog]

Newer cars have this. If your opponent in court really thinks you caused the crash, he may try to subpoena the data from your car's "black box". Most likely he'll succeed. If he doesn't try to get it, that might suggest he isn't convinced it's your fault, in which case you might be able to use it in your own defense.

Re:It doesn't matter

[DriveDog]

I should have specified "in the US". I don't know which other countries require such things.

$100k?

[DriveDog]

Let's say more like $1,000, a much higher cost than for a consumer SPOT transmitter. Rather than stream everything, just transmit the GPS coordinates. Where the trail ends is where the search begins. Commercial trucks and trains are tracked, why not airliners? It's not a privacy issue, as it might be on a private aircraft.

Doesn't stop crashes

[gelfling]

Rather have $100k spent on not crashing.

Lat/Long squirt of data every 5 minutes

[korniko]

Some planes have WiFi even over the sea. Bolt a humble smartphone to a bulkhead and install an app to send a squirt of data every five minutes. Phones require neglible maintenance and can contain GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope and battery backup in the event of power failure. A 3,499 Rupee phone costs far less than 100,000 Dollars and paying in Rupees generates wealth for a poorer country. At this price bung in a couple more to achieve triplex redundancy.

Re:Wrong.

[schlachter]

Worldwide, thousands (probably millions) of people turn up missing every year - it's sad, but true.

If you turn up, are you really missing?

ur doing it wrong...

[schlachter]

You just need to report the anomalies, and perhaps the telemetry shortly before and afterwards. You don't need a constant stream.

what could go wrong?

[epine]

Tell that the the families of passengers on Flight MH370.

That's the best way to proceed. Ask the person who has recently suffered an extreme loss, who won't be paying for the decision with his own money. What could go wrong?

Re:Wrong.

[Talderas]

Because idioms happen and they confuse the shit out of faux pedants.

Re:Maybe Copilot Fariq Abdul Hamid disabled transp

[Nehmo]

Currently *I* am working with insufficient information to convict anybody of deliberately downing the plane, but Malaysia Airlines has much more information, and, given their politician-like rebuff of concerns about the copilot's past behavior (We won't be "distracted", and "We have not been able to confirm the validity of the pictures"), the airline's sincerity is questionable.

The incident of the copilot on this missing flight having had on a previous flight invited two women to stay in the cockpit for the duration of the previous flight is hardly, as you describe it, a "non-story". Even Malaysia Airlines says they are "shocked" by the allegations. The flight crew is supposed to be working on the serious task of flying a large passenger plane. They are not supposed to be using their privileged position as a means to impress girls they want to pick up. If they want to do that, they can do so on their own time in their own planes.

As you can see by the story, distraction is possible. And a distraction in an emergency could be fatal. And who is the un-named pilot, who also allowed the girls, by the way?

They also smoked tobacco in the cockpit. This is prohibited by the Airline and by Malaysia's laws (assuming the plane is "public transport"). Since you, ledow, included a personal antidote to support your "non story" claim, it's fair for me to also offer one: I don't allow anybody on my own work crews to light up on the job. These are construction workers, incidentally.

Wow

[VictorFr]

That is always the problem... We have the knowledge, the technology and all the materials needed, we have everything to put some good idea in practice... Problem? People say it's too expensive!... What the hell? The problem is never the idea or what it takes to put it in practice, it's always lack of money or predisposition to do something new... If you sell every stuff that exists in the world (and i mean everything) you get a value inferior to all the debt in the world... If you put our economic systems in basic sentences, you actually notice that they are just stupid... They're just there so some people own more stuff then others... It's just that... To this specific problem i bet there are several different forces to not make this a reality... The blackbox companies, the airliners, the airports... even the guys in maintenance won't probably wan't them because they have to get a course on how to handle and install these new systems... I mean change is just too much for many people... Basically we don't make things because we're either misers or slackers... It's that simple! And the more you have the more miser you'll be, the less you do the more slacker you'll be... Two sides of the same coin...

Re:Wrong.

[CapOblivious2010]

But they could also turn up missing in due to any number of other causes! Only a tiny fraction of missing bodies are due to mid-ocean plane crashes - I still haven't heard why finding the corpses of a couple dozen such people per year is so much more important than finding the corpses of the thousands of other people that could be found by spending that same billion dollars more intelligently.

Re:Wrong.

[cwsumner]

"Turned up missing."

People "turned up" the space where they were supposed to be, and it was empty.
It's a common phrase where I grew up...

Re:Aircraft that fly in V formation like ducks

[Patent Lover]

No, that's a slash formation ;)

Re:Hey EvidenceBase, did you even read your articl

[rubycodez]

but over or near land generally planes are in constant communication with ground stations anyway, that's why crash sites are very quickly reached