Aviation is stuck in the 60s – a reflection on MH 370

http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/general/aviation-is-stuck-in-the-60s-a-reflection-on-mh-370.html

by gmazzotti • 12 years ago

96 71 12 years ago

english.martinvarsavsky.net

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

It may be stuck in the 60's but HF radios work

sure you can create an automated dispatch system on an iPad. How do you authenticate it? how do you tell if its not working? does it fail safe? Making safe software is hard, and well beyond the wit of your standard programmer.

After all, can you gaurentee your software when the CPU is at 100%? can you say with certainty what happens when your CPU is hammered by all the interrupts at the same time?

Everything in the whole stack has to be verified. Thats means no virutalisation, no ruby, no perl, no python no ethernet. You can have firewire 400 though.

One can almost guarantee that this plane crash did not crash because of a failure in ATC<->Pilot communication.

andor• 12 years ago

True. You can't argue about the lack of GPS trackers, though. Every shipping container has one nowadays.

joezydeco3• 12 years ago

Reading GPS is cheap and easy. Sending information back is not.

Those shipping container trackers use GSM to call home. They're cell phones. What happens when that container is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

andy_ppp• 12 years ago

That's all fine, but the points he makes remain very valid, GPS tracking and weather info being the most valid. No-one knows why the plane went down, but arguing that technology advances can't make planes safer isn't true by the looks of the article. The fact that the security aspects of computer systems to help pilots is hard does not mean it can't be attempted successfully, the points made about drones ring true on this.

gmu33• 12 years ago

In the US, most planes do have GPS, and it will be a requirement by 2020.

For those interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...

zobzu• 12 years ago

actually, HF radios with digital, encrypted & authenticated communication work GPS works, too internet safe for business fliers but not the pilot? please. it doesnt mean the whole plane relies on internet.

those 3 should probably be added to current planes, regardless.

i'm not sure why you think there is a single system with a "CPU" in a plane either. there's multiple independent systems - some electronic, some analog.

all this not much to do with visualization or python, in fact... and software glitches in planes do happen, by the way.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

I think you're missing point. For a system to be allowed on a passenger plane, it must be certified.

That means that it has to go through actual real QA (something foreign to modern Software science.)

You want to put in a glonass receiver? sure, but it has to operate independently of the GPS system, and it cannot replace any other navigation system unless the FAA allow it.

the point is each system must be robust (i mean really robust) and able to work past the extremes independently.

akkishore• 12 years ago

I think there is more pessimism than required here. We need not start with ATC directly sending instructions to the iPad thats controlling the aircraft (although something similar happens in UAVs). We can start with it displaying the required instructions along with the HF radio. Also the final judgement of obeying an instruction is with the pilot and he will responsible for the results.

In the era of having artificial hearts and pacemakers that are helping better lives, I don't think its as hard to even build sound and safe automated flying systems.

bsder2• 12 years ago

It may be stuck in the 60's but HF radios work

Really? When you have to worry about things like "Squelch" in order to deal with voltage supply ground noise? You are on thin ground.

The real problem with modern technology is that the pilot can't rely on it. Sure, a digital radio is $1,000 (or less). However, the digital radio that is FAA certified will be expensive and nobody is going to develop it because the FAA won't require it because all the pilots will bitch that it is too expensive.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

Squelch adjusts the noise floor, and in modern radios can be automagical. Also there is nought wrong with digital over HF, as other posts will attest.

gmu33• 12 years ago

At times like this, I'm reminded of the Mars Curiosity's tech specs which are something like 200MHz, 256MB of RAM, 2GB hd,and 2MP camera and all the posts about how my iPhone is so much better. Well it was good enough to get to Mars and a hell of a lot more reliable.

lisper• 12 years ago

Some of the research rovers we built before Sojourner had 8-bit processors with 2k EEPROM and 256 bytes of RAM. Back then there were people who thought we were crazy for thinking that some day we would be able to fly with the same 8MB of RAM that was in our MacII development machines.

tarre• 12 years ago

At times like this, I'm reminded of the nuclear power plants of the world and their automation based on punched cards.

