SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 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.