

Malaysia Airlines didn’t buy $10 upgrade that could have tracked missing MH370 - yeukhon
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/malaysia-airlines-didnt-buy-computer-upgrade-that-could-have-given-data-on-missing-flight/2014/03/19/40e2484c-af7c-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html

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melling
I asked this here 4 days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7411541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7411541)

I'm not sure why it's not repeatedly mentioned. The news talks about the
futuristic hardware upgrades with GPS, etc. However, we can solve most of the
problem today.

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yeukhon
It sounds unfortunate that if the upgrade was that cheap.

 _Malaysia Airlines said in a statement. “This installation is sufficient to
meet all of MAS’s operational requirements and at the same time meets all
international requirements that enable us to fly international airways.”_

This attitude is common, almost an industry standard IMO.

I watched a documentary on the Air France and at the end of the documentary
Air France claimed their equipments met the regulatory compliance. What they
said was "until the Board revises the requirements, [we] won't do anything
about it."

So unless the regulation said so, or someone brave enough to suggest that has
to be done, aviation companies will do less.

I was on a flight last summer from NY to SF and the kernel which they used to
power the OS is about 5 years old. That's not to say they have to upgrade to
the latest kernel but I wonder how old some of those equipments are. Since an
aircraft can last for many years, how often do they upgrade software and
hardware? What is the regulation like?

On the flip side, I wonder how simple a computer upgrade is on an aviation. Do
they do testing on a few aircraft before they deploy on every single flight in
the airline?

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jeremysmyth
_This attitude is common, almost an industry standard IMO._

Common and standard in a hell of a lot of industries too. With something as
tightly regulated as air travel, or pharma, or finance, you simply _do not add
features that are not required_ unless it provides some measurable competitive
benefit.

Everything feature or bit of equipment you add becomes something else you have
to check, maintain, regulate, replace. You don't do that just because it's a
good idea, but because you have to or it makes you more money. Neither of
things apply in a situation that arises once in a lifetime, unfortunately.

