

Crash Spurs Interest in Real-Time Flight Data - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/business/global/22blackbox.html

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asmithmd1
$75,000 for a satellite black box plus $3-$5/minute to send the data?

Just screw one of these onto the plane:

<http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=102>

$170 + $99/year for the data plan.

They would have a much better idea of where the real black box landed for a
trivial cost.

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quanticle
Well, its not an add-on to the existing black-box systems, its a replacement.
These new black boxes are supposed to gather more data about more components.
Given that, the $75,000 price tag makes sense.

The $3-$5 per minute data cost also makes sense if you think of the black
boxes as transmitting full real-time telemetry and voice recordings. However,
that cost is incurred only after manual activation by the pilot or after a
mechanical emergency is detected. Most of the time, the boxes will only be
transmitting a "heartbeat" signal, which costs much less to transmit.

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a-priori
Why does it need to be a replacement? It makes more sense to me that flight
data recorders should keep their current job: to record detailed flight data,
and keep it safe in the event of a crash.

This should be a new device that operates in parallel with the FDR on the same
data.

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bhickey
Isn't there some portion of the aviation spectrum that could be allocated to
ad hoc communication between aircraft? The routing problems would be
interesting!

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c1sc0
Bittorrent in the sky, I like it!

