After the baffling disappearance in March of Flight MH370, critics accused the aviation industry of "dithering" over equipping jets with real-time tracking systems. Now, with another passenger plane lost, the call for action is becoming more insistent.
Tracking aircraft by satellite and live-streaming of black box data were cited as top priorities by industry insiders after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 with 239 people on board. Its fate remains a mystery despite a long underwater search west of Australia. Members of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)—the UN's aviation body—agreed in the aftermath of the incident to mandate real-time tracking.
But they did not set a timeline as airlines mulled the additional costs involved. Many carriers have been losing money for years. Now, with the apparent loss of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 on Sunday off Indonesia, the calls for immediate changes have returned with vehemence.
http://phys.org/news/2014-12-airasia-fuels-real-time-tracking.html
[Related]: http://www.airtrafficmanagement.net/2014/12/iata-no-silver-bullet-solution-on-tracking-in-wake-of-mh370/
(Score: 2) by nyder on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:39PM
Not sure what the big deal about cost is, the passengers/payers are always the ones who bears the costs of stuff. If your airlines isn't making a profit, then you are doing it all wrong.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:37PM
Not all companies are designed to make a profit. That doesn't mean their associated holding companies in tax havens don't make money, and then occasionally reinvest some millions in the business that's losing millions ever year. If it wasn't for all these benevolent directors operating companies at losses for years, like Starbucks, there would be even less jobs to go around! Thank goodness for those altruistic CEO's based in Luxembourg, Cayman Islands and those other entrepreneurial nations.
(Score: 1) by monster on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:43AM
Increased costs either mean reduced profits if they keep prices or a price increase. With increased prices, some people who would fly with the old price may find the new one too expensive and not fly, meaning less customers and less income. If enough people do it, the price increase may make the company unprofitable.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:45PM
They found the plane and bodies this morning, so unfortunately for the premise of the article, the plane is no longer lost.
More than a small about of the "vehemence" just seems to be a convenient target of anger (and what will be the two minutes hate after this is installed) and astroturfing from satellite providers. Nobody appears to want a simple peer to peer mesh of planes because there's no way for a satellite provider to make money so there's no astroturfing for it.
What I mean by a peer to peer mesh is storage is so staggeringly cheap every plane in the air could record everything it hears. After an "incident" download all local aircraft to flash drives at their convenience when they're on the ground. After all, there is really no purpose to "strict real time" such that I could read the N2 rpm of the left side engine of some random 777 on the other side of the planet. However every plane in range of the victim plane would have a perfectly good record when something happens to the victim plane. There is no way for a service provider to make money off this and it would be too cheap for a .gov bailout so nobody has any interest in this obvious idea.
Technologically it would not be much of an achievement today to do something really simple like ship a little software defined radio box that just listens to the ADS-B band and records the whole RF spectrum for the last 24 hours or whatever. An extension of technology and protocol would be fairly obvious.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:07PM
I think suggesting a peer to peer network (on a community blogging site, no less!) is pretty much grandstanding and AstroTurf-ing as much as anything else. You are suggesting development of another radio system and associated monitoring and demands for access to every aircraft on a moment's notice to retrieve information.
The thing is that the ACARS [rockwellcollins.com] already has the capability to gather GPS coordinates along with every transmission from the aircraft. Further these systems are just about always polling the aircraft for other information, engine performance, maintenance issues, etc. In short, amateur peer to peer mesh networks developed from the ground up are simply a case of buzzword bingo.
Perhaps the solution to that is to have some of the big nations order acars to start including GPS data in every message from every (equipped) plane and provide access to that data to aviation authorities via the web as part of the cost of doing business. Let them rigorously prove costs, and write if off of their business taxes, or pass that cost to the airlines. But make it required. Then require the inclusion of GPS on every ACARS equipped plane or engine.
Still, the reality is that this simply gets first responders to the bodies quicker. It won't save any lives. It might save costs in search and rescue, a bill which nations end up footing from taxes anyway (hence the tax write-off suggestion).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:11PM
Good points. It may well save lives though, in the sense that we can't learn anything about potential failure modes from an aircraft that we can't find. Another cheap option that occurred to me is some kind of radio beacon mounted to the top of the plane in such a way that after being immersed for an extended period of time it comes loose, floats to the surface, and starts broadcasting. Ideally it would either record the location where it surfaced or be tethered somehow to avoid issues with currents. IIRC they have a similar kind of beacon for boats, but not as automatic.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:40PM
Install boxes that interrogates any ACARS capable airplane nearby and push it onto a mesh network that also uploads whatever it's internal storage has found whenever it's in an airport through a signed connection to multiple headquarters?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:36AM
What is this pointless fascination with mesh networks?
