Why do so many plane crashes have no real-time distress signal

Why in this day and age, do families affected, officials, and the public all have to wait until a 'black box' is found, if it is found, often months later and restored possibly years later?

Is this a buffer intended to piece together not the puzzle, but the public story?

I mean, if in this day and age officials actually wanted to know what happened to a plane right before it went down, just as thousands if not millions of homes already have internet-based security monitoring, don't control towers have a permanent ear to everything that is said in the cockpit (and perhaps everything that is seen from their view)?

I was also wondering why in so many instances does it seems persons in the cockpit have zero response time to utter a reaction to what just happened but seem to just vanish into thin air, when actually there was series of events leading up to the plane falling from the sky, even in the even of most explosions (see the recent movie 'Non-Stop'... its awesome!)

reply to post by gardener


I here your concern, but this just happened, and details aren't yet released or possibly known. From what I have read and heard nothing was recovered yet, just a search location and time frame. I just watched Captain Phillips, and I realized how big the ocean is and why I would never want to take a cruise. Imagine the sky, altitude they were at, and heading, and whatever happened they are probably so spread out it will be hard to recover everything, if not everyone. Maybe them, and all of their families will be lucky and the plane somehow crash landed with survivors. By this time I doubt it would still be afloat. It seems weird they didn't give any distress signal, because that could make someone assume a missile, but I have a gut feeling this is just some freak accident, I hope.

I assume that this is response to this mornings report of the missing Malaysian Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, last contact with air traffic controllers 120 nautical miles off the east coast of the Malaysian.

I don't know about Boeing, but the Air France Flight 447 Airbus, which went down during a flight from Brazil to Paris on June 1, 2009, had a diagnostic reporting system that sent information to HQ in Paris in real time.

en.wikipedia.org...

Most modern aircraft have a system that sends maintenance information on the aircraft back to the "office". But if there is a sudden catastrophic failure, there is no chance to send anything back. That's where the ELT comes in. All aircraft are equipped with an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT). On older aircraft like I used to work on, there were two crash sensors on the aircraft, one in front and one in the back. When either of the were broken, the ELT was activated and started broadcasting its location. People searching for the aircraft were (and still are) able to track the signal to the general location where the crash occurred.

reply to post by gardener


Tre are also many things that could have happened that would have inhibited the pilots from reporting an issue, from radio failure (coupled with another problem) to depressurization, to (god forbid) a bomb explosion. It sounds like the aircraft lost contact in the early hours, so its possible that there could be an element of pilot fatigue as well, as people tend to be at their least receptive at that time, so if something went wrong their reactions & decision making would likely be affected.

Either way its pretty clear that the aircraft has gone down unfortunately. My guess is that its crashed in the Gulf of Thailand somewhere. It may be a few days before they find the wreckage I would think.

777's have a great record for relaiability though (before SF last year), so it would be a little surprising if it was a technical failure for me.

I would have thought like maritime vessels, if GPS communication is not an option for global information system they would default to there short range radio like a VHF system for broadcasting distress calls no?

Think that would have to been a fairly basic standard.

reply to post by Zaphod58


These days, you'd think that they could send a real-time data stream back to the head shed, with all the data that's going to the black box and more. Like in-cockpit video and audio, maybe some camera feeds of the control surfaces and the like.

i get your point. what i find interesting is that you would think all the countries around where this happened would have military radar tracking everything, that in a case like this should be able to pretty much pinpoint where an aircraft went down or landed. especially China in this instance, as a military power. seriously if you want to intercept incoming aircraft, you would want to know long before they make it to your boarder, not after they are already in your territory. with aircraft that can exceed the sound barrier you would think that their radar would "see" aircraft at least into the surrounding countries.

There is a rule in aviation that basically says aviate (fly the aircraft), navigate (don't hit anything), communicate (when you have time let the ground boys know what is going on). This becomes paramount in a single pilot cockpit aircraft and even in a two man cockpit both pilots can become so busy they really do not have time to push an extra button to communicate due to running checklist for an emergency or trying to man handle a crippled bird. Their primary concern is rectifying whatever problem/emergency they are presently confronted with. Flying can become very violent and unforgiving if simple things are not taken care of.

