AirAsia Flight Missing - 155 on board

[Acey]

Ken is 100% right, even with a radar return, it takes time to find an airplane that went down in water.

Originally Posted by Peanut

Yeah, that's my point though. We know where our friggin cell phones are at all times thanks to GPS. How is it possible that multi-million dollar machines carrying hundreds of people are not being live-tracked?

You're somewhat right, I'll clarify.

This plane was equipped with ADS-B, long story short it broadcasts its exact GPS coordinates multiple times per second. Our problem at the moment is the ability to receive those signals from the airplane when they get too far away from land. That will be fixed in the coming years when satellites go up, so the plane sends its position to the satellite, and then it gets downlinked to us in real time... effectively 100% worldwide radar coverage. Could be as many as 10 years away before everybody gets on board. That's the problem with everything in aviation; because of its international nature, getting everybody on board and to agree on something takes forever.

You'd be shocked at how much of our airspace here in Canada has zero radar. Knock on wood we don't lose a big plane up there but in the event that we do, I'm not sure I'd be able to come on here and adequately explain that we legitimately aren't "live tracking" these planes as you describe.

For example, a plane flying from Chicago to Hong Kong might go over Norman Wells, NWT then up over Inuvik. We have no radar there. So... I know what time he went over Norman Wells because they'll tell us, I know how high they were, and how fast they are going and approximately how much the wind is affecting their ground speed. But if they didn't tell me there was a problem and then they don't report over Inuvik, well that airplane could be anywhere between Norman Wells and Inuvik, and could be 4 or 5 miles left or right of track. A gigantic swath of land to search.

Originally Posted by Peanut

So if you lose the radar does that automatically mean the plane has had some catastrophic failure? I don't think that's the case.

Yep. I'd assume one of the following things, in order of likelihood, before assuming catastrophic failure...

-Out of range (about 450 km depending on altitude)
-Flying directly overhead the radar site (there's kind of a dead spot)
-Transponder has a bit of a hiccup, pilot needs to reset it
-Our radar fails (not overly rare)
-Some other computer system failure on our end
-In the shadow of somebody else (rare)

[T@T]

It's inexcusable I could buy a $500.00 satellite phone and be tracked anywhere in the world but because of politics they continue to lose aircraft with 100's of people aboard.

It should be a no brainer to equip these planes with live tracking, especially ones that fly over water.

[KelVarnsen]

I've worked with a guy who crashed his plane, and despite they knew where he was when he went off radar it still took quite some time to find him. And this was over land.

[bluejays]

Has anyone ever tried a Mythbusters type experiment (on a smaller scale) to see if a plane crashed from X altitude, straight down, if there would be no debris found (and instead sink)? This is absolutely terrible for Malaysia and what people's families are going through this time of year. I flew Air Asia in June while in Thailand, and one thing I was alarmed about was that they didn't weigh baggage on a plane equivalent to Westjets. I'm not saying that was the case for this crash, but their safety standards may have been a bit lax. Hopefully by some miracle they're found safe.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by T@T

It should be a no brainer to equip these planes with live tracking, especially ones that fly over water.

I'm about to rehash Ken's post, basically.

You've made the false assumption that everything is going to work right up till the point you hit the water, which is a bad assumption, because something has obviously gone wrong given that you're about to hit the water.

Math: if your electronics conk out 60 seconds before you hit the water, that is now a 154 square mile area we have to search, such is the speed of airliners at cruise. And we don't know how much further you flew after the last GPS/radar return. That 154 square mile area gets exponentially larger pretty damn quick if your stuff failed any longer than 60 seconds before you hit the water.

If you want to turn on your $500 sat phone from Best Buy in the middle of nowhere and say, "hi, come and get me", then I'll see your target, know that's where you actually are, and tell them to come and get you. But it still might be a bit of wait cause... you're in the middle of nowhere.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by Acey

You've made the false assumption that everything is going to work right up till the point you hit the water,

Technically it wouldn't be hard to make something that would work after you hit water.

Oh wait! they already have them, their called ELP's which are hardly ever serviced even if the airline uses them.

Hows this? put my $500 sat phone in an ELP and have it phone home when it hits water.

