Can anyone point out a crash where the ELT Activation helped in location of survivor?

[aviator1970]

To the best of my knowledge no wreckage or survivors have ever been located by the presence of an ELT Transmission on any of the frequencies. Please feel free to contradict or validate my statement. Specifics will help.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Well, there was that crash in the Alps where the passengers all died because the ELT didn't go off by itself and none of them knew to press the red button. So if that had been part of their briefing there might have been a different outcome.

[semmern]

Breitling Watch Saves The Life Of Stranded Hunter (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/breitling-watch-saves-the-life-of-stranded-hunter-172256991.html)

[The Ancient Geek]

There have been many cases of light aircraft forced landing and/or crashing and the crew being picked up by S&R helicopters in the UK over the years.
Airliners come down much less frequently but due to higher speeds etc the ELT is still a great aid for S&R but sadly more likely to aid in finding wreckage than survivors.

In almost every crash an ELT will have been involved in locating the site but this never makes the press, they just report that wreckage, with or without survivors, has been located.

[3wheels]

What about the military? Surely they have used it on many occasions?

[horizon flyer]

Its no good if you ditch as it sinks with the aircraft, PLB is a better choice. I believe ELTs have only activated in 30% of crashes. Don't know where I read this so I would not rely on them. Wear a PLB and activate before the crash is a better choice I think.

[Mesoman]

In the US, Civil Air Patrol occasionally finds survivors from an ELT activation. In fact, ELT's tend to fail with crashes bad enough to kill all on board.

I remember one a few years back where a helicopter crashed in bad weather in the mountains of Southern Arizona. Our team was able to locate the ELT using its in-flight direction finder, and then vector a rescue helicopter to the scene, where survivors were rescued. Without the ELT, they probably would have died of exposure or from their injuries.

[Safe-T]

An Australian ATSB report states a.o.:

"Records of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s SAR incidents shows that search and rescue personnel were alerted to aviation emergencies in a variety ways including radio calls and phone calls, and that ELT activation accounted for the first notification in only about 15 per cent of incidents. However, these ELT activations have been directly responsible for saving an average of four lives per year."

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/4126629/ar-2012-128_final.pdf

[India Four Two]

An interesting report of Canadian experience here:

https://www.cospas-sarsat.int/images/stories/media/Documents/canadianstudyonelt.pdf

[mickjoebill]

ATSB linked above seems well researched.

Time to first (satellite) fix TTFF is a critical specification for ELTs that could sink or be destroyed by a post crash fire before the position is transmitted.

A beacon that is "hot" is one where satellites are continually being acquired.

This eliminates the delay in time to acquire satellites.

Can anyone confirm that most ELTs are not "hot"?

[ve3id]

My instructor was rescued after being unable to out-climb a rising valley in the BC mountains He would not have survived had the ELT not brought paramedics to drop in on him, since he had three broken ribs. Fortunately I had received my PPL by then and did not need to fly with him!. The aircraft was a C172, C-GIIY

Satellite assists in rescue - UPI Archives (http://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/09/29/Satellite-assists-in-rescue/9154402120000/)

When I went to Transport Canada to write the CPL written exam a few years ago, I found details of his exploit written up on a magazine in the waiting room!

Incidentally, the whole concept of SARSAT was originally developed by ham radio operators, using a ham radio satellite! CRC Shirley Bay Ontario allowed them use of a mainframe computer to do the calculations. One of the hams involved is still alive and hangs out in the Sandford Fleming Building at U of Toronto.

Despite the marketing, it was not a joint US-Russian invention.

[olasek]

A beacon that is "hot" is one where satellites are continually being acquired.
Not sure where are you coming from. The only reason to "acquire" anything is for a GPS to calculate its position. Few airplanes (at least in the GA world) are equipped with the latest GPIRB beacons that contain their own GPS unit. Normal ELT beacons were never designed to "acquire" anything. They only transmit, don't receive anything. They are supposed to be totally dormant (saving battery charge) until triggered by a crash or manually turned on by somebody on the aircraft. You buy today a brand new $800 K Cirrus aircraft and it comes with a modern ELT beacon (121.5/406 Mhz) but has no GPS.

[onetrack]

Interesting question. The COSPAS-SARSAT article below indicates 10 pax have been saved from 25 aircraft crashes. No indication of where the rescues happened.

Space Safety Magazine - Cospas-Sarsat life-saving beacons fail to save on MH370 (http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-on-earth/malaysia-flight-370/cospas-sarsat-life-saving-beacons-fail-save/)

SARSAT-NOAA claims 19 lives saved in 10 aviation incidents in 2016, and 21 people saved from 11 aviation incidents in 2015.
Not enough information supplied to determine what the aviation incident types were, and what device actually saved the survivors. PLB's could have possibly been primarily involved in many rescues.

Sarsat-NOAA (http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/)

SARSAT-NOAA provide a rescue map, but it won't work for me, the rescue icons don't appear on the map.

SARSAT - U.S. rescues (https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/sarsat-us-rescues)

The indications are that PLB's are the most successful device to save your life, EPIRB's come next, and ELT's have a pretty poor record for saving lives.

ELT's essentially have some major design drawbacks, not the least of which is accuracy of pinpointing the ELT (406MHz ELT's are better than 121.5MHz, but the accompanying false alarm rate is also still high, with only 1 in 9 406MHz alerts being genuine - as compared to 2 in 100 genuine alerts on 121.5MHz).

Sarsat-NOAA - 406 vs 121.5 (http://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/406vs121.pdf)

Antennas being torn off ELT's in crashes feature highly, resulting in malfunction. AF447 was not found via ELT, and MH370 carried 4 ELT's, none of which worked. We have little idea why, and finding MH370 may solve that.
The cabin-mounted ELT's appear to feature highly in malfunctions.
IMO, tail-mounted ELT's are a far superior location, and deployable ELT's, as featured on military aircraft and rotary-wing machines operating off-shore, have a very high success rate.

This Canadian guy has summarised the ELT situation pretty well.

The Use Of Deployable Flight Recorders in Dual Combi Recorder Installations (http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Publications/pdf_library/austin.pdf)

Of course, there's always the point that numerous crashes have been found via ELT, with no survivors, thus reducing the record of saving lives.
It's a simple fact of life that a high % of aircraft crashes result in no survivors.

The big factor is time taken to locate the crash site. SAR people and medical people speak of the "golden hour" - that first hour is crucial to save many survivors. Delays always result in increased fatality levels.

From the survivor stories below, few aircraft crashes are listed (only two, a broken undercarriage upon landing, and an open ocean ditching).
It's somewhat telling that the vast majority of successful rescues were via PLB's - even the two aircraft incidents involved PLB's.

Acratex - list of rescue survivors (https://www.acrartex.com/survivors/)

[Nigerian Expat Outlaw]

Most recoveries in West Africa (where SAR is mostly non-existent) are as a result of ELT activation and subsequent locating by other commercial aircraft.

[Dan Winterland]

A friend of mine was the subject of the first ever 406MHz ELT rescue after he ditched a light twin on a ferry across the Pacific. It saved his life.