Even so this is a very unusual situation with the loss of the aircraft.. China airlines 747 was almost lost several years ago on an international flight. The aircraft was in cruise flight and due to the crew's lack of attentiveness the bird stalled and fell several thousand feet ripping off several feet of the horizontal stabilizers.. The bird was parked at LAX for many weeks.. The whole thing was due to crew error; how they kept from making a big splash in the Pacific to this day is a miracle.

Unless there was a hijacking, bomb, or a really big catastrophic failure which turned the aircraft into a non flying brick this incident is puzzling. There are many airline pilots who have never flown acrobatic and if there was an upset where the aircraft got into a very unusual attitude at night then they might have done exactly opposite of what would have been required for a successful outcome.. Even something as simple as a loss of electrical power (a major deal but many safe guards with backup electrical auto switching and down loading of electrical demand;should not happen unless an electrical fire where the crew had to gang bar (battery and generators off) the electrical system) at night can ruin the whole process.. They had just leveled off @35,0000 and I would assume the galley ovens were on and they were in a high electrical load phase of flight...

Malaysia has some rather serious problems with the religion of peace (mostly in the north) and I remember a Mexican Cartel blew up a 727 to kill one guy back in the early 90s (?) with loss of all life so at this stage we can run all kinds of scenarios as a arm chair quarterback but until the bird is found and the flight recorders are retrieved we will not know for sure.

From the other ongoing thread about the flight:

Italian network Retequattro reported an hour ago that the italian citizen in the passenger list had called home from Thailand telling his father he is alive and well and has never been on that flight.
Journalist speculated about a false/stolen passport. System records show this individual checked in and boarded flight MH370 at Kuala Lumpur for Beijing.

reply to post by Bedlam


The system sends updates on the "health" of the aircraft as well as flight control position, airspeed, etc.

reply to post by generik


Radar can only see so far. Unless you build a huge specialized antenna radar can't see over the horizon.

reply to post by Reaper62


The pilot in this case had over 18K hours of flight time and probably was well rested before sitting down in the cockpit. Copilot had over 2 K hours flight time. These guys were no amateurs. I assume this was something sudden and catastrophic that they didn't have time to respond to.

reply to post by Zaphod58


According to story they had just exited Malaysia airspace and were just about to enter Vietnamese airspace when the signal was lost. They were in a no mans land between radars.

reply to post by AutumnWitch657


Exactly. And without either a ship or AWACS, a military radar won't see there either.

Why are we still wasting valuable time and resources searching for orange colored boxes? They need to find a way for these black boxes to uplink data telemetry. So that every five minutes, the black box burst-sends the last five minutes of flight parameters via satellite. They already use this technology for their ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System).

This way, when we have a crash, the last five minutes of telemetry can be instantaneously viewed. That's roughly 50 miles of flight data! (Assuming roughly 500+ Knots of ground speed ). A few thousand numerical parameters can be packed into a tiny data burst and sent. They could probably uplink the entire flight in real time. And with modern day servers and data storage technologies, they could probably uplink the telemetry of the ENTIRE flight in realtime to company headquarters.

As a pilot myself (bug smashers) my heart sinks every time I hear of a plane going down....my prayers for the family.

reply to post by Visitor2012


In an event like this there would be no chance to upload anything.

Just reading Wikipedia: GEOSAR and LEOSAR satellites are monitoring ELT frequency. Those modern beacons transmit GPS position too. So I guess the beacon might be damaged, signal obstructed?

Zaphod58
reply to post by Visitor2012

 

In an event like this there would be no chance to upload anything.

The data would be automatically sent every five minutes. Or even every 10 seconds . Thousands of numerical parameters would take up very little bandwidth. Could pack the entire data set into a small file size and send.

And if the black box is meant to survive impact, why can't it be designed to uplink the info to satellite? It sends the location beacon, so why can't it send data?

I'm sure it'll be implemented soon, technology is more that able to handle it.

reply to post by Visitor2012


And if there is a sudden power failure between sendings? How are you going to ensure the data is sent if the aircraft explodes or breaks up suddenly?

The black box doesn't send anything to a satellite. It sends out a radio signal, which can be blocked by deep water or other factors.

Double post