JD-EE
ACARS as an Alerter?
JD-EE
"It does. It would not have saved anybody to have the messages monitored at all times. (Although feeding them to a computer smart enough to detect anomalies such as missing messages and raise an alert might be useful for finding wreckage.)"
Exactly my point. Sole purpose would be to enable faster searches in event of a loss over water.
If it turns out that the DFDR/CVR data is irretrievable due corrosion or length of exposure at depth, we might have been very grateful for a smaller better defined search area earlier. I think the Industry has a lot to learn from the lessons of AF-447, in many areas. How much better we can learn them if we can retrieve the recorders earlier before exposure damage.
If ACARS is sending regular I-am-alive messages now, then its a doddle to add functionality to the ground computers to automatically look for and match the time stamp on received messages to alert after a preset time when no more I-am-alive messages are received.
Adding gps positon, heading and altitude to those messages could help considerably to locate the site earlier.
Cheers