Re:An airline that has made sure its airplanes won't disappear
by VLM on Monday January 05, 2015 @01:54PM
(#8840418)
A lot of the arguments in this particular thread are based on the assumption that an aviation grade (non-firmware locked to low speed / low altitude like some 90s models) an an antenna are somehow more expensive than $120K or more specifically that it would be more expensive than screwing around with the existing black box and flight avionics.
Making it all even weirder, lets price out something that does an even more complicated task, a TCAS unit that ties into the avionics and A/V headsets and sometimes HUD and the transponder and in real time warns of potential collisions. $15K to $20K installed. But this vastly simpler project is supposed to cost about ten times as much. Don't think so.
Also a lot of confusion about what a black box from 1980 vs 2015 actually records and what is necessary. Yes from a safety perspective a simple location tracker does nothing and you'd need a full black box feed. A classic programming example of not defining your goals means a fail. Have to spec if you just want a lat/lon or if you want a full engineering telemetry feed.
Finally, if the engine controller fails, and you're over an ocean, then you die. Pretty simple. On the other hand, 99.9999999% (seriously) of flight hours, if this flight recorder fails, much like a tcas blowing a fuse, you simply fix it before the next flight. A big old "whatever". Its not like most planes disappear on a regular basis or most planes are involved in near collisions. The MTBF of the all hardware is shorter than the mean time between accidents. So consumer grade is good enough as long as it doesn't burst into flame like a consumer laptop.
Making it all even weirder, lets price out something that does an even more complicated task, a TCAS unit that ties into the avionics and A/V headsets and sometimes HUD and the transponder and in real time warns of potential collisions. $15K to $20K installed. But this vastly simpler project is supposed to cost about ten times as much. Don't think so.
Also a lot of confusion about what a black box from 1980 vs 2015 actually records and what is necessary. Yes from a safety perspective a simple location tracker does nothing and you'd need a full black box feed. A classic programming example of not defining your goals means a fail. Have to spec if you just want a lat/lon or if you want a full engineering telemetry feed.
Finally, if the engine controller fails, and you're over an ocean, then you die. Pretty simple. On the other hand, 99.9999999% (seriously) of flight hours, if this flight recorder fails, much like a tcas blowing a fuse, you simply fix it before the next flight. A big old "whatever". Its not like most planes disappear on a regular basis or most planes are involved in near collisions. The MTBF of the all hardware is shorter than the mean time between accidents. So consumer grade is good enough as long as it doesn't burst into flame like a consumer laptop.