I denne saken er det brukt uendelig med tid og penger. Jeg har enda til gode å få en god forklaring på at ikke ELT, Emergency Locator Transmitter, kan benyttes. Det er et enkelt og gjennomprøvet system som består av en sender som sitter utvendig på flyet. Den spretter av når flyet treffer noe hardt, og sender på nødfrekevensene. Signalet kan også inneholde senderens posisjon. COSPAS/SARSAT plukker opp signalet og har en posisjon innen et par timers tid. Tydeligvis for enkelt for ICAO. (Red.)
The age of the missing airliner is coming to an end
Eighty years after her disappearance, many still
wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart when she vanished somewhere in the
Pacific Ocean on her fateful round-the-world flight.
Yet, though air
travel is safer than it has ever been, the intervening time has not provided an
enormous upgrade of our ability to track aircraft far from land-based
radar.
In 2009, an Air France flight over the south Atlantic was lost
beyond radar range, and though wreckage was recovered from the ocean surface
days later, it took two years to find the flight data recorders, often known as
"black boxes." In 2014, Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared over the Indian
Ocean, and has never been found (paywall). In 2016, an Indian Air Force plane
was lost for good over the Bay of Bengal.
Indeed, over international
waters, air traffic controllers have no real-time knowledge of where planes
are-they rely on flight plans, radio contact with pilots, and a system called
ACARS that provides what is effectively text-message communication between
planes and ground stations.
How is that possible in the age of GPS
receivers and non-stop connectivity?
"You're looking at the seat-back map
on the airplane, and you know where you are, and the pilot knows," Don Thoma,
the CEO of a plane-tracking company called Aireon, tells Quartz. "But air
traffic control has no idea."
Thoma says that "aha moment" came to him
and his team in 2009, the year Uber was founded to leverage the location-finding
power of GPS in mobile phones to link up drivers and passengers. Airlines and
air traffic controllers were also realizing that satellite navigation could play
a major role in their work.
In 2010, the FAA mandated that all US
aircraft would need to use a system called ADS-B, which means "Automatic
Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast." Essentially, by 2020, aircraft are required
to broadcast their location, derived from GPS, each second.
A network of
ground stations across the country collects this information and feeds it to air
traffic controllers, who now use it to gain real-time knowledge of where planes
are flying. If you've used the service FlightAware, you've seen ADS-B
data.
Oceans of uncertainty
However, ground receivers need to be
within about 172 miles (277 km) of the aircraft to collect ADS-B signals. Out
over the ocean, there's still a knowledge gap between the planes and the air
traffic controllers they can't reach. The solution Thoma had in mind when Aireon
was founded in 2011: more satellites.
Specifically, Aireon has installed
payloads on 75 Iridium satellites that have been launched over the past two
years, with the final installment reaching orbit in a SpaceX rocket on Jan. 11.
These payloads are designed to detect ADS-B signals wherever they are broadcast,
whether over the open ocean or a mountain range, finally providing continuous
tracking of aircraft anywhere on Earth. The satellites are already processing
more than 13 billion ADS-B messages each month.
Aireon is a unique
company: Its ownership includes Iridium, where Thoma had previously been an
executive, and a group of national air traffic control authorities that are
organized as public-private entities, allowing them to invest in companies like
Aireon. Among them are AirNavCanada and the United Kingdom's National Air
Traffic Services.
Those two invested in part because they are responsible
for the North Atlantic air corridor, which sees about 1,500 flights a day.
Currently, the regulators have difficulty meeting their safety standards, and
real-time tracking will help them to do it.
In the next six months, the
Aireon system will go through a series of test and validation efforts with air
traffic controllers in the US, Canada, and Europe. If all goes well the company
will be certified for operations over land and water, and recognized by the
European Aviation Safety Agency as an official air traffic control surveillance
provider.
For airlines themselves, the benefits will include using that
real-time traffic management to fly faster, in part because they will be able to
fly more closely to other planes, which will cut fuel costs (and emissions). The
speed will presumably please passengers, as will the added flexibility to dodge
bad weather.
But will it make mysterious airline disappearances a thing
of the past? Thoma thinks so. Real-time tracking should give investigators a far
better starting point to hunt for lost aircraft than triangulating final radio
transmissions sent an indeterminate time before the loss of the
aircraft.
There are still humans in the loop, however, which is one
source of trouble: Investigators believe that MH370's radar transponder was
turned off, either by a malfunction or by a pilot bent on
disaster.
ADS-B, like all avionics, can be disabled to deal with an
emergency. But even then, Thoma says, "we'd know exactly when that transponder
was turned off, a big improvement." And in part because of MH370, a new
international standard will go into effect in 2021, requiring airlines to be
able to track their planes in the event of an emergency once per
minute.
Now, 80 years after Earhart, we may finally be finished losing
our airplanes.
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