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It's kind of funny, looking back at that age, how unreliable machinery was, how famous aviators disappeared all the time. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote Te

It's kind of funny, looking back at that age, how unreliable machinery was, how famous aviators disappeared all the time. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote Terre des Hommes and The Little Prince, was another who went away.

evincarofautumn 12y ago
They were probably famous because it was so risky and they were seen as daring. You might crash or be marooned at any time.
codezero 12y ago
If we can lose an entire 777 today, losing a small aircraft seems really reasonable back then, I don't think things were inherently more unreliable back then. They had some pretty advanced technology at their disposal as well, they used radio signals to determine their headings, probably the biggest disadvantage they had was poor weather predictions and limited search/rescue capabilities.
- mturmon 12y ago
  "If we can lose an entire 777 today..." This starts to look more and more embarrassing in retrospect.
  - scott_karana 12y ago
    Not really. Sonar scans on vast, deep seabeds are hard. Also consider how far a crashed plane can drift on descent, how thoroughly it could be disintegrated with sea impact, quickly it can be covered up by sand, et cetera... :)
    - mturmon 12y ago
      I'm not talking about after it has reached the sea bed. I'm aware of some of the issues regarding continuous RF transmission of basic telemetry while inflight. The bandwidth for all relevant flight info is higher than you'd think, and the receivers over open ocean are sparse. Et cetera. But still: in hindsight, relative to the high standards we expect from flight systems, the inability to localize a 777 is looking more and more, for lack of a nicer term: stupid. I'm reminded of the crash of an early Mars lander (Mars Polar Lander, 1999), which didn't have telemetry during EDL, so the cause of the crash could not be fully determined. They pretty much determined after that, that every Mars landing would have telemetry, so we'd at least know what went wrong.
scott_karana 12y ago
Admittedly, Saint-Exupery's WWII recon plane might have been shot down. And in the case of Earhart, it was a boundary-pushing world record attempt. ;)

evincarofautumn 12y ago

They were probably famous because it was so risky and they were seen as daring. You might crash or be marooned at any time.

codezero 12y ago

If we can lose an entire 777 today, losing a small aircraft seems really reasonable back then, I don't think things were inherently more unreliable back then. They had some pretty advanced technology at their disposal as well, they used radio signals to determine their headings, probably the biggest disadvantage they had was poor weather predictions and limited search/rescue capabilities.

mturmon 12y ago
"If we can lose an entire 777 today..." This starts to look more and more embarrassing in retrospect.
- scott_karana 12y ago
  Not really. Sonar scans on vast, deep seabeds are hard. Also consider how far a crashed plane can drift on descent, how thoroughly it could be disintegrated with sea impact, quickly it can be covered up by sand, et cetera... :)
  - mturmon 12y ago
    I'm not talking about after it has reached the sea bed. I'm aware of some of the issues regarding continuous RF transmission of basic telemetry while inflight. The bandwidth for all relevant flight info is higher than you'd think, and the receivers over open ocean are sparse. Et cetera. But still: in hindsight, relative to the high standards we expect from flight systems, the inability to localize a 777 is looking more and more, for lack of a nicer term: stupid. I'm reminded of the crash of an early Mars lander (Mars Polar Lander, 1999), which didn't have telemetry during EDL, so the cause of the crash could not be fully determined. They pretty much determined after that, that every Mars landing would have telemetry, so we'd at least know what went wrong.

scott_karana 12y ago

Admittedly, Saint-Exupery's WWII recon plane might have been shot down. And in the case of Earhart, it was a boundary-pushing world record attempt. ;)