Originally Posted by Downwind Lander
Apols if anyone has commented on this - MH370 taught the world that there is merit in flight data going to the FDR and CVR, but ALSO to an Internet based repository (- just in case). Can it be, almost a year on, that nothing has been done about this?
Much can very easily be done but the problem of course comes down to cost and a justification of what actual benefit such a thing provides. In terms of actual safety it provides no benefit at all bar letting investigators know what was happening to the aircraft before finding the flight recorders.
It costs a huge amount of money to maintain a satellite link and to therefore transfer flight data in real time, I really doubt it is possible to do so economically. Factor in how many aircraft are in the sky and all of them maintaining satellite links... That is serious bandwidth.
I hate to mention the worst but this plane will be found and occurances like MH370 are thankfully extremely rare to almost unheard of. Engineering a hugely expensive comms link for real time flight data transfer is just not necessary.