We can't even get these things running reliably on the ground, let alone in the air.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:50AM
No single point of failure. But in reality they should probably be combined with a satellite link. But any solar flare would fry them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:08PM
Nobody appears to want a simple peer to peer mesh of planes because there's no way for a satellite provider to make money so there's no astroturfing for it.
"Simple"? I guess it depends on how much effort is required to make it simple. Like fusion is simple, I guess.
The simple interface is to use satellites for data relays. Tech is basically consumer costs - see satellite phones. Data rates can be very low. For full package, you get complete telemetry from the place, including engine status, fuel status, telemetry, etc. etc. It's not just geographic coordinates. For geographic coordinates, it probably would cost you $50/mo in data plan. 64-byte data packet every minute for 1 month is 2.6MB data.
Anyway, last time Inmersat said that they will provide free basic tracking data plans for any airlines that wants it.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/satellite-company-offers-free-passenger-jet-tracking-n102896 [nbcnews.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:11PM
From what I understand from MH370, all commercial planes have inmarsat systems on board. A typical bgan charge is something like $6/MB. A 100 byte packet sent every 10 seconds would fit in tons of telemetry including location, airspeed, gps speed, temperatures, fuel levels - pretty much every reading in the cockpit, and would cost about $5 a day. Make it a requirement to get your air worthiness certificate from Boeing and Airbus (and Embraer) and you'll have pretty much everyone with the system enabled for an insignificant cost.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday December 30 2014, @09:09PM
The pilot can velcro something like this near his dash: http://www.findmespot.com/en/?cid=102 [findmespot.com]
It might raise everyone's plane ticket by one dollar. The US Army has had this kind of technology deployed in every truck, tank, and plane for over a decade. It isn't even specialized hardware anymore. Just googled up another random one: http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/sat-trac-b.do?sortby=bestSellers&from=fn [brickhousesecurity.com] less than 20$ per hour operating cost (assuming one track every five minutes or so).
Commercial planes didn't "dither" over installing tvs, wifi, and phone service. They were excited when the technologies became smaller, lighter, and cheap. Reliably tracking planes is a good idea.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Adamsjas on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:09PM
Virtually nothing on a plane is "off the shelf". Plus the linked site gives no information about the satellite coverage area.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:28PM
Anything with a brand name that can be ordered off the internet is "off the shelf". I'll bet that includes nearly every instrument plugged into the pilot's panel : ) The second link has a coverage map in the specs tab.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:42PM
And these products are approved by FAA for aircraft use where? And approved by ICAO where? Oh, turns out you don't know anything about type acceptance for avionics. Not surprised.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:34AM
You guys are hard to please. I just googled "satellite track faa approved" and found a bunch. Here's link #1: http://blueskynetwork.com/product/faa-certified-d1000a/ [blueskynetwork.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:46PM
Yes, we are hard to please.
Now you can provide not just unit costing (which I'm sure will be made up sooner or later by ticket prices, but I'd expect something not less than $8000 per unit,) ongoing maintenance costs, and also ongoing operational costs for an Iridium data link (which is where I expect the real costs lie if you want to do something that it constantly transmitting data at not more than ten minute intervals.)
Then tell me how much we have to add to the cost of the average ticket, accounting for how many passengers we'll lose to the competition because they're NOT required to do any of this.
Then, fancy web-app or not, if you're seriously looking at using this for fleet monitoring, you'll need custom monitoring applications that will report when the heartbeat signal is lost, new staff hires for monitoring this whiz-bang thing (maybe you can absorb the manpower into Operations, but I doubt it,) protocols for attempting to re-establish contact with the plane (as it is far more likely a given plane's unit will fail rather than it being crashed,) and of course how this whole thing dovetails into what the airlines currently *actually do* in the event of a missing plane - which they already have plans for.
All of this is just a fancy way of saying that while your idea has merit and would be nice, actually putting it into practice is a hell of a lot more complex and costly than "just do it."
