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"The company already offers a similar service for ships and boats, which use Inmarsat’s network free of charge for distress signalling." Interestingly, back wh

"The company already offers a similar service for ships and boats, which use Inmarsat’s network free of charge for distress signalling." Interestingly, back when I was an intern, BT used to charge an exorbitant rate for those distress calls. I once wrote-up the whole internship thing http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-eight-in-a-million-chance http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-ei... "I was pretty uncomfortable when I found that mayday calls were being charged at the highest rate - £8 per minute if I recall correctly - even though Inmarsat itself explicitly carried those calls for free. I remember the manager I asked about that, when I found those calls in real logs, not meeting my eyes as he talked distantly about why that was."

samstave 11y ago
Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what? Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute? (Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)
- mikestew 11y ago
  I was thinking about this on a motorcycle trip to Alaska. For $250 one can buy a consumer device that updates my location via satellite every few minutes to display on a web page. $35/month, and they have cheaper plans. Were I to have been eaten by a bear, or splattered by a semi on the Dalton Highway, my wife would have at least known where to recover the body. Any yahoo with $250 and a shipping address can have one of these, yet two years later we still don't know where this Malaysian flight went to?
  - julianz 11y ago
    Which satellite would it talk back to? There's no coverage over that part of the Southern ocean. It's ridiculously remote and nobody is out there.
    - mikestew 11y ago
      It would talk to the Iridium satellites, which are claimed to cover 100% of the planet: http://www.inreachdelorme.com/product-info/network-coverage.php http://www.inreachdelorme.com/product-info/network-coverage..... Are you saying 100% coverage is not the case?
    - rconti 11y ago
      It is remote; the satellites get quite lonely I'm sure.
    - willvarfar 11y ago
      There is coverage. The plane was pinging a real working comms satellite, its just at the time nobody was paying attention. This will change.
  - martinald 11y ago
    Are you sure? That work via sat data (not cell)?
    - mikestew 11y ago
      You're on HN, surely you've heard of satellite phones. Yeah, I'm sure.
- willvarfar 11y ago
  This is exactly what Immersat are now offering. Almost all wide-bodied jets already have the senders, and Immersat will stop charging for it, so everyone will hopefully start enabling it.
  - samstave 11y ago
    I want my cut for independently inventing this, then :-)
- cmurf 11y ago
  It's complicated. One of the complications is requiring anything. Most trade agreements now in place defer major standards compliance in aviation to ICAO, and ICAO ends up being lowest common denominator when it comes to rules. Simply, less rich countries don't want to pay for every possible feature. Another complication is there's almost no such thing as a "backport" in aviation. The equipment a particular plane model is certified for is the equipment it has for life, save for some software updates. And this isn't in the category of a software update, it's new physical equipment. The easiest part is a new weight and balance for every airplane getting the new equipment. Harder is wiring the thing in, and getting it space in the cockpit - that's often quite difficult. If it requires integration of any sort, very difficult. There's extremely low willingness to substantially alter certified aircraft. There are individual systems that make up a whole, change any one part, you change the whole. The liability is too high for the return, these kinds of lost plane events are rare.
  - samstave 11y ago
    I wonder if the cost to Malaysia and Malaysia air at ~250 per month would have been more than all the monies they've had to pay for this two year long search :-/
  - neurotech1 11y ago
    Actually, your mistaken. Cockpit avionics upgrades are relatively common, even in small aircraft like Cessna 172s. Considering a new Cessna 172 is around $250k, and a refurbished aircraft, with new glass cockpit is around $50k (and sometimes significantly less). Aircraft have whats known as a Supplementary Type Certificate, which permits changes to a certified aircraft. Even a major upgrade from radial engine to turboprop has been authorized for some aircraft, including DC-3 transports made in the 1940s. Another example is Southwest Airlines. The 737-300 series jets have glass cockpit upgrades for a common configuration between a 737-300 (Classic) and a newer 737-700 (NG). If the ICAO mandates upgrades, it will happen. It might not be cheap, but its quite doable.
    - throwaway60453 11y ago
      The above comment is very cavalier with the facts on pricing and availability of airplane upgrades.
- SeoxyS 11y ago
  > Yes I know how many flights there are Actually, not that many. There are less than 20,000 commercial flights in the air at any given a time.
dnautics 11y ago
Isn't that a good thing? £8 is not that much if you are really in distress, and it is enough to keep spurious distress signals from clogging the channel.
- jleader 11y ago
  It's not £8 per call, it's £8 per minute. I don't know the protocol for satellite calls, but I'd been taught that for both 911 calls and VHF-Marine distress calls, you're supposed to stay in contact with the dispatcher, to update them as the situation changes and to help guide the responders to your location. E.g: "The fire truck is at Smith Street, they can't find you." "No, I'm on Smith Lane, not Smith Street". Or "I can hear the helicopter, it sounds like they just flew by south of me, can you have them fly back 1000 yards further north?" For satellite distress calls, I would imagine this could take a while, though I imagine they'd set up a schedule where you'd only call back periodically.

