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31 years later, we found the flight recorders

operationthonapa.com

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Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#71

Post by pseingatl »

13of40 wrote: post #57
trhway wrote: post #54

what seems to be the main cargo of the plane - illegally trafficked (by the airline itself) caiman skins: https://operationthonapa.com/an-international-smuggling-ring... "Pieces of snake/alligator/crocodile skins are scattered all over the mountain. In picking up a plane part for a closer look, often there would be crocodile hide on or near the part. They are in such abundance that we actually became quite sick of th…

I read the Wikipedia article, and it seemed strange they were flying with only 19 passengers. Maybe the smuggling is what made it profitable?

I worked in cargo for a Latin American airline in the 1970's. Our fleet consisted solely of 727's. Back then, cargo prices were regulated. Our cargo operations paid for the airline's costs; passengers were profit. Even without passengers we paid the bills. Also, keep in mind that the aircraft would pick up passengers in Bolivia who were going to Miami. If you were in Paraguay flying to Bolivia there were a lot of better local choices than waiting for the flight from Miami.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#72

Post by pseingatl »

xufi wrote: post #55
justinclift wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the software that does the sending has vulnerabilities in it, that would be bad. Although we can all think of approaches to try to minimise/exclude that possibility... reality often has ways of showing up things people didn't think of. :(

What software would that be that the flight recorder box is running? I've always wanted to know. I've heard the OS Is some variation of a Linux distro

Not in the 1980's.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#73

Post by ams6110 »

emdowling wrote: post #16
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There just isn't adequate satellite internet worldwide to trust that system just yet. Airplanes don't even broadcast their coordinates to satellites in many airlines, despite existing networks likely (ie Iridium) being able to handle the small increase in data (if they kept the packets small - just flight number/lat/lon - and let the satellites figure out where to send and what time the packets come, the total size f…

It's truly mind boggling that airlines don't do this. Given the cost of an aircraft and the value it represents, surely the data cost is more than worth it. I hope MH370 has changed the mindset of airlines and aircraft manufacturers. I know that pilots are against live streaming, always on voice recorders in the cockpit due to privacy concerns but surely there are ways to regulate access to that (eg: it goes to the s…

Typically plane crashes are very rare events. Even more rare are crashes from crusing altitude over water. MH370 doesn't change that.

So if the proposal is to add new equipment to every aircraft in service, that is compared to the very rare cost of having to recover a data recorder, and the even more rare cost of having to recover it from underwater. Airlines don't see that as an economic tradeoff that makes sense.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#74

Post by ams6110 »

stevep98 wrote: post #24
emdowling wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's truly mind boggling that airlines don't do this. Given the cost of an aircraft and the value it represents, surely the data cost is more than worth it. I hope MH370 has changed the mindset of airlines and aircraft manufacturers. I know that pilots are against live streaming, always on voice recorders in the cockpit due to privacy concerns but surely there are ways to regulate access to that (eg: it goes to the s…

> It's truly mind boggling that airlines don't do this. They don't do it because they don't need the data. Governments do, for when they need to do search and rescue. So, governments should make it a requirement. For a manager making a decision in an airline whether or not to use this service, he would have to justify the cost to the airline. If none of his competitors are using it, then he's just got an unnecessary…

Governments should just bill the manufacturer and the airline for the costs of the search and rescue/recovery operation. Then the manufacturers, airlines, and their insurers could work out what the cost/benefit equation is.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#75

Post by comex »

ams6110 wrote: post #74
stevep98 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's truly mind boggling that airlines don't do this. They don't do it because they don't need the data. Governments do, for when they need to do search and rescue. So, governments should make it a requirement. For a manager making a decision in an airline whether or not to use this service, he would have to justify the cost to the airline. If none of his competitors are using it, then he's just got an unnecessary…

Governments should just bill the manufacturer and the airline for the costs of the search and rescue/recovery operation. Then the manufacturers, airlines, and their insurers could work out what the cost/benefit equation is.

