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Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

bigblue_dl

bigblue_dl

Armed
I know we have a few people around here that have some decent knowledge on commercial aviation and the planes themselves, so I wanted to ask this year. This is in response to the presumed crash of the Malaysian Air flight.

After one of these incidents happen, there is always the search for "the black box" so they can hopefully figure out what caused the crash. My question is, in 2014, how do we not have the technology to instantaneously upload this datalog to a satellite, instead of storing it in some kind of drive on the plane itself? With all of the technology we have, this has to be a possible, is there a reason why they haven't switched to this strategy? It seems like it could be pretty dang helpful in trying to find the plane if a datalog was uploaded in real time.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

The related topic of why planes can disappear came up also. Planes more than 120 miles off land arent seen by radar. They have to send them their position. So planes can disappear for up to an hour at a time.

There is tech to send data every second via satellite, but its expensive and requires many more satellites being launched.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

I wonder whether maybe it has something to do with difficulties maintaining constant data connectivity with sufficient bandwidth when moving at hundreds of miles per hour, particularly at the kind of remote locations involved in intercontinental travel? I don't really know, just speculating. On the other hand, all those airlines must offer internet connectivity to passengers, so I don't see why the same connection wouldn't be adequate to upload data about the aircraft itself. So, like I said, I don't know.
 
jmh said:
I wonder whether maybe it has something to do with difficulties maintaining constant data connectivity with sufficient bandwidth when moving at hundreds of miles per hour, particularly at the kind of remote locations involved in intercontinental travel? I don't really know, just speculating. On the other hand, all those airlines must offer internet connectivity to passengers, so I don't see why the same connection wouldn't be adequate to upload data about the aircraft itself. So, like I said, I don't know.
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I think the biggest problem is the data integrity - making sure the sattelite link works 99.99% of the time is difficult. If you're going to have to carry an on-board backup anyway, then the sattelite link is just extra cost that you incur for relatively small benefit - most crashes occur over land, during takeoff or landing, so finding the black box isn't too hard. Also, there probably is a lot more data involved than it first appears - don't forget that there is a voice recorder as well as a flight data recorder.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

jmh said:
I wonder whether maybe it has something to do with difficulties maintaining constant data connectivity with sufficient bandwidth when moving at hundreds of miles per hour, particularly at the kind of remote locations involved in intercontinental travel? I don't really know, just speculating. On the other hand, all those airlines must offer internet connectivity to passengers, so I don't see why the same connection wouldn't be adequate to upload data about the aircraft itself. So, like I said, I don't know.
Click to expand...

Actually, the airlines are just starting to offer internet connectivity. Not all of them, especially some of the airlines in the developing world, have it.

And if the reliability of such a system is anywhere comparable to that of, say, the in-flight entertainment systems, they'd be pretty useless as a tracking method.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

JF_Gophers said:
The related topic of why planes can disappear came up also. Planes more than 120 miles off land arent seen by radar. They have to send them their position. So planes can disappear for up to an hour at a time.

There is tech to send data every second via satellite, but its expensive and requires many more satellites being launched.
Click to expand...
If anything came of this, a GPS tracking system would be the most likely. GPS location data require just a small amount of bandwidth, and if a flight pings its location back to a control tower or its own company's servers every 5 minutes or so, further reducing the infrastructure requirments vs. a continuous feed, it will still reduce the area for search and rescue efforts significantly.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

Gov'ment would never allow it!!! If it was available then they couldn't have shot down TWA flight off Long Island!


:D
 
St. Clown said:
If anything came of this, a GPS tracking system would be the most likely. GPS location data require just a small amount of bandwidth, and if a flight pings its location back to a control tower or its own company's servers every 5 minutes or so, further reducing the infrastructure requirments vs. a continuous feed, it will still reduce the area for search and rescue efforts significantly.
Click to expand...

I believe GPS is already in use. So there must be some delay or issue with it that its not as effective as we'd think.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

Hopkinja said:
Actually, the airlines are just starting to offer internet connectivity. Not all of them, especially some of the airlines in the developing world, have it.

And if the reliability of such a system is anywhere comparable to that of, say, the in-flight entertainment systems, they'd be pretty useless as a tracking method.
Click to expand...

Good call on the in-flight entertainment systems. Those are junk, from my experience.


