
An airline that has made sure its airplanes won't disappear - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/31/one-airline-figured-out-how-to-make-sure-its-airplanes-never-disappear/
======
danpat
I deploy satellite-comm GPS tracking equipment on machinery in the ski
industry.

What I don't get is why airlines insist on bundling emergency telematics along
with position tracking. It massively complicates what otherwise is a pretty
simple problem. It feels like that description of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle
out of the Pentagon Wars movie.

With a box the size of a Big Mac, at <$1k per unit and about $100/month in
data costs, you could deploy an off-the-shelf industrial grade tracking unit
that would transmit location/speed/altitude every 10 seconds whenever the unit
is powered. All it would need would be a power supply. This would neatly solve
the "where the heck is the plane" problem, globally, for a fairly trivial
cost.

I realize that finding a spot on the plane to mount it, verifying
aerodynamics, figuring out how to wire it in, testing, doing the work across a
fleet and managing all that data all end up costing a lot more than the
equipment, but given the costs being quoted for some solutions in the articles
that have been coming up, it really seems like the airlines could have a big
PR win by paying for it with petty cash out of their marketing/advertising
budget.

~~~
RobotCaleb
I'd like to talk with you. Could you hit me at my email in my profile?

~~~
danpat
Email sent.

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hengheng
I don't like the tone of this article. Articles like this were written after
each and every single crash, which eventually led to sharper requirements,
more certification, added security gizmos and thingies and more safe-ropes in
every single corner of the aircraft. Most of that was reasonable, but care
must be taken when making systems more complicated and static by taking what
seems to be the easy route of "just adding a fix".

The reason why most of these systems seem anachronistic is not due to the high
costs and financial pressure on the airline companies. Most systems seem so
anachronistic because they have to be incredibly reliable and robust. Flight
recorders are built to withstand about any disaster you can throw at them,
which would be quite hard to do achieve with a modern cloud-enabled micro-
electronic device. Even if we threw billions at the problem, it would most
likely take five years to build a mass-deployable remote aviation telemetry
system of the required quality level, just because making hardware is hard,
and a half-assed solution helps nobody. It's particularly unlikely that a
niche solution like the one suggested in the article works for everybody.

Don't get me wrong -- added safety is always nice. But let's take a step back
for the moment. Let us not just put another whole new box into every aircraft
after every crash. Instead, let's try and make the smallest possible
adjustment to what is a well-proven, existing system already.

There have been reports after the MH370 loss that turbine telemetry data had
been transmitted even after all other systems had failed. An small adjustment
would be to lower the interval in which this signal was transmitted, down to
say 30 seconds, provided the comm satellites are prepared to handle this. I'm
not an expert on avionics, and I'm not claiming that this is the egg of
Columbus, but surely there has to be a nice, small, lightweight and elegant
solution, which _incidentally_ is cheap on top of this.

~~~
boxey
Agreed. People forget that in addition to the nominal cost of a new tracking
system ($120k PER PLANE in the article, not including control center cost),
just the weight alone costs about $3k/year for each 1kg added to the plane.
Add the yearly communication service, maintainance, depreciation costs to
this, and we're soon gonna be paying $3k/plane ticket.

In contrast, since MH370, Inmarsat has changed the time period for handshakes
with their terminals from one hour to 15 minutes. Cost: $0.

~~~
magicalist
> _$3k /year for each 1kg added to the plane_

sorry, offtopic, but this is an interesting number. Do you have a source for
more on this? Most of the search hits I can find are discussing economics of
spaceflight.

~~~
greeneggs
Usually you find these kinds of figures in articles about 3D printing aircraft
parts. For example, "By reducing an airplane’s weight by just one kilogram, an
airline can save $1,300 in fuel costs per year, according to the [2011]
IBISWorld report." [1] The 2014 report can be purchased here [2]. Of course,
these numbers will depend on the kind of plane and its utilization, as well as
fuel costs.

[1] [http://www.businessweek.com/technology/3d-printing-coming-
to...](http://www.businessweek.com/technology/3d-printing-coming-to-the-
manufacturing-spaceand-outer-space-01092012.html)

[2] [https://www.ibisworld.com/industry/3d-printer-
manufacturing....](https://www.ibisworld.com/industry/3d-printer-
manufacturing.html)

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marcosdumay
Notice that avoiding that the plane disappears does not save any life. That's
why people do not care so much about it, and that's why they stil disappear.

That said, good telemetry brings economical gains. Planes will stop
disappearing in due time, just not by state decree, and probably because of
more usfull devices than this one.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Notice that avoiding that the plane disappears does not save any life.

Analyzing the causes of plane crashes saves _lots_ of lives. You can't do that
with a disappeared plane.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You usually get the black box upon recovery, which doesn't save the
passengers, but does get you all the valuable data.

~~~
ceejayoz
> You usually get the black box upon recovery, which doesn't save the
> passengers, but does get you all the valuable data.

And recovery is only possible if you can find the wreckage. MH370 is still
missing, and as such the cause of its crash is unknown. If we had real-time
GPS monitoring of airliners, chances are we'd have wreckage in-hand.

~~~
toomuchtodo
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecovered_flight_reco...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecovered_flight_recorders)

17 unrecovered black boxes since 1965. I don't think that calls for spending
tens of millions of dollars considering ADS-B and Iridium will have the
problem solved in the next few years:
[http://www.aireon.com/AboutAireon/AnIridiumInnovation](http://www.aireon.com/AboutAireon/AnIridiumInnovation)

------
ganeumann
"...a six-pound tracking system, about the size of a hotel safe, installed in
the planes’ electronics bays...if something goes wrong — a sudden loss of
altitude; an unexpected bank; engine vibrations — the system begins
transmitting data to the ground, via satellite, every second. That six-pound
box spits out reams of performance data, as well as the basics necessary for a
search-and-rescue: coordinates, speed, and altitude....installation alone runs
about $120,000 per plane..."

Should this cost $120k? I'm no expert, but that seems steep. I assume this
data is already being written to the black box, so piggybacking off that data
feed seems like it would be a pretty simple thing.

