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Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

theguardian.com

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#101

Post by teamonkey »

melling wrote: post #39
Zancarius wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Btw, what's the transmission range of a black box? If it's 10,000 ft down, how close do you have to be to hear it? Apparently 2-3 kilometers according to [1], which I found in the comments from here [2]. [1] http://www.hydro-international.com/issues/articles/id1098-Ai... [2] http://www.aticourses.com/blog/index.php/tag/side-scan-sonar...

So, if the plane is traveling at 13 km a minutes and you have a 20 minute window, it's going to take a long time to find it. Doesn't the technology exist to detect low power signals from a much greater distance? The US military must be able to do it?

The black box pinger isn't really designed to locate a crash site, IIRC, it's to locate the black box within a crash site that could cover several square kilometers.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#102

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

sliverstorm wrote: post #96
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't most actual aircraft flight paths tend to stay near land? For those flights that must go over that horizon, couldn't they fail over to a lower freq / lower bandwidth channel, when needed; while still keeping near real-time status updates? Or connect via another aircraft who is further behind them but on a similar flight plan. Here is probably one of the worst flight paths for this type of potential comms ht…

You can't just "fail over to a lower freq". Propagation beyond the radio horizon at all is at the whim of the ionosphere, which is the only reason long-distance radio works in the first place (it reflects back down, when the conditions are right)

With full duplex communication you can.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#103

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

wglb wrote: post #95
fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't most actual aircraft flight paths tend to stay near land? For those flights that must go over that horizon, couldn't they fail over to a lower freq / lower bandwidth channel, when needed; while still keeping near real-time status updates? Or connect via another aircraft who is further behind them but on a similar flight plan. Here is probably one of the worst flight paths for this type of potential comms ht…

Well, for the ones that travel within sight of land, we don't have much of a problem. And that may be "most". But "most" flights don't end in disaster. It is the ones that spend long hours over the horizon that are of the most concern. A significant number spend lots of time more than 200 miles from land. And "land" here means some land with a data link endpoint. With respect to airplanes forming some sort of mesh ne…

>With respect to airplanes forming some sort of mesh network, consider the bandwidth requirements throughout this link.

Right, but all that is really necessary is groundspeed, altitude, and equipment number. That gets you enough information to find a crash / forced landing site quickly, and to know where to search for wreckage. So, even for those parts of the flight path that are "dark" It still may be potentially superior to low-bandwidth satellite links.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#104

Post by akiselev »

akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

Someone replied quoting the "curse of knowledge" wiki article and deleted their reply.

With regards to why video recording FDRs aren't in place, look no further than the FAA [1]. The original request from the National Transportation Safety Board (in pdf) from 2000 is also available [2] although I'm sure the issue has come up since then. However, the FAA doesn't govern Malaysian aircraft except when they fly to the US (I'm guessing 777s were up to code though)

[1] http://www.ntsb.gov/safetyrecs/private/history.aspx?rec=A-00...

[2] http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/2000/A00_30_31.pdf

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#105

Post by ekianjo »

akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

Totally agree. This article smelled ignorance in every single line, and saying Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes is akin to complaining that my TI Calculator in the 80s was more powerful that the Voyager's probe processor. Different purposes, different specs, different constraints. The person who wrote this piece is definitely not an engineer and has no scientific background whatsoever, as far as I can tell.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#106

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

tzs wrote: post #82
m4x wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real time telemetry via satellite could definitely be useful in some situations. The Air France crash could have been prevented if somebody on the ground had taken a look at the data from the plane, realised that the junior pilot has been pulling up the whole time, and made the crew aware of it. That was one of the worst crashes in history and there was never even a problem with the plane. All they needed to save the…

> The Air France crash could have been prevented if somebody on the ground had taken a look at the data from the plane, realised that the junior pilot has been pulling up the whole time, and made the crew aware of it There are something like 10k commercial flights in the air at a given time around the world. How would that somebody on the ground know to look at that particular plane's telemetry?

By constantly comparing incoming data to known-good historical flight data and flagging instances that fall outside the norm?

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#107

Post by wglb »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #102
sliverstorm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just "fail over to a lower freq". Propagation beyond the radio horizon at all is at the whim of the ionosphere, which is the only reason long-distance radio works in the first place (it reflects back down, when the conditions are right)

With full duplex communication you can.

How would that work?

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#108

Post by userbinator »

tobiasu wrote: post #51

Before you waste time with better data logging, please install an ejection seat, parachute, and a built-in life support system. That's much more useful than sensors that record the demise of the passengers to satisfy the bloodlust of news corps. Or rationally, don't change a damn thing. Airliners are fine. Any other form of transportation (maybe with the exception of trains) is many times more deadly and we cope with…

As much as the idea of every passenger being able to eject in the case of an emergency amuses me, I don't think that's going to happen. Ejection seats are expensive, can themselves be dangerous (they are basically a rocket-propelled chair), and pilots in aircraft that use them need to be specially trained for their use. That's not even mentioning how you'd be able to sever the whole top off the fuselage quickly enough, and if you could, what if that system malfunctions in normal operation...!

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#109

Post by sliverstorm »

fnordfnordfnord wrote: post #102
sliverstorm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't just "fail over to a lower freq". Propagation beyond the radio horizon at all is at the whim of the ionosphere, which is the only reason long-distance radio works in the first place (it reflects back down, when the conditions are right)

With full duplex communication you can.

I... what? What does that have to do with radio wave propagation & the ionosphere?

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#110

Post by anigbrowl »

akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

All this is true, but perhaps we should also be exploiting cheap and redundant systems that leverage more up-to-date technology, eg multiple lightweight pods that are designed to eject automatically under certain circumstances and consist of a battery, the same sort of technology you'd find in a typical satellite smartphone, and a small parachute - something you could build with a unit cost under $5k, which you could easily make back without a drastic impact on ticket prices. If you deployed, say, 20 of them automatically during a catastrophe, odds are that a few of them would survive.

I'm not disputing anything you wrote above, but right now all our eggs are in two very expensive baskets (FDR/CVR). When a plane goes mssing you want to pinpoint the location of the crash ASAP and get some telemetry as a second priority. The existing systems are great but could we not also benefit from some cheaper and simpler systems that didn't rely on being bulletproof?

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