[jayswin]

You're right T@T, you know more than the entire airline industry when it comes to GPS. How could they be so stupid? If they had you working for them, we'd have found both Malaysian planes by now.

If I were you I'd apply for a job in this industry, if not for yourself then for the families of missing loved ones. They need you.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by KelVarnsen

I've worked with a guy who crashed his plane, and despite they knew where he was when he went off radar it still took quite some time to find him. And this was over land.

Radar is fine for directing air traffic but after 100 miles or so it gets sketchy and if an aircraft goes below the horizon it's just a guess. Sat systems are the way to go for live tracking and there's actually a lot of them operating right now.

Put it this way. If this plane went down in Hudson Bay we would know within 100 feet where it hit water.

[T@T]

Originally Posted by flameswin

You're right T@T, you know more than the entire airline industry when it comes to GPS. How could they be so stupid? If they had you working for them, we'd have found both Malaysian planes by now.

If I were you I'd apply for a job in this industry, if not for yourself then for the families of missing loved ones. They need you.

Ignorance.

The airline industry don't spend money until their told too. If you don't believe the technology is available I can't help you.

[Acey]

Originally Posted by T@T

Radar is fine for directing air traffic but after 100 miles or so it gets sketchy and if an aircraft goes below the horizon it's just a guess. Sat systems are the way to go for live tracking and there's actually a lot of them operating right now.

Put it this way. If this plane went down in Hudson Bay we would know within 100 feet where it hit water.

Disagree, for the reasons stated above. You apparently know about our ADS-B sites around the bay, but they're not immune from the problems stated above.

And we apply the same separation at the periphery of secondary radar coverage (~250 nm) that we do within 100 miles, which is to say we don't consider it sketchy... our opinion is kinda the only one that matters as far as that's concerned.

[KelVarnsen]

Reports of debris found according to a Twitter. Unconfirmed reports at this time of course.

[Peanut]

Originally Posted by KelVarnsen

Reports of debris found according to a Twitter. Unconfirmed reports at this time of course.

Wall Street Journal has the debris as "breaking news"... Maybe confirmed?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/expanded...day-1419833687

It's strange about the emergency beacons not going off.

[KelVarnsen]

@jonostrower: WSJ BREAKING: Indonesia SAR Chief: ‘95% Certain’ Debris Field Came From #QZ8501; Search Team Found Shadow Underwater, Looks Like Aircraft

[Acey]

Bodies found floating in water now. Air France was 4,000 meters down and I can see on the map that this wreckage is in an area no deeper than 50 meters down... that will help a lot. Excellent chance of black box recovery.

[JonDuke]

They've recovered 40+/- bodies so far.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30634081

Always sad when it becomes reality, but at least the plane has been located and a proper investigation can begin as to the "why" this happened. Hopefully the families are able to get some sort of closure.

[MoneyGuy]

I can imagine how terrifying those last moments would have been for those poor people.

[flylock shox]

What a horrible time for those families.

It's looking like this case might be fairly straightforward if all the info so far is accurate: bad weather threatens, pilot asks to go to higher elevation to avoid it, that request is denied, plane continues into bad weather and trouble ensues, pilot attempts to gain altitude to avoid trouble, weather conditions and/or equipment failure cause plane to stall, plane doesn't nose dive in a way that allows it to recover from the stall, and down it goes.

I wonder if we'll see any evidence that anyone survived the initial impact. I don't know what would be worse frankly.

[hwy19man]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/airasia-flight-qz8501-bodies-and-debris-recovered-by-search-teams-1.2885920

[FLAME ENVY]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I can imagine how terrifying those last moments would have been for those poor people.

The incident likely happened very quick (based on the current information) with little time to be terrified which is good. If the aircraft came apart at FL350 +/- death would be near instant.

[FLAME ENVY]

Originally Posted by flylock shox

I wonder if we'll see any evidence that anyone survived the initial impact. I don't know what would be worse frankly.

Guaranteed not. Particularly if the aircraft came apart before hitting the water which is 99.9% likely based on current information. I personally believe this was a catastrophic breakup at a mid 30 FL which is not survivable.