How do you track a plane?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-26544554

by ColinWright • 12 years ago

43 40 12 years ago

bbc.co.uk

The more this story unfolds, the more I realize just how wrong I was about how I thought things like FlightAware and everything involved in tracking an airplane works.

What exactly is the barrier between just having two way satellite communications on every plane for the purposes of tracking and reporting its location?

jib• 12 years ago

Cost mostly if I got it right? The value in knowing the position doesn't justify equipping all airplanes with some kind of satellite position update system (the two-way part that is), and there is almost no value in that information outside freak incidents like this.

jlmorton• 12 years ago

In the United States, the FAA is implementing a program called NextGen Air Transportation System that would feature two-way, GPS-based satellite communication. There are numerous benefits outside of an accident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Air_Transportat...

joshberry• 12 years ago

I would have to assume that at some point the cost of two dozen countries looking in between every nook and cranny of 1/3 of the planet exceeds the cost of a two-way position updating system, not to mention the value of being able to avoid even one disaster like this and whatever potential related disasters we have yet to see.

vl• 12 years ago

The claim is that it's way to expensive to retrofit existing planes due to regulations: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2014/03/10/why-dont-we-ha...

foobarqux2• 12 years ago

I don't think that reasoning is correct. My comment on that blog was:

I don’t think the fixed cost should be as high as you suggest because the functionality would (arguably) not be safety-critical, in contrast to your examples, and therefore subject to weaker regulations.

Emergency geolocation doesn’t affect flight safety, only rescue operations. What happens if the new GPS location functionality fails? The only deleterious consequence is if the other locations systems fail (ELT) and the error causes, in the event that saving passengers is possible, for SAR to look in the wrong place when they otherwise would have looked in the correct one.

Perdition6• 12 years ago

What satellites are you using that have world wide coverage and enough bandwidth for this purpose?

Such a system also wouldn't be immune to being disabled as the current tracking systems are. People need to learn to live with uncertainty instead of trying to remove it.

trauco• 12 years ago

I do not know how much bandwidth you would need to track the entire fleet of all major airlines (even if you, say, limited yourself to international and/or flights longer than X hours/km), but worldwide tracking of automated instrumentation (I'm an earth scientist) is done regularly. A few examples:

- The iridium satellite network, which provides phone service, also provides a Short Burst Data service, which I suspect could be used for this purpose.

- The Argo network tracks thousands of ocean drifters (http://www.argos-system.org/?nocache=0.9626778103411198). Some of those drifters are using the Iridium network now.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

They also omit the fact that the 4 digit code in the transponder is entered by the pilot. When I've flown with friends typically the transponder is set to 1200 until ATC tells them what number they want them to emit, and then the pilot sets that number and from then on they know who they are.

davepage2• 12 years ago

It is worth mentioning that transport aircraft carry Mode S [0] transponders which emit a unique ICAO 24 bit address assigned by aircraft registration. This data is available regardless the pilot-entered 4 octal digit Mode A transponder code. The transponder can still be turned off, however.

This contrasts to small aircraft which typically have Mode A/C only (no mode S).

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_transponder_interrogat...

samstave4• 12 years ago

So.... why?

All airplanes should have a MAC address. No plane should have a user-servicable-power-switch to the transponder.

Can you tell why the opposite woud be needed?

melling• 12 years ago

Does anyone know the exact information that the Rolls Royce engines would have transmitted if the airline had paid for the "basic plan"?

midas007• 12 years ago

So I worked at Trimble Nav in the radio group, so this by no means perfect || expert on the first go:

Rough specs of something that might be respectable:

  - wind & solar powered
  - externally-mounted, self-contained, near zero maintenance
  - compatible with deicing chemicals & equipment
  - multiple redundant location sources: GPS, GLONASS, LORAN, cell-tower 
  - jam-resistant multi antennnae / recvr config
  - highly compressed satellite telemetry with cellular, pager and HF backups
    - location & alt delta every 3 minutes (12 bits +- 100m)
    - absolute location & alt every 8 hours (46 bits +- 100m)
  - physically hardened against several hours blunt-force phsyical damage
    - (eg enough to slow down a die-grinder w/ a diamond cutoff wheel)
  - pretty app similar to google earth where carrier operators can see their fleet live or in the past

Unit cost of ~$100k USD at first, getting to $35k at scale

Shoe-string budget dev costs: $1.2 mil for a bump to fit the most popular model of jet first, then expand to others and airbus if successful.

Assumes engrs that can bust it out quickly and hustlers that can finagle enterprise & get distribution (Eg make it an FAA mandatory device for classes of airframes).

siculars2• 12 years ago

What is the first thing you do when you land? I don't know about you, but I check my phone. If even one phone on that plane was not off or in airplane mode it would immediately connect with the nearest cell tower no matter where they landed, if there was a cell tower in range that is. I know for a fact that I've simply forgotten to turn my phone off... on occasion... and sure enough, my phone starts ringing as soon as I land.

Now, who here would say that the NSA isn't backdoored into every cell tower on that planet. I wouldn't be surprised if they are. How could we not know as soon as one of the cells on that plane popped up on a tower anywhere in the world? So, exclude all cell tower coverage areas in projected flight area and search there to rule out potential hijack/landing.

kevinchen2• 12 years ago

You're assuming that the passengers are still alive (the plane climbed to 45,000 feet after disabling its transponder), and if they are, that they haven't been intimidated into giving up their phones.

zaidf• 12 years ago

What does getting the last known cell phone tower contact have anything to do with whether anyone is alive? Like the OP says, all that is a single phone making contact with the nearest tower.

einhverfr3• 12 years ago

These guys were also incredibly prepared it seems. I would suggest that it would be unlikely that passengers, if they were still alive, would be allowed to just move about and grab things. They could be blindfolded and told not to move, for example, during landing, refueling, and so forth (though blindfolds may not be as relevant at night.

shn2• 12 years ago

Forgive my ignorance, but why the plane could not fly straight rather than north or south that is put forth as the only options? Straight is as suicidal as going south, still a vast ocean ahead.

shn2• 12 years ago

Somebody down voted a genuine question, and left no comment at all for why did it? There's no corner of the world short of mean people.

How do you track a plane?

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