~~~
brandon272
Airlines and regulators have no interest in slapping on crude, consumer grade
transmitters to existing aircraft. As is the case with any aircraft part, it
needs to be a high-grade, reliable, tested, and certified.

When you start tying in transmitters to the aircraft's existing avionics, the
need for a redundant, extremely reliable, tested and fault-free system is even
greater. An absolute must.

That's where the big expense comes in. And I believe that's what passengers
have come to expect. Personally, I'd rather fly on an airliner without a
satellite tracking system than fly with one that hasn't been subjected to the
same testing and certification standards as the rest of the plane's equipment.

The cost is the prohibitive factor. I can imagine that Delta, for instance,
has no interest in a $90M charge to retrofit their aircraft with a system that
they will probably never use.

~~~
toomuchtodo
The money would probably be better spent speeding up ADS-B transmitter
installations, as well as incentive payments to Iridium to get their new
satellites with ADS-B receivers into orbit. No point in reinventing the wheel.

~~~
cpncrunch
This is already being done, by Aireon.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Right, which is a subsidiary of Iridium:

[http://www.aireon.com/AboutAireon/AnIridiumInnovation](http://www.aireon.com/AboutAireon/AnIridiumInnovation)

------
tokenadult
From the article: "In discussing about potential safety advances, Tony Tyler,
the International Air Transport Association director general, said earlier
this month that 'even though aircraft cannot be tracked in all cases, flying
is safe. Over 100,000 flights operate safely every day.'" That's important
baseline information. I would much rather fly on any of the airlines that
serve the major airport in my town than drive here, and that's even though
some website has just identified the drivers in my state, incredibly, as the
safest drivers in the United States.[1] Airline flying as it is currently
regulated and implemented daily is an astounding safe way to go to places near
and far.

[1] [http://bringmethenews.com/2015/01/04/study-finds-
minnesota-h...](http://bringmethenews.com/2015/01/04/study-finds-minnesota-
has-the-nations-safest-drivers/)

~~~
grecy
No matter how safe something is, we should still be trying to make it safer.

~~~
jacalata
Rubbish. Perhaps you meant to say "Unless something is already completely
safe, we should always be open to analyzing the benefits and costs of possible
safety improvements, while being sure to spend the majority of our resources
on areas that offer easier or larger gains".

------
minikites
> Any new technology also requires new training of pilots and ground crew, and
> it opens new avenues for mistakes.

I think this is the key point. This isn't iPhone level technology, this is
closer to Space Shuttle technology, where things need to be tested to the
extreme, radiation tolerant, and able to withstand the force of a literal
plane crash.

~~~
johansch
Meanwhile they allow hundreds of relatively high power RF transmitters
(passengers' phones) onboard. I call humbug.

~~~
minikites
Right, my point is that this new device has to be tolerant of radiation from
passengers' phones, increased radiation from space, etc

~~~
johansch
And what happens if it isn't? And how would be this be any worse than no
device at all?

~~~
minikites
The device recording plane data is presumably connected to important plane
systems to record them. Can data/electricity only flow one way? Are you sure?

~~~
zaphar
Why? for location data all they need is GPS. If you know location you find the
black box which has the telemetry data.

Is there a reason a location tracker can't be self contained with it's own
power supply and no connections to a plane's telemetry feed?

~~~
minikites
If you do that, the next time there's a crash like Air France 447, you'll see
rending of garments and crappy articles like this (again) saying "Why have a
black box when you can just transmit the data?!?!?!"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Underwate...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Underwater_search)

> French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said
> that he was not optimistic about finding them since they might have been
> under as much as 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of water and the terrain under this
> portion of the ocean was very rugged. Although France had never recovered a
> flight recorder from such depths, there was precedent for such an operation.

Crashed: June 2009

Black boxes found: May 2011

~~~
marcosdumay
Notice that the AF447 had great telemetry reporting its position right before
the accident. Searching for things at the sea bottom is simply hard.

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cpncrunch
I don't think this expensive solution is the answer. All airliners already
have ADS-B transmitters...the problem is that over the ocean there are no
ground receivers to pick up the signals. Aireon is launching a set of
satellites that will pick up ADS-B signals from all aircraft, and will offer
the service completely free of charge to any airline in the event they lose
contact with a plane.

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zaphar
I'm curious why a simple "Where am I right now" item that doesn't have to plug
into the avionics and could possibly even have it's own power supply isn't
sufficient to cover this. The biggest problem for both of those planes seems
to be that we can't find them.

Figuring out why they crashed is possible once we find them and can get the
black box. The only really missing component is the location ping and it
should be possible to completely isolate from the plane shouldn't it?

~~~
Gravityloss
You can buy a box that attaches to anything you'd like to track. For example
with magnets to a steel shipping container. It has its own battery and gps and
a satellite phone. It notices from the gps when the container is moving and
starts sending position updates with the satellite phone. You can specify the
interval, that then decides how many years the battery lasts.

~~~
zaphar
So why isn't this a cost effective approach to the problem for airlines? You
could even have a pool of them that you attach to airplanes that on overseas
duty only to limit the costs.

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ck2
The ultimate system would ping home every minute, not wait for a fatal even
which may cause loss of power or antenna.

Certainly satellite data cost has come down to the point where you can track
such expensive planes in real time?

