

A relatively simple fix that could prevent planes from disappearing - joshbaptiste
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/29/the-relatively-simple-fix-that-could-prevent-planes-like-airasia-qz8501-from-disappearing/

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tokenadult
It's important to note that the substance of the article here is not about
improving tracking of airplanes while they are flying (which actually does
very little to keep them from disappearing if a catastrophe stops them from
flying) but is actually about tracking _weather_ more accurately by gaining
real-time data from other aircraft in the vicinity. This suggestion might
indeed have helped prevent the most recent Air Asia crash, and perhaps also
the Air France crash from several years ago. It takes good information to
respond to rapidly developing storms at high altitude over the ocean, and to
advise pilots how to change their courses (along heavily trafficked airline
routes) to avoid both dangerous weather and collisions with other planes.

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tacticus
How exactly would it help af447? wasn't that determined to be an issue with
the pitot tube becoming blocked and one of the pilots just holding the stick
back until they stalled at 47 thousand feet.

~~~
69_years_and
The fact that there was a storm that could cause icing (perhaps due to super
cooled water, or is it super chilled water) could have been shared thus giving
AF447 a greater opportunity to avoid it, which could/would have meant the
pitot's would not have become blocked which would mean the auto pilot would
not have turned off due to faulty airspeed input which would mean there would
have been no need for pilot to fly the plane and hold the stick back for so
long. Of course its a moot point for AF447 - RIP.

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TeMPOraL
Can someone explain to me why they can't just stick a GPS receiver wired to
Iridium satellite phone and duct tape it to the back of the plane? I.e. it
shouldn't be neither hard nor that expensive to send a few dozen bytes of
telemetry every minute via Iridium. Why anything like this is not happening?

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jpollock
They charge a lot of money for real-time telemetry from a plane. This charge
can frequently represent the entire profit for a flight for smaller carriers,
so they don't elect to purchase it.

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rational-future
Who is 'they'?

You don't even need Iridium, a shortwave radio transmitter will suffice.

~~~
achamayou
Boeing or Airbus. Look up ACARS, it exists, many planes are equipped.

I find conflicting information about the Air Asia flight, a Bloomberg article
claims the plane wasn't equipped, other places claim it was, but the airline
wasn't subscribing to the data it generated.

It's not clear at all whether this is related to the cost of the system itself
however.

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upofadown
The Microsoft project is a way of figuring out _current_ upper wind conditions
from data available from the aircraft that fly at those upper altitudes ...
which is pretty cool, but doesn't help plan fuel loads by itself. For that you
would have to use those derived wind speeds to generate a better _forecast_.
You need to know what the winds are going to do in the future. Getting the
upper wind forecast wrong doesn't cause a crash. At the most it might cause a
diversion.

The Microsoft idea has nothing to do with the sort of bad weather that people
think might of been an issue with Flight QZ8501. That bad weather mostly
consists of thunderstorms which are small unpredictable areas of vertical air
movement.

Drones are not likely to be of much help here as they normally operate at low
altitudes.

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alblue
This article really demonstrates the level of idiocy that armchair experts
contribute to the discussion. It's as if the author had to publish a piece on
the disappearance and use it to generate as many click bait responses as
possible.

Firstly, for ground covered aircraft there is already extensive weather radar
(the same used to demonstrate clouds on your tv's weather graphics on the
evening news) which shows what is happening live. This is tracked by most
airline operators and the hotspots can be rerouted from central if necessary.

Secondly most newer aircraft have a forward looking weather radar that can
warn them as the plane flies of the immediate vicinity (though they don't have
full visibility of what's on the other side). At the very least they can use
this to do what happened here; request a variation in the path of the flight.

Thirdly the main problem of weather is in areas not covered by weather radar.
This is where drones would be most useful; but that is also the problem: they
need sufficient fuel to get them to stay in or around one place and unless
there is automated return to base and refuelling options it isn't going to
happen.

Fourthly the planet is big. Really big. You may think it's a long way down to
the chemist at the end of the street etc. the point is knowing what the
weather is like tens of miles away isn't really that useful for identifying
the kind of cells causing bad weather which are generally known about in any
case. To get the kind of required resolution you either have to have lots and
lots of them, or send a leading drone out in front of the aircraft's intended
path waving a red flag. Except to do that it has to fly at a similar speed to
the jet which means each drone is going to cost many millions In hardware and
fuel for each flight.

Lastly no pilot is going to want to fly through a mid air drone field because
the chance of disaster occurring due to high speed impact with a stationary
object is much higher than that of suffering weather damage. The reason planes
fly at different altitudes depending on which direction they are travelling is
to avoid meeting traffic coming the other way; generally because if you notice
it it's already too late to avoid it.

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joshbaptiste
I love the idea this article proposes, basically Waze for airplanes where real
time weather data comes from the actual flights themselves and shared via
traffic controllers or the planes themselves.

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fubarred
The most terrible reality is that the capability for tracking virtually all
long-haul airframes (99.999%) already exists. It's called Inmarsat FANS-1/a
ADS-C, which is now being offered to all airlines for free, post-MH370. It was
present on the MH370 airframe (but for a cost), and could've located it to
within tens of square miles instead of millions.

[http://www.inmarsat.com/news/inmarsat-provide-free-global-
ai...](http://www.inmarsat.com/news/inmarsat-provide-free-global-airline-
tracking-service/)

[http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/common/documents/FMS_DirectT...](http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/common/documents/FMS_DirectTo_3rd_Editionrev1.pdf.pdf)

[http://members.optusnet.com.au/~cjr/CPDLC.htm](http://members.optusnet.com.au/~cjr/CPDLC.htm)

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eveningcoffee
I am a bit surprised that he did not mention big data.

But there is point in this talk.

Of course this system will not cost 300 as it has to be dependable and it must
kept properly calibrated.

