Meanwhile they allow hundreds of relatively high power RF transmitters (passengers' phones) onboard. I call humbug.

Right, my point is that this new device has to be tolerant of radiation from passengers' phones, increased radiation from space, etc

And what happens if it isn't? And how would be this be any worse than no device at all?

The device recording plane data is presumably connected to important plane systems to record them. Can data/electricity only flow one way? Are you sure?

Why? for location data all they need is GPS. If you know location you find the black box which has the telemetry data.

Is there a reason a location tracker can't be self contained with it's own power supply and no connections to a plane's telemetry feed?

If you do that, the next time there's a crash like Air France 447, you'll see rending of garments and crappy articles like this (again) saying "Why have a black box when you can just transmit the data?!?!?!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Underwate...

> French Bureau d'Enquetes et d'Analyses (BEA) chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said that he was not optimistic about finding them since they might have been under as much as 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of water and the terrain under this portion of the ocean was very rugged. Although France had never recovered a flight recorder from such depths, there was precedent for such an operation.

Crashed: June 2009

Black boxes found: May 2011

Notice that the AF447 had great telemetry reporting its position right before the accident. Searching for things at the sea bottom is simply hard.

Which they didn't allow until recently. And of course a system like this would almost certainly be tied into the airplane's avionics and communications systems, and possibly also its power system. It really does have to be tested more than one might expect.

My phone doesn't connect to the aircraft's avionics. Big difference.

Not directly. But the field emanating from your phone will induce a current in the wiring of the plane if it isn't properly shielded to account for that. So even if there is no physical connection there could still be a resulting interruption in communications. All it takes is a crappy or un-intended ground point somewhere along the signal path or at either end.

One way in which I would stress test new electronics designs for resistance to such interference was to stick a mobile phone on top of it and then call that number. Worked like a charm most of the times: instant crash.