201–210 of 215 posts
So will autopilots include a mode to drop to an altitude where people can start breathing again if depressurization occurs and is not fixed within 2 minutes?
Sure, then someday an airliner crashes into a mountain because this system got triggered accidentally and it wasn't fixed in time....
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Sure, then someday an airliner crashes into a mountain because this system got triggered accidentally and it wasn't fixed in time....
That would be part of the autopilot. It will probably use a combination of GPS, maps, and radar to avoid this. And it would fly in circles waiting for people to wake up.
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I get that, but what about just simple rules? if(Plane.Altitude > 0 && Plane.FlightTime > 10 Minutes){ TransponderOn }
The altitude of the "ground" varies by thousands of meters: https://www.google.com/search?q=highest+airport+altitude Although, I guess you could just check if the landing gear is up. I'm sure there are corner cases I can't think of, but it seems like that would pretty much cover it.
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Instead of turning your phone off, so that it can inform the network that it is going off line, try pulling the battery without warning. If I turn off my phone gracefully, the network will send incoming calls pretty much straight to voicemail. If my phones battery has died, or the phone dropped off the network for another reason (went camping?), then the network will have your phone ring as it searches for the phone.
No, you will not hear a ringing. The ringing only starts after the phone you are calling has been contacted. When you pull the battery out, the network will keep on searching for your phone and since no phone replies, it will inform you that the phone is out of coverage area.
Seriously, what is the thesis here, that the phones are still 1) intact, 2) charged, 3) on the network, 4) cannot or are not answered, 5) cannot be located? How would those things even make sense, several days after the planes disappearance? That plane sure as shit isn't still flying...
People are identifying something that they consider weird (phones of people on a lost plane ringing) and are using it to justify their pet theories on what happened (involving the phones actually legitimately ringing), without explaining why their pet theory makes anything less weird.
Why no one is paying attention to the fact that the plane was flying over South China see which China is trying to claim for itself. Could it be the case that China by mistake shot the plane down ?
Impossible. The consequence of hiding the truth is an international shame. And do you really think any country launching a missile can go unnoticed? You know that area is under dispute and nearby countries are claiming ownership, meaning they are actively monitoring all military actions. There are satellites watching that area too. No. No. And why China? I think this is more of an anti-China/China conspiracy. You got…
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I don't know what RR is, but you don't have to transmit to any central authority. Just to the plane owner. Make a law that the owner has to preserve the data for one week, but doesn't have to provide it to anyone. And doesn't the US military track every overland flight anyway?
Rolls Royce. Make a law affecting every nation on the planet? Best of luck wth that.
But it's even easier than that: Just make all US owned airlines require it, and any flight landing in the US. Phase it in, etc, to give time to upgrade, but it's certainly possible.
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So why don't planes do that that? You need 24 bits for 3 meter GPS accuracy (times 2). Add some extra for altitude and airplane ID (or does a unique ID come built in?) So maybe 80 bits in total. This would be nothing for an airplane - $0.40 per hour? Why don't they do this already?
There's a cost analysis of that by Stross in the comments. Basically "way too damned expensive - ~$M - for once-a-decade events".
My numbers were $0.40 per hour, plus a few hundred for the equipment (it's available off the shelf, don't need anything custom). Don't know how much installation would be, but certainly not millions.
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The altitude of the "ground" varies by thousands of meters: https://www.google.com/search?q=highest+airport+altitude Although, I guess you could just check if the landing gear is up. I'm sure there are corner cases I can't think of, but it seems like that would pretty much cover it.
Doesn't really solve the problem; a malicious actor could just lower the landing gear and then turn the transponder off.
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This is not true; the difficulty in using raw radar returns to manage and defend the domestic airspace was the primary reason the FAA grounded all civilian aircraft on 9/11--to clean up the scopes. Andrews scrambled two (unarmed) F-16s to intercept flight 93; they just followed the Potomac north because no one knew where that plane was. Even after the PA crash was confirmed, those fighters spent hours contacting rada…
That just shows that primary radar is difficult to use, and that it's hard to track a plane on radar after it's crashed. I'm not disputing that. Perhaps "no real problem" was bad phrasing, what I meant was that they were able to track them and they were not "unable to locate" the planes.
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You're showing one botched flight deck O2 tank per 30 years? That's how I read it but I may be wrong. What are the odds that that one botched O2 tank happens to be on a flight with high altitude decompression?
If the cause of the accident is in any way related to "human error" instead of unpredictable failure (unpredictable as in photons causing a bit flip that can't be caught in error correction, not something like a part with a 15 year life span being used for 20), chances are that error is the result of an institutional problem. With 90,000 flights a day I can imagine plenty of people making mistakes during maintenance…
If that was really the case, planes would be failing every single day and air crashes would be as common as train wrecks and car accidents. It's far from being the case, so it says a lot as to how reliable planes are made to be, and how serious the maintenance is done on planes. Besides, companies have no incentive to skip on safety checks because they know a crash would have immediate, and serious impact on their image and direct sales of tickets.