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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

#121

Post by neurotech1 »

A combination of Enhanced Ground-Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_system and Deployable Flight Incident Recorder Set (DFIRS) http://www.drs.com/Products/c3a/DFIRS.aspx might be an option. The DFIRS deploys when a pilot ejects from a F/A-18 Hornet. Using EGPWS in a civilian aircraft the system only triggers when a crash is imminent.

An alternative would be to eject the DFIRS when subjected to high acceleration like an Airbag in a car. In a large proportion of crashes, the nose of the jet hits first.

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

#122

Post by brc »

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…

I'm pretty sure trains are more deadly, especially when you include the numbers from them hitting things like trucks at level crossings.

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

#123

Post by akiselev »

ekianjo wrote: post #105
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 pi…

Fun fact, Voyager launched before the first RAD hardened CPU [1] processor was available and the Voyager electronics are more akin to a ton of expensive FPGAs and ASICs that have a bunch of error correction and redundancy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802

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

#124

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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…

Replacing black boxes is not a good idea. Black boxes work when everything else has broken. We trust them to report when unimaginable edge conditions are breached.

We should instead supplement our sturdy but silent black boxes with a chattier partner. The new device would not survive a catastrophic breakup. Nor would it receive the omniscient breadth of data trusted to a black box. Instead, it would (1) receive a subset of flight data (e.g. location, alerts, and pilot inputs) and (2) immediately send them to a ground-based datacentre. These data would back up air traffic controllers' radars in real time. They would also assist in locating fallen planes and their more comprehensive black boxes.

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

#125

Post by aptwebapps »

potatolicious wrote: post #119
anigbrowl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "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" So you've replaced a single point of failure (failure of the recording device) with 4: failure of the ejection trigger, failure of the ejection mechanism, failure of the parachute, and failure of…

Isn't anigbrowl suggesting supplementing the black boxes rather than replacing them?

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

#126

Post by ekianjo »

mpyne wrote: post #80
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…

> That was one of the worst crashes in history and there was never even a problem with the plane. There were many problems with the plane, including the physical one of the pitot tubes freezing up (despite heating elements installed to prevent that), and the software and design problems relating to silent disengagement of parts of the auto-pilot, silent transfer to different flight modalities by the auto-pilot, and p…

> There were many problems with the plane, including the physical one of the pitot tubes freezing up

Not many, a single problem actually. Plus, the plane was not crashing after the issue occurred and the autopilot was off. The crew misinterpreted the signals and did not pay attention the Stall alarms repeatedly. The plane was flying fine even without the autopilot, it's a case where the crew actually crashed the plane by themselves.

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

#127

Post by ekianjo »

m4x wrote: post #87
gvb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) Nobody on the ground knew AF447 was in trouble. The aircraft never broadcast a declaration of an emergency. b) Even if there was telemetry that sent the aircraft control inputs and instrumentation to the ground, with thousands of aircraft in the air, nobody would have been watching AF447's telemetry, waiting for Something Bad to happen. c) It was about four minutes between when the aircraft got in trouble and when…

So ask yourself why it never broadcast a declaration of emergency - the autopilot had disengaged due to an instrument malfunction, which should have generated an automated broadcast on the spot. Then somebody could start monitoring the telemetry from the the one (or five, or some other low number of planes) that were in trouble of some sort. It would also be quite simple to be running a bunch of automated tests on th…

> It's pretty fucking simple for a computer to monitor the altitude of a plane and say "one of your planes has significantly deviated from it's target altitude".

Look, read the AF447 case again and the reports of what happened in the cockpit! The pilots were not EVEN listening to the different alarms being triggered in the cockpit and did not realize that they were in danger no matter how many instruments they had indicating major issues in front of them. In such situations what would make you think they would give a shit at what an automated message coming from a land operation would tell them ?

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

#128

Post by ekianjo »

jarek wrote: post #86
tzs wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This is the least difficult part of the whole scheme. A program looking at all incoming data and picking out extraordinary data (in AF 447's case, for instance the stall warnings) to flag for a human operator to inspect would help greatly. There'd be a lot of false alarms but still vastly less work than looking at telemetry of every plane ever. (And even if - 10k is around the number of employees of one mid-size airp…

> A program looking at all incoming data and picking out extraordinary data (in AF 447's case, for instance the stall warnings) to flag for a human operator to inspect would help greatly.

Look at what happened in flight AF447. Everything occurred in a matter of minutes. Even if what you mentioned were to be in place, there would be virtually no time for an operator to do anything about it. And probably such operators would have to go through textbook questions because such regulations would be imposed on them by the FAA.

That's why we have several pilots in every aircraft, to mitigate the risk of human failure. Having more operators outside of the plane are not going to help much. If you want to put more engineering power, it's more software in the plane that is the right way to go for safety, as demonstrated so many times before.

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

#129

Post by rayiner »

judk wrote: post #117
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was an article on reddit questioning why we can track a rover on Mars but not a commercial airliner on Earth. We have billions of dollars of equipment focused on tracking that rover, and we still lose contact with it sometimes.

Billions, really? Excluding the equipment used to send the rover to Mars?

The Deep Space Network:http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/m/news/news.php?release=2013-370#.Ux....

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

#130

Post by m4x »

ekianjo wrote: post #127
m4x wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ask yourself why it never broadcast a declaration of emergency - the autopilot had disengaged due to an instrument malfunction, which should have generated an automated broadcast on the spot. Then somebody could start monitoring the telemetry from the the one (or five, or some other low number of planes) that were in trouble of some sort. It would also be quite simple to be running a bunch of automated tests on th…

> It's pretty fucking simple for a computer to monitor the altitude of a plane and say "one of your planes has significantly deviated from it's target altitude". Look, read the AF447 case again and the reports of what happened in the cockpit! The pilots were not EVEN listening to the different alarms being triggered in the cockpit and did not realize that they were in danger no matter how many instruments they had in…

If a pilot on the ground had checked the telemetry and seen that a) the plane was stalled and b) the elevator was at max deflection, he would have asked why that was the case and the pilot who wasn't in control would have realised what was going on. We aren't talking about giving the flight crew another automated message or bombarding them with unwanted input, just allowing somebody in a more sterile/low stress environment to monitor the telemetry for obvious problems

Sometimes a fresh opinion, or some input from somebody who is removed from the situation, is all that you need to set you on the right track or break an assumption that you were incorrectly holding.

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