I found this interesting
short flights long nights
Thread Starter
I found this interesting
After sitting back and watching this industry descend to the lowest common denominator, and then lower....I think it's all a bit late...
Horror week in aviation moves International Air Transport Association to action on safety - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Horror week in aviation moves International Air Transport Association to action on safety - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
short flights long nights
Thread Starter
That's exactly what I was getting at.
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Tried to get my message across on this forum but my thread disappeared. For a start I would like to see all Flight recorder data passed to the ground in real time. This would provide a good start to any analysis. It would also have told us where the first Malaysia loss had vanished.
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I work for a little operator - and I mean REALLY little - and even us little guys saw the sense and could afford to install a satellite tracker into our aircraft which relays real-time data back to operations throughout each and every flight. If it makes practical and economic sense to install such a system into a 4 seater - surely the BIG boys and the airlines out there could do the same. I know it usually comes down to finance, but really......??
It isn't a major expenditure, and think of all the grief it would have saved since say Air France when it was mooted as a possible solution. How many more 'lost' aircraft do we have to have before the simple solution that's already out there and affordable becomes a requirement?
It isn't a major expenditure, and think of all the grief it would have saved since say Air France when it was mooted as a possible solution. How many more 'lost' aircraft do we have to have before the simple solution that's already out there and affordable becomes a requirement?
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While I can see the point in having flight data transmitted to the ground in real time, can I ask how this would have prevented any of the aircraft crashes we have experienced this year?
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Most half descent trucking companies have real time info feed from their trucks via satellite to a centralized control center . If we where to compare well run bus or trucking companies to the majority of the airlines flying around the world today the results may surprise .
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Not necessarily a case of preventing the disasters that have happened recently but making finding a downed plane pretty quick. Our little system records altitude, speed, heading and status from take-off to touchdown. If the S...T hits the fan, we can at least find our little aircraft. Kind of removes the needle from the haystack. And added bonus ... no matter the range, distance or location we have immediate contact to the cockpit and vice versa. The technology is out there, we just need to make use of it.
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Fox.
I see the value in tracking, don't get me wrong.
Just how can this be described as a safety issue? Surely it's a logistics improvement.
It can obviously lead to quicker location of downed aircraft and with potential saving of life in some instances but this doesn't apply in any of the disasters this year, so they can offer no weight in promoting the tracking campaign.
I see the value in tracking, don't get me wrong.
Just how can this be described as a safety issue? Surely it's a logistics improvement.
It can obviously lead to quicker location of downed aircraft and with potential saving of life in some instances but this doesn't apply in any of the disasters this year, so they can offer no weight in promoting the tracking campaign.
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If you find a downed plane quicker you can find out "why" sooner, then possibly take action to prevent a recurrence. Therefore this technology might well prevent some future incidents.
During my life the improvements in engine and air frame safety have been staggering, but recording and tracking technologies seem to have been left behind.
During my life the improvements in engine and air frame safety have been staggering, but recording and tracking technologies seem to have been left behind.
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Never mind real time tracking, one very large EU locos doesn't even have any way for pilots to contact ops, engineering or ground crew once the doors are closed, despite having a fleet of hundreds of aircraft in the one company. No CPDLC, no satcom, no ACARS, not HF, just the legal minimum two VHFs. And all the time it bangs the drum about safety. And I doubt that is unique. It's all lip service - the only contribution the industry has to safety is making sure the pilots are aboard the aircraft and have to save their own arses. God help the passengers if the industry does go down the remotely piloted vehicle route...
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And another very large LoCo 'used' to give captains company mobiles. What now? I even flew for a smallish Italian intercontinental charter 20 years ago that gave captains AND pursers company mobiles. As we were all over the place, often with last minute changes, it really was necessary.
Another LoCo had a/c at many airports all over Europe; had a very tight schedule to keep; had very very few spare a/c or crews, and yet relied entirely on ATC and handler's departure messages to know where their a/c were. They knew when they were airborne, somewhat later, but not the push-back in live time. Thus anticipating arrival delays and making adjustments always happened at the last minute. Resulting chaos. A few pennies on communication - that great CRM philosophy - and hundreds of £'s would be saved.