When speaking about systems, which need maximal reliability and are strictly controlled by authorities (air planes, nuclear power plants, medical treatment devices, space related stuff), updating existing and once approved systems is so painful, that you often do all you can to avoid it. That's a sad state of affairs.

logicallee• 12 years ago

obviously anything that is stuck in the 60's works - and well, or it wouldn't still be used.

author's point is that we could do better using today's technology.

agumonkey• 12 years ago

More than the 'dated' technology they rely on, it's the overall system and protocols that have been crafted and polished. New tech often result in unknown regressions.

paul_f• 12 years ago

I cannot believe I am doing this, but .... how about a few paragraph breaks once in a while?

sudomal• 12 years ago

I'm sure I saw a documentary a few years back where an aeroplane engine manufacturer had a control centre. The sole purpose of this place was to track minute engine attributes in real time, and alert their clients of future maintenance. Is that just on the latest planes?

rwmj• 12 years ago

A lot of airlines hire the engines by the (flight-) hour, and those engines are monitored in real time by the manufacturer. For example:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/8111075/Live-mo...

krisoft• 12 years ago

So having internet would somehow magically solve all the problems. Also it doesn't seem to be written out clearly, but there seems to be the implied assumption that Air France Flight 447 had no GPS tracker. Which is false. It did have, and automatically reported it's position at certain intervals.

joezydeco3• 12 years ago

Good point. On-board internet works great when the aircraft is at level and stable flight. It's a lot harder to transmit to a satellite in the middle of the ocean when the plane is gyrating and tossing all over the place (as in the case of AF447).

All bets are also off when the plane has had a catastrophic loss of power.

kyberias• 12 years ago

Interesting ideas. Just a quick note about the layout of the blog text: font and line spacing are too small and the text column is too wide. The combination makes it a little hard to read. Plus points on not having grey text on grey background though.

_pferreir_• 12 years ago

Most modern aircraft have GPS receivers built-in. They are actually constantly reporting this information to ground stations [1].

I'm not saying that things couldn't be better (and I'm no expert at all) but I doubt that any of these new technologies would have saved MH370.

It's very weird, for instance, that the ground station that reports to flightracker24 lost ADS-B communication with the plane all of a sudden and it's pretty clear from the number of planes that you can see in the area that it is probably not a coverage issue.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder_(aviation)

frik3• 12 years ago

Is a Boeing 777-200ER (introduced 1997) a modern aircraft in your opinion?

It seems that Flight 370 had GPS tracking (flightradar24.com screenshot): http://www.voanews.com/content/vietnam-navy-official-missing...

Direct link: http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-03-07/16:46/12x/MAS370/2d8...

philipn• 12 years ago

I don't know much about aviation, but a number of these technologies are being implemented in commercial flights now, including NextGen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportat...).

adrinavarro2• 12 years ago

Most modern airliners have satellite links (data and voice) with their dispatch centers. They also use the ACARS system to send and receive clearances (they can acknowledge by pushing a button). The old SELCAL+HF radio is no longer in use, except for backup.

Planes have GPS trackers. Not only their company knows where they are, the control center can too. In the case of the north atlantic track system, air control keeps a tight eye on speed, altitude and separation with very precise measurements, even as airplanes are far away from land.

I just fail to see the point of this post. I recently hitched a ride on the cockpit jump seat of a modern airplane for a Europe-East Coast flight and during that I saw the air traffic control knowing exactly where we were, and the pilots communicating via text message (ACARS) with control, as well as using satellite links to contact dispatch (via text messages), as well as satellite phone calls.

Pilots keep paper around them because pilots are there to maintain control, and paper is just another failsafe (with pretty good reliability record!).

Bonus: some planes can notice alterations in the flight dynamics and report an ice buildup. No pilot in this planet is going to let any external person input flight parameters remotely into their aircraft's system while they are in the air.

hydrogen18• 12 years ago

The author of the article is apparently so uninformed that not only does he realize that ACARS is available, but that is uses the same "awful, really awful" HF radio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Data_Link

It's actually a brilliant system, with network of transmit and receive sites its like globally available text messaging for pilots.

Also, unless the pilot was using atrocious equipment I can't see why HF radio would sound awful. I use my HF radio almost daily and don't have any complaints. I can legally listen to air traffic controllers on HF with no problem as well. The equipment I have is far, far inferior to that in most commercial airliners.

notahacker• 12 years ago

And pilot aids that appear to provide more information than they actually do can do more harm than good. If pilots take suicidal risks based on dubious information from "real-time" weather updates specifically designed for pilots[1], just imagine what would happen if consumer-grade iPad "real-time" weather apps found their way into the commercial cockpit.

[1]http://www.maxtrescott.com/max_trescott_on_general_a/2012/06...

frik3• 12 years ago

I just fail to see the point of this post.

