Breaking: Air France Airbus A330 disappears outside of Brazil

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6-01-2009 @ 11:57AM

MF said...

Question??
I hear on the news that in the middle of the ocean outside of radar, no one knows exactly where the plane was when it probably dissapeard, they only had a 20 or 30 minute old location radioed in.

I hear that the electrical fault signal was somehow transmited back to HQ. How come the plane just can't transmit coordinates of the location every 2 minutes or so? I would imagine that would require a faily simple transmission of basic GPS data. Very simple coordinates and flight # or whatever?

6-02-2009 @ 6:27AM

Joe said...

Thats a good questions. From what I understand, when doing transatlantic crossings airplanes fly along waypoints and on tracks. Think of 3D slot-cars, for planes. They are separated by a mile horizontally and 1000 ft vertically. The pilot is supposed to deliver a radio report every 30 minutes to ATC letting them know their position and inform them of any deviations. Since radar can't see that far they rely on onboard collision avoidance system (TCAS? i think).

They do have VHF radio where they can talk to their company (medical, technical, legal problems onboard). The band is quite narrow since their are military and rescue considerations above and below it. And really, it's not necessary to give a status report every 2 minutes. That's why the pilot is on the plane and not at a desk driving the plane.

6-02-2009 @ 6:46AM

Hans said...

??? And really, it's not necessary to give a status report every 2 minutes ???

Except in situations like this. A simple GPS locator chip found in consumer phones once connected to automatic data exchange systems could make difference between life and death for survivors.

IMHO, a huge engineering flaw if this doesn't exist.

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