Ontopic Flight 370
- Thread starter Petunia
- Start date
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
I'm not even thinking about 'switching over.' I just figured there's some iPhone sized computer with technology close to 'that can ping it's location & info to redundant locations every second.
If a April can track Wes's phone, I expect that planes have technology that's only slightly more sophisticated too.
So this seems to be all anyone is talking about... Except UF..
Thoughts?
Conspiracies?
Where the fuck is this Boeing 777?!?
This is soooo scary in this day and age.
Those poor people
UFO
The whole plane simultaneously lost telemetry/radio contact all at once.
Theories:
- Catastrophic in-flight breakup, due to mechanical failure / crappy maintenance.
- Catastrophic in-flight breakup due to onboard bomb.
- Pilot shut everything off and deliberately crashed the plane.
- Pilot shut everything off and flew for <insert country here>, though we'd probably hear about it by now if that happened.
- Flight shot down (very unlikely, but here for the sake of conspiracy theorists)
As for why they can't find the plane - pretty much every airplane carries a corpus/sarsat ELT beacon, and they're accurate enough to find skiers trapped under avalanches etc. But they phased out analog ELT's about 5 years ago, and it's possible the airline saved a few bucks and never switched them out for digital ones, or never kept batteries up to date in them.
Theories:
- Catastrophic in-flight breakup, due to mechanical failure / crappy maintenance.
- Catastrophic in-flight breakup due to onboard bomb.
- Pilot shut everything off and deliberately crashed the plane.
- Pilot shut everything off and flew for <insert country here>, though we'd probably hear about it by now if that happened.
- Flight shot down (very unlikely, but here for the sake of conspiracy theorists)
As for why they can't find the plane - pretty much every airplane carries a corpus/sarsat ELT beacon, and they're accurate enough to find skiers trapped under avalanches etc. But they phased out analog ELT's about 5 years ago, and it's possible the airline saved a few bucks and never switched them out for digital ones, or never kept batteries up to date in them.
there would be debris but whatever's left would take a long time to find. it's a biiiig ocean
1996 TWA flight 800 debris:
If we now can track iPhones within 6 feet of their powered existence, how is it we can't locate this plane to it's last known broadcast?
twa 800 was 12 minutes into flight and right off the coast of new York, not at cruising altitude and in the middle of the ocean
do you know how we track iphones? either we triangulate via cell towers or we send it a signal, tell it to ask gps where it is and provide it
both rely on active cell towers nearby. an iphone cannot send a signal to a satellite, it doesn't have enough power. devices with enough power typically have very limited battery life compared to an iphone and such connections are made as needed, not continuously
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
I get the whole 'inertia' & 'wave' thing, but can't get over the idea of
Well, the 777 took off at this time with 200+ people on board from here, and the PLAN was for it to be over here at this time. We don't bother to track them so they may have stopped for some unplanned sight seeing.
Hence the name it's Radar not GPS. Also those flight trackers use estimates based on flight path and speed when a plane is out of radar range.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
The point I'm making is that long before we tracked iPhones it's been important to know where planes are.
I may be of the misconception that people who fly planes, design planes, and passengers on planes expect that someone knows within a few feet where the plane is because the technology is there.
A long time ago, someone did come up with the idea of implementing a black box to help understand wtf happens post accident.
I can't comprehend 'we just don't do that' when the lives and a plane are at stake.
Also, hijacking is possible.
Flights operating within north american/european airspace, and a few other regions, are required to have reinforced cockpit doors that lock only from the inside. In that part of the world, that might not be the case.
The problem is every time something like this happens everyone is shocked to learn that something does't exist or things are done a certain way. Like when they realize outside of taking off that's all the pilot does. The rest of the time it's on autopilot and the crew just hangs out playing candy crush until the plane lands itself. That was the issue with the crash at SFO last year. The autopilot landing assistance was disabled at the airport so the crew actually had to land themselves and messed it up.
Amstel
The Hoarse Whisperer
so essentially, the story is, They were flying from gorgeous SoTA airport to gorgeous SoTA airport in an old plane where they didn't bother to change the batteries on the locator system. But they did have fully stocked Top Shelf liquor in First Class.
Mandating them to have them doesn't mean they don't already have them. Like abs brakes on cars. When the law came in requiring car maker to have them, most already did have them.
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