Haven't you read about the missing aircraft?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a missing international passenger flight operated by a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

At least two of the passengers were travelling using false identities (stolen passports, tickets bought at the same time).

Edit: last known position: http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-03-07/16:46/12x/MAS370/2d8...

greyskull2• 12 years ago

Oh wow. If it's straight-up missing they could be anywhere in Asia right now... nuts.

pyalot2• 12 years ago

Modern airliners are also flown by entire teams of ground crews, among them Rolls Royce support engineers that monitor an aircrafts engines in realtime every second of operation trough its entire lifespan trough the hundreds of sensors embedded in each and every engine.

This way, most problems an engine would develop that would be hard to spot by ground service, are detected and acted upon long before they threaten the operation of the engine and airplane.

jkaljundi• 12 years ago

FYI, the author of the post owns and pilots a modern jet plane, and is a seasoned pilot. His post was not just about airliners, but any planes up in the sky. And he is right, that the technology in many cases is outdated and prone to errors.

adrinavarro2• 12 years ago

He owns a plane which he does not fly as a pilot and got a PPL which allows him to fly light aircraft in visual conditions but refuses to fly unaccompanied. I would not say that he is a seasoned pilot…

There are planes and planes. Security in airliners and in light aircraft are two matters of their own. You don't expect people who own a Cessna to have a black box and a satellite data link.

tsotha• 12 years ago

The last thing I want to see is internet in the cockpit. What hasn't been hacked over the last few years?

tuzemec2• 12 years ago

The moment we saw bunch of aviation articles on HN and that plane disappears. Coincident?

tuzemec2• 12 years ago

The moment we saw bunch of aviation articles on HN and that plane disappears. Coincidence?

spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

Aviation is stuck in the 60s because if it wasn't airliner stuff would all be automatic.

twistedpair2• 12 years ago

@spiritplumber, I can only assume you've never flown a plane or used a flight simulator (MS Flight will do).

Today's airliners are incredibly advanced. In the 60's they didn't have Terrain Collision Avoidance. Try to fly the plane into a hill and alarms go off and tell you how rapidly to ascent. They didn't have automated traffic collision avoidance (TCAS). Fly two planes at each other and it tells one pilot to dive, the other to climb and how much. They didn't have stick shakers which alert the pilot if the plane is near stalling, before it stalls, so they know to gain air speed to prevent the stall.

Those are the basic standards. Today any aircraft worth it's salt has a full Doppler weather radar to avoid storms, hail and down drafts. Today the entire flight path is computer calculated and tracked from end to end. Just turn on auto pilot or keep the indicators aligned on your artificial horizon and you'll get where you're going. No one gets lost these days without trying. I've not going to even start on CatII and CatIII landings too. Today planes can land in 0, that right 0, visibility.

if it wasn't airliner stuff would all be automatic

But let's keep going. Ever heard of AutoLand? Yep, plane can land itself. Ever heard of AutoFlare? Yep, plane will tilt back at just the right angle for a pillow soft touch down. Ever heard of AutoThrottle? No need to keep adjusting those engines, plane takes care of that, just tell it where you want to go. Frankly, pilots rarely do much more than tell the plane what it should do. Want to go to flight level 380? Just turn the knob to 38000ft, set the desired vertical speed rate and the plane will adjust the throttles, ailerons and trim itself out at 38000ft for you. Want to go to heading 245? Just dial in 245 degrees the plane will take your speed into consideration and speed up just enough to keep everything constant through the curve.

Funny thing about automation though is not getting everything automated, but keeping pilots from getting stale because too much is automated. Take the Asiana flight, it's what we call Controlled Flight into Terrain. Not a thing wrong with that 777 but the pilot.

We're worlds away from the 1960's and the 777 is among the most sophisticated and advanced craft in the world. Far more advanced than even our spacecraft of the 1960's.

will_asouka• 12 years ago

Autoland is 60s tech http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland.

But TCAS and GPS-aware Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) are 90s, and automation vs maintaining flying skill is definitely a major challenge.

spiritplumber2• 12 years ago

Thanks!

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

Hopefully the author is reading this, as I have some structural comments.

First, I agree with your thesis. In fact, I'd argue General Aviation is stuck in the 1950s. Lots of reasons for that, including the cost of insurance.

Second, I had a hard time reading this, as you seem to lack the ability to form cohesive paragraphs. Very sorry to have to tell you, but I figured somebody should. Nobody can read a big wall of text where each paragraph is trying to say several different things at the same time.

