http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/bu...2blackbox.html
I think W.E. Deming would call this tampering, or using a special cause to make a non productive corrective action by pretending it is a trend.
From the article:
The hardware itself sells for around $50,000 to $70,000 per plane, compared with $10,000 to $20,000 for a conventional black box. But for airlines, he noted, “the real cost is not the system but the phone bill.”
The sheer volume of data contained in a plane’s two black boxes — the flight data recorder, which contains 25 hours of information on the plane’s position, speed, altitude and heading; and the cockpit voice recorder, which contains the final two hours of cockpit audio — requires enormous amounts of bandwidth to transmit.
The cost to send that data via satellite can be $3 to $5 a minute.
For major airlines with hundreds of planes in their fleets, real-time streaming of flight data from takeoff to landing would cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually, some industry executives estimate.
Point: only airlines that fly routes that are similar to the one Air France 447 typically flew. Most overland domestic routes have zero need for this, so the expense could not be justified. Maybe there are better places to spend a dollar or two on improving flight safety ...
But providers are seeking to reduce the expense by allowing the airline to define which information they wish to monitor and how frequently they want it transmitted during a flight. Both the AMS and Star Navigation systems are programmed to automatically switch to live streaming after an incident or anomaly is detected during flight, and pilots can also activate it manually.
That last bit made me laugh. Companies will more likely encourage pilots NOT to activate this manually, due to the
increased cost.
At what point is it appropriate to treat a manned aircraft as a UAV? That is what is being proposed here, at IMNATWIO (in my not all that well informed opinion) an unjustifiable cost.
Such equipment would not have prevented AF 447 from happening as it did, but it might have helped understand how those last few minutes played out. Without resorting to emotional argument, this thread has seen discussion of a myriad of other equipment, and systems, that are already equipped that allow an aircrew to avoid terrible weather.
From the discussion here, it appears that a core contributing cause of the mishap is flying into, or too near, really bad weather that you'd usually avoid.
The data stream capability isn't the piece of equipment that helps you avoid that.
From the article:
Airlines, meanwhile, are cautious about absorbing significant new costs to address the very rare cases when a plane’s black boxes cannot be found.
...
11 cases in the past 35 years where flight data recorders were never recovered.
...
{cost} That is especially so in parts of the world where aircraft often are not even equipped with the most basic safety equipment. “If you had a dollar to spend on safety in certain developing countries, this would be the last thing you’d spend it on,” said Mr. Voss.
Good point.
Does anyone who regularly flies intercontinental routes think this capability is a good idea?
Elements of this was discussed some pages back, pro and con, in context of this mishap.