it isn't a type of the system i was talking about as ability, in flight, to disable a system excludes the system from the "security" category. Just for the sake of example, placing a battery powered device like always-connected satellite phone into unreachable in flight part of the plane (end of wing for example) would be like something alone the lines of "a security satellite system"
Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system. This would have independent power supply and obviate the "need for cicuit breakers" being accessed. Or something like a lo-jack or whatever. Its completely embarassing to Boeing. Almost as bad as the pilot has a 64mb i phone and the [edit: voice recorders] holds only 2hrs? WTF. An Iphone might not itself survive, but the media allocations for the seem absyrdly low.
> Point is a $100 spot device could be added (powered by Li AA's) as a backup system
Li AAs... without a means of isolating them from the circuitry?
How many aircraft are you prepared to lose through in-flight fires for this 'benefit'? Reference: Ethiopian Airlines 787 fire at Heathrow originating from lithium cells in the ELT.
Who is going to check the battery status at regular intervals?
Who is going to certify and sign-off those checks?
Who is going to be qualified to change those cells?
What interfaces will there be with the aircraft avionics to relay data such as call sign and flight code? How do we protect those connections from overload? There's a reason every single electrical circuit on an airliner can be isolated.
Laugh all you want, but the tech is pretty simple. You need to look at what it is doing. Replacing a transponder with something that is much simpler than an epirb. The example I gave is a $100 dollar current piece of tech that weigs 150 grams including power-source, and if it was available to LOS througha window could track the plane for 4-7 hours off a single set of batteries. If you want to raise the budget for an order of magnitude or two, for 10k dollars you could surely create a redundant system for the transponder.
The larger point is that any "real situation" that would need the transponder turned off (power/fire/corruption) would have almost no bearing on the operability of such a simple system.
FYI the imarsat pings are not all that different, are they? Its just a simple ping with some data that including headers is going to be very minimal payload...like SMS text type level of data.
The spot device doesn't need to survive a crash, just needs to send out a GPS ping once every 10 minutes. ie to give a fix on where the crash is would be sufficient.
10 minutes isn't nearly enough. Remember you're talking about something moving at 8-10 miles per minute, 10 minutes, so worse case your solution will give a range about the size of Iowa.
You could increase the ping rate somewhat trivially. Look at what the trucking industry does to keep an eye on cargo. And in any event, the current 777 search area is how big?
You make it sound so simple, when in reality it is anything but simple. Every component in a plane is tested extensively before it can be installed and used. When it comes to electronic components in a plane, things like interference to other aircraft, other components on the plane, power usage and interference to ground devices (radio stations, emergency frequencies, etc) are all tested and considered.
Planes are massive powerhouses of technological wonder, adding something new into such a machine would take considerable amounts of time and even then once you've got it installed, who is going to maintain it? You've got to pay for access to a satellite for the data to be tracked, where is the data stored? Is the data encrypted? How do you make sure only the eyes intended to see the data see it and nobody else? What kind of redundancy is there if the satellite security system fails? Does the plane need bigger batteries to power such a device, where does the power come from?
There are rules and processes to follow in the aviation industry and they're very strict. And that's just the hardware, then you've got to write the software, make sure it doesn't interfere with anything else on the plane, then you've got to make it work for different planes, planes wired differently, different hardware/software, controls. You're testing two different halves that make a whole.
One does not simply just install a new piece of technology into a plane. There's no DIY kit you can buy from Tandy.
Then there is a cost vs risk calculation thrown into the equation here. How often does a plane just vanish like this? It doesn't happen very often and probably not enough to warrant spending hundreds of millions of dollars implementing a terrorist proof tracking/data collection system. Cars are stolen everyday, it's a common thing, for planes it is not.
If things were that easy, they would have already done so, trust me. Nobody wants to see their planes return more than the airline who paid for the plane, paid for the maintenance, paid for the staff & fuel and need it to help recoup the costs and make the business money.
Are we also not forgetting planes have quite good data capturing and positioning systems already? The transponder was disabled which was the easy one (a flick of a switch) but the ACARS maintenance tracker was also disabled and as already highlighted, without advanced knowledge of the planes internals, isn't something you can just disable with the flick of a switch. Other advanced fall-back tracking methods were disabled, this isn't something your standard pilot would know about.
With 1st hand experience on aeronautics devices, i can tell you the "tech moves slow on planned because of extensive testing" is pure disinformation used copiously by everyone in the industry benefiting from that lie. Yeah, it is tested, like in several other industries.
<quote> Then there is a cost vs risk calculation thrown into the equation here. How often does a plane just vanish like this? It doesn't happen very often and probably not enough to warrant spending hundreds of millions of dollars implementing a terrorist proof tracking/data collection system.
How do you make sure only the eyes intended to see the data see it and nobody else?
Why isn't this a concern with ADS-B, which allows anyone with the right equipment (or access to a flight tracking website) to track planes in real time?
And cost-versus-risk has been decided in favor of increasing cost (and safety) in numerous aircraft systems already.
Also, if one factors in the cost of one more huge deep ocean search, a few more cents per ticket won't seem so bad. Who pays for these searches and investigations anyway - the airlines or governments (privatizing profits and socializing losses)?
> from time to time planes crash over ocean and search for black boxes may take years like Air France 447 ...
Yes, and in that case, they knew within narrow limits where the plane went down -- the crew were doing what they could to let their position be known. No effort to sneak away with an airliner, as in the present case.
If only airlines employed someone with your acumen. You are most definitely the first person ever to have that thought. But now that that is out of the way there is nothing in the way.
people fit 239 passengers in a plane. Couldn't manufacturers do the same with cars?
Fallacy by analogy. It's a fair question (off hand), but it falls down when other factors are considered (cars don't normally drive for hours over water, for example).
The short answer, as I understand it, is:
1) Most communications technology, including satellites, is focused on where most people are communicating - ie, on land; ie, on 1/8th of the earth's surface
2) As you correctly point out, satellites over water aren't as obvious a problem as, say, mobile phone towers in the Indian Ocean, but the cost to retrofit existing aircraft is considered prohibitive given the rarity of this type of situation (ie, existing communication systems work well, and in this case seem to have been deliberately turned off anyway - so a different system is likely to have proved no more helpful).