samstave 11y ago

Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what? Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute? (Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

mikestew 11y ago
I was thinking about this on a motorcycle trip to Alaska. For $250 one can buy a consumer device that updates my location via satellite every few minutes to display on a web page. $35/month, and they have cheaper plans. Were I to have been eaten by a bear, or splattered by a semi on the Dalton Highway, my wife would have at least known where to recover the body. Any yahoo with $250 and a shipping address can have one of these, yet two years later we still don't know where this Malaysian flight went to?
- julianz 11y ago
  Which satellite would it talk back to? There's no coverage over that part of the Southern ocean. It's ridiculously remote and nobody is out there.
  - mikestew 11y ago
    It would talk to the Iridium satellites, which are claimed to cover 100% of the planet: http://www.inreachdelorme.com/product-info/network-coverage.php http://www.inreachdelorme.com/product-info/network-coverage..... Are you saying 100% coverage is not the case?
  - rconti 11y ago
    It is remote; the satellites get quite lonely I'm sure.
  - willvarfar 11y ago
    There is coverage. The plane was pinging a real working comms satellite, its just at the time nobody was paying attention. This will change.
- martinald 11y ago
  Are you sure? That work via sat data (not cell)?
  - mikestew 11y ago
    You're on HN, surely you've heard of satellite phones. Yeah, I'm sure.
willvarfar 11y ago
This is exactly what Immersat are now offering. Almost all wide-bodied jets already have the senders, and Immersat will stop charging for it, so everyone will hopefully start enabling it.
- samstave 11y ago
  I want my cut for independently inventing this, then :-)
cmurf 11y ago
It's complicated. One of the complications is requiring anything. Most trade agreements now in place defer major standards compliance in aviation to ICAO, and ICAO ends up being lowest common denominator when it comes to rules. Simply, less rich countries don't want to pay for every possible feature. Another complication is there's almost no such thing as a "backport" in aviation. The equipment a particular plane model is certified for is the equipment it has for life, save for some software updates. And this isn't in the category of a software update, it's new physical equipment. The easiest part is a new weight and balance for every airplane getting the new equipment. Harder is wiring the thing in, and getting it space in the cockpit - that's often quite difficult. If it requires integration of any sort, very difficult. There's extremely low willingness to substantially alter certified aircraft. There are individual systems that make up a whole, change any one part, you change the whole. The liability is too high for the return, these kinds of lost plane events are rare.
- samstave 11y ago
  I wonder if the cost to Malaysia and Malaysia air at ~250 per month would have been more than all the monies they've had to pay for this two year long search :-/
- neurotech1 11y ago
  Actually, your mistaken. Cockpit avionics upgrades are relatively common, even in small aircraft like Cessna 172s. Considering a new Cessna 172 is around $250k, and a refurbished aircraft, with new glass cockpit is around $50k (and sometimes significantly less). Aircraft have whats known as a Supplementary Type Certificate, which permits changes to a certified aircraft. Even a major upgrade from radial engine to turboprop has been authorized for some aircraft, including DC-3 transports made in the 1940s. Another example is Southwest Airlines. The 737-300 series jets have glass cockpit upgrades for a common configuration between a 737-300 (Classic) and a newer 737-700 (NG). If the ICAO mandates upgrades, it will happen. It might not be cheap, but its quite doable.
  - throwaway60453 11y ago
    The above comment is very cavalier with the facts on pricing and availability of airplane upgrades.
SeoxyS 11y ago
> Yes I know how many flights there are Actually, not that many. There are less than 20,000 commercial flights in the air at any given a time.

dnautics 11y ago

Isn't that a good thing? £8 is not that much if you are really in distress, and it is enough to keep spurious distress signals from clogging the channel.

jleader 11y ago
It's not £8 per call, it's £8 per minute. I don't know the protocol for satellite calls, but I'd been taught that for both 911 calls and VHF-Marine distress calls, you're supposed to stay in contact with the dispatcher, to update them as the situation changes and to help guide the responders to your location. E.g: "The fire truck is at Smith Street, they can't find you." "No, I'm on Smith Lane, not Smith Street". Or "I can hear the helicopter, it sounds like they just flew by south of me, can you have them fly back 1000 yards further north?" For satellite distress calls, I would imagine this could take a while, though I imagine they'd set up a schedule where you'd only call back periodically.