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I work on flight data recorders, mainly in rotorcraft but some small fixed wing aircraft. The current generation does use a satellite connection for real time t

• xen2xen1 3y ago
  Yeah, my first thought in reading the article: maybe SpaceX and all the other constellations with make it cheaper to constantly stream data, and just use the expensive satellites for low speed backup. It looks like big planes will all end up with fat internet pipes for the passengers, let's hope that soon extends to avionics info.
• ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? I'm sure that there are a bunch of factors in play, but tracking a plane seems like a relatively simple and a high priority thing to do, and relatively cheap compared to a total cost of a plane. GPS, satellite connectivity, battery backup and even in a case of a total explosion, at least you know the last location, speed and direction to try to find the wreckage.
  • ipython 3y ago
    The difference is that the mh370 pilot deliberately took actions to avoid tracking. At some point if you can’t trust the captain of your vessel, that person can disrupt or disable most any system put in place. If the captain of the titanic intended on sinking the ship without a trace, he most certainly would have succeeded as well. A more apt comparison would be AF447, which took a few days before the wreckage was found. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
    • ozr 3y ago
      Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain. E.g.: disabling the tracking system could require accessing a section of the plane inaccessible while it's in flight. Combine that with a hardware interlock system that would prevent the plane from taking off when it's disabled, and that should be sufficient in the vast majority of cases to prevent 'lost' planes. Is there ever a valid reason to disable the recorder/tracking systems in flight?
      • logifail 3y ago
        > Physical access can generally circumvent any security precautions, but it seems like there are some fairly simple schemes that would work well to prevent a disturbed captain I can't be the only one thinking that in the situation where we postulate losing trust in the captain, whether tracking is switched on or not is a relatively minor issue, compared with - say - the captain deliberately flying the aircraft into a mountainside.
        • ozr 3y ago
          You're definitely not wrong. Most civil aviation authorities I'm aware of have some profound issues with their policies around pilots and mental health issues. Fixing that is more likely to prevent the issue in the first place. That's closer to the root cause and something that shouldn't be ignored. But parallel to that (and unfortunately-but-most-likely in lieu of): we simply shouldn't be losing large aircraft and having no idea what happened.
          • bombcar 3y ago
            The biggest issue with all policies is the same with red flag laws - and even attempted mention of potentially having an issue grounds you and you lose your job; this makes the issue that much worse.
            • 3y ago
  • valval 3y ago
    I imagine most airlines have operated at unsustainably low margins for the past however many years, at least here in Europe. Ticket prices have gone way up now, and I suppose it’s getting better for them.
  • nix0n 3y ago
    The current theory is that the pilot of MH-370 was able to disable most of the tracking equipment, while the plane moved away from any major population centers. The radio operator of the Titanic was trying very hard to let everybody know where they were.
    • faangsticle 3y ago
      Why was he able to? Isn't the black box supposed to be a black box?
      • bombcar 3y ago
        The black box doesn’t transmit its location. If they find it, it would/will tell you some of what happened, but if you sink it in the Mariana Trench and they can’t find it, you’ve “won”.
        • kube-system 3y ago
          The black box can also transmit its location, albeit only after the plane hits the ocean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_locator_beacon
      • dghlsakjg 3y ago
        The black box has nothing to do with the transponders and tracking equipment. The black box can’t be disabled AFAIK. The argument in favor of disabling tracking is that the equipment itself could potentially malfunction in a way that disabling it would be safer (if it were interfering with voice communications or transmitting an emergency code inappropriately). I fly small planes and it is not unheard of for ATC to ask pilots to cycle the power on a transponder that isn’t responding as expected. I assume that airline grade equipment is more reliable, but the same principle applies
        • MAGZine 3y ago
          AFAIK, the FDR and CVR can both be disabled by crew to some degree. I think they can be disconnected from the aircraft's power system (by fuse/breaker), but they also have some amount of battery backup. Part of Federal Express Flight 705's whole debacle was that the hijacker tried to pull the breaker on the CVR. And the investigation into SilkAir 185 was hampered because the recorders had their power pulled as a apart of load shedding while trying to resolve issues onboard the aircraft.
  • teraflop 3y ago
    > show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? What do you mean by "heard both in London and New York"? The Titanic was actively sending out distress signals via telegraph as it sank, but those signals weren't strong enough to reach land. They were picked up by other nearby vessels and relayed.
    • FreshStart 3y ago
      So why can't we have aircraft screams some data in a last ditch effort?
      • touisteur 3y ago
        As long as you trust the pilot with absolute authority over which equipment is running, this isn't going to happen. If something can catch fire (as in, any electronics?), it needs to have some kind of local breaker that the flight crew can switch off. The only trusted equipment there is one doing passive recording of some elements (the flight recorder).