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday December 31 2014, @06:17PM
You are assuming that knowing where every plane was in your fleet (in real-time) wouldn't save you money somewhere. If your friends could track your flight in real-time then that is also a perk. They can check their phone and know exactly where you are and not just some best guess "on-time" listed on the website. "Just do it" doesn't mean it doesn't cost money or time. It means just do it. I have installed and used two-way satellite communication systems. They are as difficult to maintain as a normal radio (not difficult). Transmitter, receiver, laptop, and a bunch of cables. That is for a two-way system. It will cost more money to install the thing than to purchase it. There is so much nay-saying over something that has been solved for a decade. Google will turn up plenty of options if anyone actually cares to look instead of judging my suggestion without any research.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RedBear on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:21AM
Slightly off topic but anyone who is looking at the SPOT (or SPOT 2) devices should really read the bad reviews of them on Amazon. The SPOT devices and the expensive yearly service that goes with it are not something that I would ever rely on for any situation resembling an emergency. If you are going out into the wilderness or out on a boat, do yourself a huge favor and buy a proper EPIRB or other standardized personal locator radio beacon. Other than possibly needing to be registered so whoever is receiving the signal will know who you are and who to contact once it starts broadcasting, they do not need any expensive yearly satellite service fees and are very reliable, broadcasting a signal that can be received possibly hundreds of miles away (depending on the device).
Speaking of EPIRBs, around here all commercial marine vessels and many private vessels above a certain size or with a certain number of passengers are required by law to have auto-releasing, auto-activating EPIRB units mounted externally on the vessel, so that if the vessel gets into trouble the survivors (hopefully floating nearby in an also-required survival raft that automatically cuts itself free from a sinking vessel) can be more easily located. How it is that commercial airliners containing hundreds of people are not required to have a similar device onboard is really beyond me. The largest units are the size of a couple loaves of bread and can't weigh more than ten pounds, but will broadcast a signal for hundreds of miles for several days. At the very least such devices would allow much faster locating of where the plane entered the ocean.
And then there's GPS, which surveyors now routinely use to make centimeter-accurate plots via special multiple-antenna setups. Surely the computers onboard big commercial airliners know when Something Has Gone Horribly Wrong even if a pilot hasn't pushed the "Aww, Shiiii" button, and could start screaming out highly accurate GPS coordinates (including altitude, of course) once per second until the plane comes to a stop. Given current technology, this does not seem like it would be a difficult or expensive thing to implement.
We also have ballistic parachutes [youtube.com], at least for small planes, which we should be capable of adapting to larger planes. How many crashes have we had in recent years that would have been easily survivable if the plane had impacted at 10 MPH instead of 150 MPH? Lots, I'd wager. But I've seen no sign that anyone is interested in putting these parachutes on anything larger than a Cessna. Too "expensive", I guess.
At every level it is just exceedingly bizarre that we are even capable of "losing" commercial airliners today. And who the hell thought it was a good idea to make a transponder that was capable of being disabled from inside the plane while it's in flight? That's the biggest thing that has always bugged me about the disappearance of MH370. They "lost" the plane because the transponder was disabled in flight. I could understand the need for that on a military aircraft, but deactivating the transponder on a commercial aircraft in flight should automatically activate a backup transponder that can't be accessed, and therefore can't be disabled, from inside the plane.
Of course, we also still have hundreds of passenger train systems around the world that are driven manually by a single human, with no automatic safety systems whatsoever in place to slow down the train or alert headquarters when the (single, remember!) idiot human pilot feels like doing 80 MPH around a curve that the laws of physics says you must go around at less than 30 MPH if you don't want to derail the train. So I don't know why I'm surprised we keep misplacing giant airplanes.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday December 31 2014, @08:03AM
Of course the transponder needs to be able to disabled by the pilot in an emergency, such as when a terrorist fires a missile that locks onto the transponder signal [as you can easily determine how the missile is tracking you by a few basic maneuvers including turning the engines off and then on again].
Haven't you seen ANY action movies involving airplanes?
(Score: 1) by BananaPhone on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:01PM
Description:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vile_Vortices [wikipedia.org]
Better map:
http://www.deepinfo.com/WorldGrid.htm [deepinfo.com]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:36PM
Is there cell coverage there?
Are the disapperances connected?
Did they learn from the last two and decide to scatter some stuff to find this time?
Could the planes be in flyable condition somewhere?
Were there any Motorola engineers or Patent Holders on Board?
Where did the planes really go?
Were the transponders disabled like on 9/11?
Wouldn't any other tracker be disabled also?
Can I avoid flying to SE Asia?
Am I a conspiricay theorist? Maybe. That is just as plausable as the possible answers you don't like.
Why does nobody go after this stuff? Because they would lose their job.
C'mon guys, the kool aid is tasty... er, something about a hat?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:53PM
Why do these things keep disappearing in that area?
Is there cell coverage there?
Have you bothered to look at a map?