I found in many airlines the blinkers were on. The wizz-kids could not see a small investment could bring big returns, in anything. Before expenditure they needed to know of an immediate tangible return. If not, then no cash on the table. There are still companies flying around with hand made load sheets. The dispatcher spends more time doing that, and sometimes making mistakes that have caused tail strikes, than monitoring all the factors involved in a speedy turn-round. The cost of computer load sheets is pennies. Why steam driven in one area and super hi-tech in others? But then we never do know 'whole big picture' do we?
Another LoCo had a/c at many airports all over Europe; had a very tight schedule to keep; had very very few spare a/c or crews, and yet relied entirely on ATC and handler's departure messages to know where their a/c were. They knew when they were airborne, somewhat later, but not the push-back in live time. Thus anticipating arrival delays and making adjustments always happened at the last minute. Resulting chaos. A few pennies on communication - that great CRM philosophy - and hundreds of £'s would be saved.
I found in many airlines the blinkers were on. The wizz-kids could not see a small investment could bring big returns, in anything. Before expenditure they needed to know of an immediate tangible return. If not, then no cash on the table. There are still companies flying around with hand made load sheets. The dispatcher spends more time doing that, and sometimes making mistakes that have caused tail strikes, than monitoring all the factors involved in a speedy turn-round. The cost of computer load sheets is pennies. Why steam driven in one area and super hi-tech in others? But then we never do know 'whole big picture' do we?
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Foxcotte
I would give it a guess you operating for UN and this is UN requiremnt to have sat tracker for medium and long term contracts. This is a good explanation why some small operators having it.
When it comes to the trucks I am yet to see any truck (except military or UN) sending position signals via satellite - it is all through the normal cellular data networks, totally different cost wise.
I would give it a guess you operating for UN and this is UN requiremnt to have sat tracker for medium and long term contracts. This is a good explanation why some small operators having it.
When it comes to the trucks I am yet to see any truck (except military or UN) sending position signals via satellite - it is all through the normal cellular data networks, totally different cost wise.
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Tried to get my message across on this forum but my thread disappeared. For a start I would like to see all Flight recorder data passed to the ground in real time. This would provide a good start to any analysis. It would also have told us where the first Malaysia loss had vanished.
Originally Posted by Foxcotte
I work for a little operator - and I mean REALLY little - and even us little guys saw the sense and could afford to install a satellite tracker into our aircraft which relays real-time data back to operations throughout each and every flight.
Off top of head / back of envelope:
For Foxcotte's example, it looks like 5 or 6 parameters (presuming location as well), be generous and say 16bits each, and every second (probably they are actually only sent every 10s or maybe 1min ?). That makes maybe 80bits/sec or 0.08kbps max.
For flight recorder on a modern large jet we are talking over 1000 parameters, lets say average 8bits (some may be 12 or 16, but some may be 1 or 2 (on/off or on/off/invalid). Sampling is at least every second but soon going up to 8 per second minimum I think. So that is 1000*8*8 = 64kbps (roughly). CVR is at least 4 audio channels probably at least 16kbps - don't want to run it through low bandwidth voice codecs as there are often non-voice sounds that are of interest - so that is another 64kbps, 128 in total.
128 / 0.08 = roughly 1500 times as much data - and hence 1500 times the cost. A satcom phone call is about 2.4kbps and maybe $1 / min, so that's $50 / flight-minute. Even if I'm out by a factor of 10, that is a significant cost.
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If I may throw more wood onto the fire. A company I used to work for had all of its aircraft outfitted with sat-phones. Same thing as mentioned before, 5 parameters sent every 5 seconds. The speed ranges we were dealing with were all south of 270 knots, so finding a downed aircraft would have been relatively easy.
Except that the problem we had was we were operating in some pretty remote areas. We often found that the system would become masked by mountains or that we were out of range of the satellite. We used to have a notation in our company ops manual that, were an aircraft to "drop off" the screen while in flight, we were to begin a communications search with immediate effect. This ended up taking so much time from our dispatchers that the notation was removed.
We have to remember that satellite tracking is not done by the same satellites that are used for a GNSS - well, at least GPS. The company doing the tracking must have at least one satellite in the sky. Unless they have more than the GNSS constellation being used, they can never ensure complete, world-wide coverage. So we as an industry end up paying for a service that, in my experience, works less than 50% of the time.