        • bombcar 3y ago
          The airframes do usually have various ELTs and beacons that can activate in a crash, but some (most?) can be disabled in some way (in case they’re accidentally on) - and others are only short range/directional.
      • dghlsakjg 3y ago
        We do. The radios they use can be heard for quite a distance at the altitudes they operate at
    • Gordonjcp 3y ago
      It was night time. Titanic's radio transmitter could work on both 500kHz and 1MHz, pretty advanced stuff for the time, and the bands were far quieter. It would have been hard *not* to hear it on both sides of the Atlantic, even with the primitive receivers of the day.
  • pmarreck 3y ago
    MH-370 was a suicidal pilot who deliberately disabled tracking mechanisms, my dude. Not sure if you got the memo
    • Gud 3y ago
      We don’t know that.
      • IMSAI8080 3y ago
        Indeed. Pilot suicide is just one theory and is not proven fact. Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. Another possibility is hypoxia causing pilot impairment as a result of decompression. Hypoxia severely inhibits brain function and turns you into an incompetent. It's similar to being extremely drunk or high on drugs. This happened on the Greek Helios flight that decompressed. The pilots can be heard on the recording becoming gradually unable to competently fly the plane and making ridiculous decisions due to brain impairment.
        • sokoloff 3y ago
          > Almost everyone thinks there was a decompression event on the aircraft. I would wager that far more people believe in the suicide theory than an un-commanded decompression event.
          • IMSAI8080 3y ago
            It's a fairly common incident. There's a list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression
            • sokoloff 3y ago
              As is pilot suicide. There's a list of them as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
  • antonjs 3y ago
    I was surprised after MH370 that there isn't a beacon or flight recorder on the surface of the plane, that's buoyant and detaches on immersion. Though I assume the engineering and regulation means such a thing has a decade+ lead time and then would only exist on new planes.
    • ianburrell 3y ago
      Aircraft have ELT that broadcast location. They are similar to the marine EPIRB or hiking PLB. MH370 had 4 ELT, 2 on life raft, 1 in cabin, and 1 mounted to aircraft. The latter would have activated on crash but it was designed for ground crash not ocean. It would have sunk with plane. The life raft ones are water activated but probably sunk. ELT are more meant for finding survivors and not the crash site. There are ejectable beacons but they are probably not required. It would make sense to add one for water crashes.
  • nine_k 3y ago
    Titanic was in the middle between London and NYC, relatively easily within reach of either by using longer waves. Titanic actively sent distress signals. MH-370 has flown into the uninhabited area of Southern Indian ocean, far away from any places where a shorter-wave signal would be easy to receive, due to the curvature of Earth. MH-370 apparently did not send any distress signals; if it did, these would likely be received and relayed.
  • rocket_surgeron 3y ago
    >Is there some good explanation, show a sinking titanic was heard both in london and new york, but a modern(...ish) MH-370 can just dissapear? If Titanic had sunk in the Indian Ocean, it would probably still be lost. By sinking in the North Atlantic it was within radio range of dozens of other ships and ground stations. Carpathia got to it in 3 hours. The part of the Indian Ocean that MH370 is thought to have gone down in is second only to the South Pacific in emptiness.
• pmarreck 3y ago
  Wouldn't Starlink lower this cost tremendously?
  • bnycum 3y ago
    Currently the upcoming Starlink for Aviation terminal is for much larger aircraft than we are operating on at the moment. Plus the cost is $150k for hardware, and up to $25k monthly. https://www.starlink.com/aviation https://www.starlink.com/aviation
• roeles 3y ago
  Would it make sense to broadcast vital information to "nearby" aircraft, so they can store and forward when something went wrong?
• choppaface 3y ago
  Why is the cost of sending data such an obstacle? It seems like that reporting should be done according to regulation .. do governments not subsidize the cost? Or perhaps it’s even just hard to get international alignment on this topic?
• deepsun 3y ago
  ADS-B has the same problem -- it's hard to collect it over the oceans. Satellites do pick up the signal, but the detection area is pretty wide, so sometimes it's just too many signals coming in all at once, overwhelming the satellite. ADS-B is also pretty chatty, so the data sizes are significant (compared, to, say AIS, which is a similar system for marine vessels). It's gradually becoming better, satellites having more focused antennas able to gather signals only from unpopulated areas, and more computing power to filter noise out.
  • throw0101b 3y ago
    > Satellites do pick up the signal, but the detection area is pretty wide, so sometimes it's just too many signals coming in all at once Even with something like Aireon (that piggybacks on top of many Iridium sats)? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aireon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aireon
    • deepsun 3y ago
      I don't know how their system works, sorry. And whether they have 100% globe coverage.