Best of luck in future drafts.

frik3• 12 years ago

Can an aviation expert decipher the following data?

  MH370/MAS370
  Boing 777-2H6ER
  Registration 9M-MRO
  Altitude 0ft
  Speed 471 kt
  Track 40°
  Vertical Speed 0 fpm
  Lattitude: 6.97
  Longitude: 103.63
  Radar: F-WMKC1
  Squawk: 2157

source: http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-03-07/16:46/12x/MAS370/2d8...

That particular airplane was delivered new to Malaysia Airlines in May 2002 and was involved in a ground mishap in 2012. While taxiing at Shanghai's Pudong airport, its wingtip hit the tail of another aircraft. According to an independent accident-tracking site, the damage suffered by the Boeing 777 was "substantial.": http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=147571

yock• 12 years ago

Probably an incomplete or corrupt report. It would be an incredible coincidence of timing for the system to produce a location data point precisely at the moment that the aircraft hit the water and before the system was destroyed. This is probably an incomplete report when aircraft left the coverage area or if the system malfunctioned mid-air and mid-transmission.

tuxguy• 12 years ago

from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/world/asia/malaysia-airlin...

"Malaysia Airlines confirmed that the missing aircraft had been involved in a collision with another plane in 2012 at the Shanghai airport that resulted in damage to the Malaysian aircraft’s wingtip. But the airline said the wing was repaired by Boeing and declared safe to fly."

RogerL• 12 years ago

I am by no means an aviation expert, but my career was largely built on things like putting GPS and modern radios into military aircraft, writing flight planners, and so on.

I ask you to envision the logistics of a simple change. You want to implement X, and gee-whiz do I have some cool, new technology that makes it easy!!

Okay. Let's start. If we make mistakes people die, and careers end. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about motivations re that, but all I'll say is as an engineer I only ever focused on the former. So, huge testing and verification effort to show that my gee-whiz technology that works in some consumer device has acceptably low failure modes, does not negatively affect pilot work flow, can work under the conditions of flight (-55C to 70C anyone?), over the wide performance characteristics (high G, high vibration, salt water, high radiation), and so on.

Okay, you did all that! Let's start bolting it on the planes!

No.

Let's write and get approved training programs for all the maintenance workers. Then, let's train them - across the whole world. Let's write and get approved training programs for the pilot. We will fit it into their refresher training, have new mandated training, or what? Basically, rewrite all the training curriculum that is out there. Get it into the schools, so the pilots coming fresh out of school aren't behind. Again, across the world.

Oh, this interfaces with the towers? Okay, so do all that again with the towers. Hmm, you want this 2013 technology to seamlessly integrate with some core memory technology - that should be easy. Perform a study, put out RFQs, get bids, select the best bidder, have them build the system, manage them through the cost overrun, opps, 3 months before deployment Congress mandates that that core-memory system be retired, and oh, how will this work in the 168 other countries?

Got that sorted. No, wait, no one in the tower knows how to use it, no one knows how to install it, no one knows how to maintain it. Let's throw money and time at that! Oh, unions. I hate unions. ATCs have a union. This could take awhile....

Finally, it is 2020, and I am rolling out, um, 7 year old technology that is entirely obsolete and no longer supported by the manufacturers. Oh, they'll support it if you throw enough money at it - get your $5 microprocessor at $1000 a pop.

Meanwhile, the entire world is filled with aircraft still using the old system. So, we mandate a phase-out by 2035. Just another 15 years of supporting the old and new systems in parallel. I'm sure that'll be pretty cheap.

People who work in the field will rightly accuse me of hand waving, and especially of over-exaggerating some difficulties (not every modernization project hits every possible snag that exists). But this is still a useful sketch the scope of the problem. I've spent time talking to very high people in the FAA. They are not unaware of the old systems and their limitations, nor are they bumbling bureaucrats (pet peeve - it is easy to villanize faceless people, and that is very lazy thinking). We in industry are forever proposing new ideas, better technology, and so on (let's face it, they are all trying to feed at the trough of government spending, and getting your system mandated is a company maker). But the price tag for my handy,dandy system is at the noise level compared to the cost of the logistics of deployment.