So our option is to go to the public, tell them we need a whole new constellation of satellites to ensure world-wide coverage (explaining all the way why the current system does not do this and cannot be upgraded to do this), we need to outfit the world fleet with trackers, and we need to reduce the cost to user to make it more affordable than the $50/flight-minute quoted before.
Once we put the price tag on all this, explaining we can do it through a dollar amount per ticket, I'm sure you will see the desire drop off substantially. I mean, if they're not willing to pay an extra couple dollars to keep experience at the pointy end, what makes you think they'll pay for technology that will only help them if they're dead?
Except that the problem we had was we were operating in some pretty remote areas. We often found that the system would become masked by mountains or that we were out of range of the satellite. We used to have a notation in our company ops manual that, were an aircraft to "drop off" the screen while in flight, we were to begin a communications search with immediate effect. This ended up taking so much time from our dispatchers that the notation was removed.
We have to remember that satellite tracking is not done by the same satellites that are used for a GNSS - well, at least GPS. The company doing the tracking must have at least one satellite in the sky. Unless they have more than the GNSS constellation being used, they can never ensure complete, world-wide coverage. So we as an industry end up paying for a service that, in my experience, works less than 50% of the time.
So our option is to go to the public, tell them we need a whole new constellation of satellites to ensure world-wide coverage (explaining all the way why the current system does not do this and cannot be upgraded to do this), we need to outfit the world fleet with trackers, and we need to reduce the cost to user to make it more affordable than the $50/flight-minute quoted before.
Once we put the price tag on all this, explaining we can do it through a dollar amount per ticket, I'm sure you will see the desire drop off substantially. I mean, if they're not willing to pay an extra couple dollars to keep experience at the pointy end, what makes you think they'll pay for technology that will only help them if they're dead?
Last edited by +TSRA; 26th Jul 2014 at 18:13. Reason: Missing "0" in a quoted number.
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Originally Posted by infrequentflyer789
128/0.08 = roughly 1500 times as much data - and hence 1500 times the cost. A satcom phone call is conducted at a rate of about 2.4kbps maybe $1 / min, so that's $50 / flight-minute. Even if I'm out by a factor of 10, that is a significant cost.
Thanks for a very good post, my friend! I’ve gone over your figures (which are pretty darn accurate I would say) … and, presuming your suppositions are correct, it’s actually closer to 1600 times (rather than 1500 times) the amount of data involved. I also agree that it’s approximately $1.00 per minute for a “sat-phone call,” transmitting approximately 2.4kbps of data each minute. Using that same rate of data transmittal (2.4kbps), it would take approximately 22 minutes (and some 15 seconds) to transmit the data that you describe being regularly gathered each second – or, more precisely, the data that would be transmitted during approximately the first hour of flight would be the data collected only during the first 3 seconds of that flight. On the surface, regularly gathering the data you describe, and then transmitting the next 3-second hunk of data every 22+ minutes, would leave a huge amount of data that has been gathered while the first portion of that data was being transmitted. In this event, the process of transmittal would be ever falling further and further behind … to the point that at landing after an 8 hour flight (which is 480 minutes; or 28,800 seconds) it is likely that only the data for the first 24 seconds of that flight would have been transmitted. Or, said differently, this means that substantially well less than 1% of the data collected will have been transmitted throughout that 8-hour flight.
Of course, this would not be the case were there a way to increase the data transmission rate. If it is logical (and it may be totally illogical, but…) presume that the transmission rate were to be increased by the amount of data collected in one second - which would mean a transmission rate of 128kbps (128,000 bits per second) – and as you indicated, this is 1600 times (my corrected number) that of the sat phone. If we presume a straight “1 for 1” increase, the transmission of FDR data would be approximately $1600 per flight minute … and again, a flight of 8 hours would cost a mere $768,000. With there being approximately 100,000 airline flights per day, this would net the provider of this service merely $768 million a day, every day of the year – which would generate a mere 280 billion 320 million dollars each year. Anyone care to guess who would wind up actually paying for this? Yeah … the passengers. So … I don’t hold out for any such situation becoming something to consider – unless of course, the transmission rate were dramatically increased, and cost equally dramatically reduced – that might make the process more in line with “cost for value.”