Discovery Channel MAYDAY

[destillat]

OK, I'm a big fan of this show... especially when I can't sleep at night!

I have a question...
We live in the year 2013...
Why is it not possible to have every cockpit wired with audio and visual recording devices that instantly transmit data to an external datacentre?
Black box no longer needed.
I mean, airlines offer WiFi, cell service (in Asia)... so why not this?

 

[danmand]

OK, I'm a big fan of this show... especially when I can't sleep at night!

I have a question...
We live in the year 2013...
Why is it not possible to have every cockpit wired with audio and visual recording devices that instantly transmit data to an external datacentre?
Black box no longer needed.
I mean, airlines offer WiFi, cell service (in Asia)... so why not this?

You like see pilots and stewardesses?

 

[Aardvark154]

Ever have your Satellite Radio, WiFi, Cell Phone drop out?

 

[danmand]

Ever have your Satellite Radio, WiFi, Cell Phone drop out?

Sometimes planes drop out of the sky.

 

[cancowboy2001]

http://news.discovery.com/tech/beyond-the-black-box.htm

It has been a decade since I first proposed the glass box, and progress toward it has been shamefully slow. The main hurdle is sheer institutional inertia. The strongest institutional opposition has come from airline pilots, who fear that the practice would lead to full-scale monitoring of their work, much as it has for interstate truckers. In 2000, in reaction to the EgyptAir crash, the FAA tried to mandate cockpit cameras, but the U.S. pilots' union managed to prevent it. The rest of the world, which followed the U.S. lead, has also done nothing.

 

[great bear]

The NSA knows what is going on in airplane cockpits!

 

[destillat]

Ever have your Satellite Radio, WiFi, Cell Phone drop out?

Yes... but isn't 99.5% of the data better than 0% of the data?

 

[piano8950]

Technology advancement in planes isn't as apparent as technology advancement in something else...say cars. Because cars can break down. The industry best a couple of years ago was Lexus, with 0.71 problems for every hundred cars within the first year if I remember correctly. That is considered the gold standard.

Now think about a plane. You cannot have 0.71 problems per hundred planes in the first year. While most issues might be small, the larger ones get very bad press. And you definitely don't want that. Planes are made with every precaution taken. Systems have backup systems. They are extremely reliable machines, but despite all best intentions on getting it perfect, one small slip could pass by and cause disastrous consequences. You've seen Mayday, I'm sure you've seen a few episodes when it was a design error, unnoticed for thousands of flights in the same model plane that preceded it.

Now coming back to your suggestion. Wireless transmission. The problem is that under almost all conditions, it should cause no problems. But lack of knowledge on whether wireless live stream of audio could cause an issue, and even tests to prove it won't cause any incidents doesn't prove anything. There has to be no doubt that this transmission of data will in no way cause any adverse affects, even in the most extreme situation.

 

[destillat]

Now coming back to your suggestion. Wireless transmission. The problem is that under almost all conditions, it should cause no problems. But lack of knowledge on whether wireless live stream of audio could cause an issue, and even tests to prove it won't cause any incidents doesn't prove anything. There has to be no doubt that this transmission of data will in no way cause any adverse affects, even in the most extreme situation.

Wha?!?!
My original message states that those transmissions are already happening on a regular basis.

 

[Anynym]

Data is not sent by wireless, it's by radio via sat. Issue of wireless on a plane is still being debated and until issues of safety are settled, we are not likely to have total wireless capacity on planes.

We might have different definitions of what "wireless" means.

 

[nottyboi]

There are areas planes fly that are extremely remote. No radar, cell and satellite relays and bandwidth is very expensive. What the next systems will do is transmit bursts of data via satellite, with compressed data. I am not sure if CVR data will also be sent. There are THOUSANDS of planes in the air at any given moment.

 

[Wild Wiglin Willie]

There is great difficulty to transmit huge amounts of data through long distances, there is also the reliability problem.

 

[Dream_State]

There is actually a very new technology that's revolutionizing the aviation industry called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast or ADS-B

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillance-broadcast

It's a real time data link from the aircraft's on-board flight management computers to Air Traffic Control. Flight parameters such as air speed, vertical speed, heading, altitude, longitude, latitude, Aircraft type, hexcode ID, and Squawk code are transmitted at a rate of 2 times per second.

A local HAM monitoring the ADS-B data on 1090 MHz Mode-S in the GTA area (F-CYYZ2) Gives us an idea of what ATC gets to see.
http://ads-b.ca/

 

[ig-88]

OK, I'm a big fan of this show... especially when I can't sleep at night!

I have a question...
We live in the year 2013...
Why is it not possible to have every cockpit wired with audio and visual recording devices that instantly transmit data to an external datacentre?
Black box no longer needed.
I mean, airlines offer WiFi, cell service (in Asia)... so why not this?

Technology has been advancing and continues to improve.

I'm also a fan of the show.

The incidents shown occurred mainly in the early 2000s, 90s, 80s, or even earlier.

 

[Keebler Elf]

The incidents shown occurred mainly in the early 2000s, 90s, 80s, or even earlier.

That's just because it takes time for the accidents to be investigated, reports written, research done, show filmed, etc.

They'll have crashes that occurred in recent years, it just takes time.

 

[Dream_State]

Here comes all the COKE! I bet Rob Ford's really happy when this flight lands. How much you want a bet every flight from Bogota's got some Coke on it... or in someone LOL!

 

[abv]

It's an interesting site. It's about 5 minutes behind. Not real time.

 

[nottyboi]

Here comes all the COKE! I bet Rob Ford's really happy when this flight lands. How much you want a bet every flight from Bogota's got some Coke on it... or in someone LOL!

I would take that bet. If you have travelled from Colombia to Canada you will know Colombians take drug smuggling VERY SERIOUSLY. To try and smuggle drugs out of Colombia by plane is DUMB ASS. Sure you can make TONS of money, but 99.9999999999978% you will end up rotting in a Colombian prison.

 

[Dream_State]

It's an interesting site. It's about 5 minutes behind. Not real time.

Take a closer look... Orange planes are FAA data and are 5 minutes delayed... Yellow planes are ADS-B data and are real time. Go into settings are turn off FAA data and then you will see nothing but Yellow real time aircraft tracking.

 

[Dream_State]

I would take that bet. If you have travelled from Colombia to Canada you will know Colombians take drug smuggling VERY SERIOUSLY. To try and smuggle drugs out of Colombia by plane is DUMB ASS. Sure you can make TONS of money, but 99.9999999999978% you will end up rotting in a Colombian prison.

That's why the Colombian prisons are so overcrowded .... This woman was arrested trying to board the Air Canada "Cocaine Express"

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/0...aine-in-a-fake-pregnancy-belly-police-allege/