I am not arguing that there is nothing to be done, or that everyone is working maximally efficiently right now. Certainly the US is behind other countries in some areas of aviation technology. But it is not in any way a trivial problem, one of "just bolt a new radio to the plane and trash the old ecosystem".

edit: consider, for example, the Rockwell Collins DTU-7000 Data Transfer Module (https://www.rockwellcollins.com/sitecore/content/Data/Produc...). This is absolutely modern hardware in the aviation world. It is PCMCIA. And how exciting it was to get. You would not believe the cost and size of the old system - we would jealously keep tracking logs of, I forget, a few MB of flash memory units that cost thousands and thousands (and thousands) of dollars. There is some even more modern stuff being rolled out that uses usb. But consider, when this is something that contains your flight plan, your maps, and so on, the cost of a stray gamma ray blowing away a byte. Mull on how much testing this hardware goes through. And then factor in all of the logistics above. We already don't have money to own the old system, and now I have to go to all this further expense, to save what is truly chump change (that thousands and thousands and thousands number) in the end? Millions to save thousands.

Of course, we have to modernize, we can't store rich maps on tiny memory, so we spend, and spend, and spend. And then get a front page HN story about how old everything is! Well, there's a reason for that.

nawitus2• 12 years ago

If bureaucracy prevents new technology of being adopted quickly, then that bureaucracy actually decreases safety, even if it's goal is to increase safety. Yes, adopting new technology increases some risks, but also decreases others. The good thing is that usually you can have both systems on at the same time. If the internet connection and GPS fails, it's not difficult to fall back to the existing technology.

batbomb• 12 years ago

Arguably, this is likely only the second crash of a 777 that's not attributable to pilot error, and the first catastrophic crash in nearly 19 years.

It's almost like this blog post is suggesting that safety of large airliners is in some sort of massive disarray that could be fixed by an iPad and a few apps.

The second thing that we fail to think about is statistics. Systems like hadoop are very popular because is because failure ALWAYS scales, so we just buy lots of things and assume the embrace the risk of failure. For commercial plane, even a 0.1% failure rate would affect 25 flights out of O'Hare every day. Square had some information that 10% of customers that used an iPad 2 had one fail within a year.

So, the idea of expediting unproven technology with unknown failure rates to a system as reliable as a 777 sounds utterly preposterous to me.

lttlrck2• 12 years ago

"If the internet connection and GPS fails, it's not difficult to fall back to the existing technology."

Even if there was no bureaucracy everyone involved still has to go through rigorous training before we get to the point where "it's not difficult" ...

Spooky23• 12 years ago

You're knee-jerking in response to an incident that we literally know almost nothing about.

Aviation is a field where every major incident, and many minor ones are investigated and root cause is determined. The FAA and NTSB does fault tree analysis of crashes and publishes lots of material and bulletins to prevent similar issues.

KaiserPro5• 12 years ago

Well no.

What happens when the GPS says one thing, and the "internet" says another?

what takes precedence?

The "Internet" isn't safe, reliable or even bullet proof.

New technology isn't a golden bullet. Often its just a re-invention of the wheel. (whatsapp for example, is just MMS without the guaranteed delivery.)

I don't want my plane being crammed full of shiny new tech, especially if its not proven. Th reason why there is bureaucracy is to make things safe.

al2o3cr• 12 years ago

"Imagine if you had a telephone system in which you had to listen to everyone else’s conversations until somebody finally spoke to you."

Now imagine that everybody on the alternative secret phone system is flying around hundreds of passengers who'll be killed if somebody misdirects a call with important instructions.

I've found that, in general, if one's reaction to a practice is "WTF, is literally everybody else in this industry stoopid?" it usually means the opposite...

anovikov• 12 years ago

Every commercial airplane has a GPS tracker and a transmitter which sends its vital info on air, which everyone can receive and track on sites like http://www.flightradar24.com/ .

bitcuration• 12 years ago

The only modernization needed is elimination of human pilot all together out of the loop. Then there is no training, union, or endless testing, as the robot is fail safe just like there have always been more than one engine in commercial airplane.

Purposefully staying behind the technology curve is not a "safe" strategy, aviation is not alone in this obsolete thinking bias, the same is seen in utility, automobile industry too.

lttlrck2• 12 years ago

Does weather change that drastically over the duration of an average flight?

Pilots get weather forecasts before take-off, are they inadequate? How does knowing the weather at the destination help with the immediate task of flying a plane through a thunderstorm that you knew was going to be there anyway and you can see on your radar?

How more weather information change the impact of a major weather event e.g. East Coast winter storm, on air travel? I don't see how it could, the decisions are made far ahead of time because weather forecasts are pretty good.

Aviation is stuck in the 60s – a reflection on MH 370

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