PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Malaysian Airlines MH370 contact lost
View Single Post
Old 12th Apr 2014, 02:06
  #9801 (permalink)  
YRP
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Ontario, Canada
Posts: 163
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Quote:
25 meg per hour is 7 kilobytes per second (56 Kbps) per aircraft. Existing satellite internet networks can absorb that without breaking a sweat.

Also, most of this stuff is highly optional and it's stored mainly because it can be. 20 years ago standard FDRs on aircraft like the 777 had the capacity to record 64 or 128 words per second (0.77 or 1.54 Kbps). After the expansion of the list of required parameter groups in 2002, Boeing started installing FDRs capable of 3 Kbps.
I'm not so sure about the networks absorbing the bandwidth system wide for all aircraft in the air. Maybe it can.

I did look up some numbers. Data charges are in the $7 to $25 range. So assume 25MB per hour, looking at $175/hr. Maybe you can undersample, can limit the parameters. So call it $50 to $100/hr. That is just FDR; CVR is going to be a couple of voice channels at say $30/hour each.

Maybe that is enough said on this topic, but all in all, how much extra sim time per year could you give each pilot for that money?
YRP is offline