That would fix the economic incentives, but not the larger externalities. After all, many black boxes are never recovered[1], including the Eastern Airlines one at issue (well, it might have just been recovered, decades late) and, so far, MH370's. To an airline, this outcome is not the end of the world, or perhaps even preferable: abstractly, data from the flight recorder might help prevent future crashes, but that's far in the future, the crash rate is already very low, and in the near term, whenever info about the crash makes it into the news cycle, that's bad PR for the airline. But the government has a strong interest in getting that data: if it was terror, that information can help catch the masterminds and prevent future attacks; if it was an accident, well, government regulatory bodies are the embodiment of the public's collective interest in safety, which is considered more important than short-term profit. On top of that, typically, people who knew the victims have a very strong emotional interest in learning what happened, no matter whether any practical benefit can be derived from the knowledge.

If there was some realistic dollar amount that would guarantee recovery of existing black boxes, then sure, bill the airline for it and let them weigh the probabilities. But there isn't. The only way to prevent these types of situations from happening again is by upgrading the technology, and that has to be done in advance.

Of course, that doesn't mean we are supposed to disregard the cost of reducing externalities; nobody wants a bankrupt industry. Me, I'm not familiar with the economics of aviation, so I don't know whether the airlines should, or whether the government should require them to, make those upgrades in the near term. But at the very least, both of those statements will be true someday (due to turnover, technology improvements, etc.), and economic benefits won't have much to do with it.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecovered_flight_r...

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#76

Post by brillenfux »

wrigby wrote: post #3
vermontdevil wrote: post #2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_980 The crash.

Non-mobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Air_Lines_Flight_980

Thanks. Or use this[1] with this[2].

[1] http://einaregilsson.com/redirector/

[2] http://sprunge.us/hMAE?json

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#77

Post by Washuu »

jessaustin wrote: post #5

Will Wikipedia ever get responsive? [EDIT:] In other words, Wikipedia seems to be the last vestige of the dumb old "separate web for mobile" mindset of ideas like WML. Media queries are just better, and would prevent this inane "that link sucks for half of us; here's one that sucks for the other half" crap.

Unless they get rid of the vast amounts of position: absolute; in the Vector skin it is unlikely. Which will most likely require switching out entirely to a new skin. Unfortunately many extensions that are not parser extensions rely on the Vector skin to function.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#78

Post by LoSboccacc »

tamana wrote: post #51
LoSboccacc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media query are at most marginally better. They still suck for all devices with high resolution and low size or large size but low resolution.

Is that a flaw in media queries, or we devs writing bad queries?

Flaw in media query. They work on resolution and on pixel density as reported by the device but you have no way to know if it's a small size high density screen or a large screen with average density.

There are 13" laptops with a resolution which overlaps with the higher end mobile phones and that is where mq falls apart because you can't tell where you are. The real issue is with all browser reporting the same fixed dpi, for reason which make sense in context but don't allow to discern all cases.

We work with a mix of media query + user agent sniffing to enable mobile queries only on mobile stuff.

It was all fine and dandy as long as pc had >1280 pixels, tablets where between 768 and 1024 and phones below that range. Now that everything overlaps with everything, not so much, and because all browser reports metric around the 96dpi magic number, there's no solution. At least making a media query in em instead of pixel saves you from the trouble with people zooming on pages.

And if your website is responsive and allows iframing, it's even worse.

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#79

Post by PhasmaFelis »

_RPM wrote: post #15
jessaustin wrote: post #5

Will Wikipedia ever get responsive? [EDIT:] In other words, Wikipedia seems to be the last vestige of the dumb old "separate web for mobile" mindset of ideas like WML. Media queries are just better, and would prevent this inane "that link sucks for half of us; here's one that sucks for the other half" crap.

The reason for a separate mobile site is that we can transfer less data over the wire. mobile sites typically aren't as feature filled as the desktop sites.

That sounds like the actual problem is the ongoing bloat of useless, unnecessary "features."

Re: 31 years later, we found the flight recorders

#80

Post by PhasmaFelis »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #78
tamana wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a flaw in media queries, or we devs writing bad queries?

Flaw in media query. They work on resolution and on pixel density as reported by the device but you have no way to know if it's a small size high density screen or a large screen with average density. There are 13" laptops with a resolution which overlaps with the higher end mobile phones and that is where mq falls apart because you can't tell where you are. The real issue is with all browser reporting the same fixed…

> all browser reports metric around the 96dpi magic number

Why do they do that?

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