Originally Posted by
Sallyann1234
Thank you Christiaan.
So to build a system that is reasonably future-proof you will need 100kbps per aircraft, 1000 aircraft over the Atlantic, total 100 Megabits.
Of course 100Mbs is nothing... it's about one 2nd-generation Ethernet link, no?
So when we talked about just bandwidth, we were barking up the wrong tree.
"The truth is elsewhere"...
You already ponted to some of the other issues...
The challenge will be to design and build a robust satellite-based TDMA system that can control and synchronise the individual transmissions. And an entirely new radio fit in all aircraft (with appropriate redundancy of course because the radio link will always be less reliable than an on-board recorder).
And a
huge infrastructure on the ground everywhere, to recover these data, save them, distribute them, etc. etc.
I just used my imagination a moment...
Can little "AZ Airlines", trying to operate half a dozen second-hand regional jets conscientiously on a shoe-string budget (yes, they exist and try to survive), even afford to subscribe to such a service (they never could do it on their own)? Or can they be relied on to have the facilities to receive and store the data reliably?
Their half-dozen aircraft will carry FDRs, they have to, and they're likely to maintain them as they do the rest of their equipment.
Not to mention that if they're clever, they have already tied them in with QARs etc.
What is their interest in a system that "maybe" recovers a few more data from an extremely rare accident, where the FDR itself is not recovered?????
I think this puts the idea to bed.
I can think of many more reasons..... like the one already mentioned... the posited "data link" breaking down because the aircraft is in a vertical dive, for instance.
The idea mentioned by
XB70_Valkyrie would be nice... were it not that a few more FDR memory units would be equally impossible to locate as the original wreckage.
Personally, I still like the dye markers.... and the improvements suggested to the ELBs and ULBs, and possibly adding more of those.
Contray to the suggestions about adding FDR units (which would mean major aircraft system modifications), they would mean minor, and largely system-independent and aircraft-independent, improvements.
CJ