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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 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.