I guess I understand some of the reasoning here, and why, while it may be possible, it may not make the most sense to do. I do like the idea of just doing a simple GPS tracker though. That should be cheap enough. Maybe a GPS tracker that it attached to a device that inflates when water touches it, and activates when in contact with water.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

bigblue_dl said:
Good call on the in-flight entertainment systems. Those are junk, from my experience.
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I flew on an Air France Airbus A380 from Paris to JFK and the entertainment system was pretty sweet. Last spring I flew Southwest and the Wi-Fi let me watch NBC hockey on my tablet with little or no buffering.

I
bigblue_dl said:
guess I understand some of the reasoning here, and why, while it may be possible, it may not make the most sense to do. I do like the idea of just doing a simple GPS tracker though. That should be cheap enough. Maybe a GPS tracker that it attached to a device that inflates when water touches it, and activates when in contact with water.
Click to expand...

GPS lets flight tracking websites keep a pretty good tab on a flight. From one report I saw, they confirmed this plane made an unscheduled turn before dropping off the radar.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

SteveP said:
I flew on an Air France Airbus A380 from Paris to JFK and the entertainment system was pretty sweet. Last spring I flew Southwest and the Wi-Fi let me watch NBC hockey on my tablet with little or no buffering.
Click to expand...

The ones I've used on Delta have been extremely glitchy, and not very easy to use. I rarely fly anyone but Delta, since that is where I have all of my miles, and Delta dominates MSP airport. I had a flight last year from MSP to Schipol, where the entertainment system crashed about 10 minutes after we took off any it didn't work the entire flight. They reset it after it failed, then it turned back on for half the plane, not the other half. Reset it again, ****ing off the other half of the plane that had already gotten 30 minutes into movies since the last restart. When it came back up again, even less seats had a working entertainment system. I just gave up on it and read a book until I could fall asleep.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

Weight, interference with aircraft systems, and expense are the three biggest reasons I can think of. It's not easy to get stuff certified to use on commercial aircraft. Heck it's taken UPS years just to allow pilots to use an iPad instead of a briefcase full of manuals.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

Jimjamesak said:
Weight, interference with aircraft systems, and expense are the three biggest reasons I can think of. It's not easy to get stuff certified to use on commercial aircraft. Heck it's taken UPS years just to allow pilots to use an iPad instead of a briefcase full of manuals.
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It wasn't UPS but the FAA that just started to allow the use of Ipads. MY kid uses a mini and Iphone for an App called foreflight.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

Some airplanes, the 777 among them, do send data by datalink.( they have a vhf link via satellite in most of the world, particularly the n atlantic and n pacific.)
However this is done by exception. In other words, if there is some issue that the on board computers see,( for instance the oil pressure on number one engine drops) then all that data is sent automatically, right away. Also most airplanes now days, with some exceptions, can be interrogated from the ground and all the data that is of interest can be downloaded in real time. Normally though this is just downloaded at the end of the flight or at a specific interval.

there is some movement to get rid of the black box but it contains a ton of data and I doubt it would be gotten rid of totally. The black box is not the issue with finding the plane, as planes, even small ones, have beacons that go off automatically, with multiple back ups, on multiple frequencies.

wi fi now days only works, at least to my knowledge, within about 200 miles, or vhf range, of land. If they are doing it over water, then it's by vhf satellite link similar to the data link feature above. I would think doing that for 300-400 people, hours on end, would be cost prohibitive.
,
the iPads broadcast, so there is some concern about interference.
so as far as position reporting, generally this is done either by the cpdlc,( the data link set up), or via HF radio, at certain intervals. In this case, the airplane was in radar contact so position reporting was not required.
 
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manurespreader said:
Some airplanes, the 777 among them, do send data by datalink.( they have a vhf link via satellite in most of the world, particularly the n atlantic and n pacific.)
However this is done by exception. In other words, if there is some issue that the on board computers see,( for instance the oil pressure on number one engine drops) then all that data is sent automatically, right away. Also most airplanes now days, with some exceptions, can be interrogated from the ground and all the data that is of interest can be downloaded in real time. Normally though this is just downloaded at the end of the flight or at a specific interval.
Click to expand...
I know UPS has this on their 747s as it helped identify a problem in a crash a few years back. Forgot about that.
 
Re: Commercial Aviation/Airplane Question

St. Clown said:
If anything came of this, a GPS tracking system would be the most likely. GPS location data require just a small amount of bandwidth, and if a flight pings its location back to a control tower or its own company's servers every 5 minutes or so, further reducing the infrastructure requirments vs. a continuous feed, it will still reduce the area for search and rescue efforts significantly.
Click to expand...
Sounds like ADS-B and NextGen...
 
Apparently Rolls Royce engines have transmitters on them. They were still going 4 hrs after they lost radar contact. Weird and keeps getting weirder
 
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