How far is cell coverage from 100 meters deep in the ocean?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:47PM
Some poor or unordered countries have problems with keeping their airlines in order. Flying over war zones, pushing pilots, using Airbus with known pilot tube (wind speed) defects, or just plain bad weather.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:56AM
Some poor or unordered countries have problems with keeping their airlines in order.
Flying over war zones
The week of MH17, the following airlines (not exhaustive) flew over the Ukraine
* Lufthansa (Germany)
* Singapore
* Thai
* Air India
* Jet (India)
* Qatar
* Emirates (UAE)
* United (USA)
* Virgin (UK)
* FedEx (USA)
There's a skew towards SEA, India and European carriers for obvious geographical reasons -- Ukraine isn't on the flight path for many flights from the U.S or Japan.
pushing pilots
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/02/21/pilots-reported-fatigue-erred-ups-jet-crash/pEu9NkHAqHklDk5swrCA5J/story.html [bostonglobe.com]
"WASHINGTON — The pilots of a UPS cargo jet that crashed last August complained about the company’s tiring work schedules at the start of the fatal flight, and then made errors shortly before the plane flew into a hillside and burst into flames, according to information presented at a hearing Thursday."
or just plain bad weather.
Countries with flights crashing during bad weather in the last 10 years:
Lao, Congo, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Iraq. It's not exactly common.
using Airbus with known pilot tube (wind speed) defects
I'm not aware the A320 family has any such known defects, but I'll be sure to tell the U.S. pilot on US588 on Sunday about it.
Of the 3 major plane incidents this year, 2 were Boeing, 1 was airbus.
U.S. carriers with Airbus planes:
AA (+US), Delta, United, Jet Blue, Spirit. In fact the only U.S. national airline I could find without a sizeable airbus fleet was Alaska.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Wednesday December 31 2014, @01:16AM
Did those airline companies fly over the eastern part of Ukraine?
That UPS does some bad mistakes is perhaps something that won't kill many passengers..
Bad weather means avoiding flights in some regions at specific times. Or when bad weather is announced. Some areas just suffer way more from this than others.
According to a previous article comment [soylentnews.org]:
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @09:38AM
An a330 is to an a320 as a 777 is to a 757
And yes all those airlines flew over Donetsk.far more were flying over Isis occupied Iraq.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday December 31 2014, @05:36PM
"far more were flying over Isis occupied Iraq"
Airlines seems reckless..
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday December 31 2014, @12:30AM
Why do these things keep disappearing in that area?
Which area? MH370 went wrong over 1,200 miles away. 1200 miles is a large area, about the size of the contiguous U.S. [gcmap.com]
MH17 went wrong about 5,000 miles away from MH370, which is the same as saying that Washington and Moscow are "in the same area"
Is there cell coverage there?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=a%20map [lmgtfy.com]
You're asking if there's cell coverage 50 miles off shore? No, GSM doesn't work that way.
Are the disapperances connected?
Yes, MH17, MH370, and QZ8501 were all planes, and all had bad things happen in 2014. 2 of them were owned by a malaysian firm. The other was sort-of mostly-partially owned by a malaysian firm.
Did they learn from the last two and decide to scatter some stuff to find this time?
MH17 had plenty to find, as it was shot down over a field. Journalists were picking through luggage live on TV :(
Could the planes be in flyable condition somewhere?
Yes, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/blob/1270024/1405628401000/mh17-crash8-data.jpg [channelnewsasia.com]
Were there any Motorola engineers or Patent Holders on Board?
On a budget airline flight from a secondary Indonesian city to the regional hub at 5AM? Yes, sounds like just the type of plane that high fliying execs would take.
Where did the planes really go?
MH17 ended up in a field in eastern ukraine. By all means argue if it was shot down by Russia, Ukrainian Rebels, Ukraine, or the U.S, but it was shot down.
QZ8501 ended up at the bottom of the sea near Borneo.
God knows about MH370, most likely in the indian ocean.
Were the transponders disabled like on 9/11?
Are you still beating your wife?
Wouldn't any other tracker be disabled also?
Can I avoid flying to SE Asia?
No, it's a law that nutters have to fly to south east asia.
Am I a conspiricay theorist?
Do you even need that answered?
That is just as plausable as the possible answers you don't like.
What don't I like? A massive global conspiracy involving multiple nations, thousands of people, and it's all been kept hidden by the lamestream media, and the truth is only known to a few basement-dwelling lardarses?
Why does nobody go after this stuff? Because they would lose their job.
Yes, there's noone willing to go after this stuff because they'd lose their job. Manning, Assange, Snowden, they all kept quiet because they were worried about losing their jobs..