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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

How often is there a crash landing at an airport? Video would probably be more useful in automobiles. There are lots of accidents every day. At some point video at airports or on planes be be useful for collision warnings. Camera on the plane could warn the tower and pilot.

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Whats the difference does it make "how often"? When it happens its usually fatal and this looks like a miracle only 2 dead (RIP).

How often per year you have terrorist attack (1 this year?) and yet you have billions of dollars spent and US Constitution shredded with the possibility of some sweating pot-belly stranger grouping your three-years daughter between her crotch, checking if you hadn't packed some explosives there (just like every american parent would sacrifice their child for their terrorist threat [just being extremely sarcastic here obviously]).

Its actually weird that each airport does not have close-circuit cameras recording each runway. I dont see a problem just make it what 24hours closed recording and its enough in case there is situation like this one.

Side note: from the initial pictures how the roof looked like, my assumption was that there were two bombs in overhead compartments. I would never guess that a belly diving would cause such a sever damage to the roof of the airplane where it looks like it was extensively burned.

The fire caused that roof damage.

Every photo that I have seems shows the open roof. I can't tell if the fire burned it through or if the roof was ripped open by the fire fighters and the rescue teams.

If the former, I wonder if the plane's vertical profile was designed in such a way as to keep the fire above the passengers (if such a thing is even possible).

My experience with fire in an enclosed space is that you never want to introduce air. I am confident that the airport fire crews did not rip the fuselage open at the top. The photos I have seen look like burned aluminum. http://a57.foxnews.com/global.fncstatic.com/static/managed/i...

David Eun's post right after evacuating the aircraft shows the roof still intact. https://path.com/p/1lwrZb

The initial crash had some smaller fires that died out. They evacuated the people and then the plane started burning. The damage to the roof was from the secondary fires.

Because if it only happens once every 10 years or so and it doesn't provide any real value beyond what the flight and data recorders provide then it hardly seems worth it. Technology changes quickly. It sounds like it was human error. I'd rather have something to help prevent it rather than seeing the footage of the crash. Let's get the crashes down to one every 20 years.

Fatal crashes like this are rare enough to make the headlines, but near-accidents, non-fatal accidents and other minor events could be better documented and help improve the overall safety and efficiency.

Given the current low price of high-quality video equipment, and the cost of both safety equipment and investigation, even in minor cases, this sounds actually like a good idea. Footage could be deleted quickly if nothing eventful happens, reducing the costs even further.

It would be much more helpful and less privacy-invasive than the rest of the airport camera circuit, and probably cheaper.

Bureaucracy. Some entrepreneurial employee of the airport can't just head out and install cameras, no matter how cheap they are. You or I could get a gopro and a tiny PC and have high quality footage recorded all day and then deleted automatically if nothing eventful happens. But... we're talking about an industry that still uses token-ring networks.

A "markets" person might think, if it's so cheap and the footage of a crash so valuable, why don't individuals across the bay setup their own cameras to record the runway, then sell the footage if it becomes valuable?

>we're talking about an industry that still uses token-ring networks

Wait, seriously? I'm interested...

My question still stands. I'm not proposing for some random person to go there and install the cameras, I'm wondering why the industry does not adopt this as a standard practice.

Either they already are, or it was deemed not useful to diagnose and prevent other disasters. Given the depth and the breadth of rules and regulations that make air travel safer than crossing the street [citation needed, I'm sure], I would assume that they're doing something right.

What if you sell to pilots? Have pilots buy cameras and have them carry the camera onto the plane themselves. Sell it as a liability reduction thing.

Cars in Russia routinely have dash-mounted cams to record driving; helps for insurance claims. It's one reason why there were so many videos of the meteorite that hit Chelyabinsk, taken while driving.

Russia seems to be the richest vein of "weird road videos" for precisely this reason - when you're recording "everything" then you get a lot more strange incidents on camera.

The habit seems to be spreading by Russian immigrants too - I had a Russian driver the other week, and that was the first US taxi I had been in that had a dash cam.

The cost of minimal useful equipment to accomplish that task at every international airport in the US (~150) would be less than the cost of a single 777 empty ($300MM). The value of that footage? I don't know, but it sounds like a bargain to me.

They have something like this already, it's called a Flight Data Recorder

I can't wait to see the video footage from it!

I don't know if you are being sarcastic, and but I don't see any smiley faces so here http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_data_recorder

Sarcasm that is made unambiguous is not sarcasm.

Do they record videos too ? I don't think so.

Modern planes have multiple video cameras attached to them, I'm not sure if they are recorded, though. They help with taxing.

A few dozen go pro's are not going to cost much and we have surveillance pretty much everywhere else, so why not here. Every post office in the USA has about 25 high res cameras.

We have surveillance elsewhere because there's a relatively high possibility of criminal activity. On a runway, that possibility is ridiculously low. We fear malice more than incompetence.

We have surveillance elsewhere because there's a relatively high possibility of criminal activity.

Where are you talking about?

High density populations.

I'm in favor of blanket video at airports but the cameras are probably the cheapest part of the setup. You'll need to wire the cameras with electricity and data connections to a system. You'll also need to make sure that they are secure enough not to blow over and litter the runway or far enough away not to be a danger. That takes testing and planning for every airport.

Lots of money to do this. Still worth it but its much more expensive than a few go pros and tripods.

You could just install them inside the tower pointing out the window.

You still need power wired and planning. Go Pros will still be the cheapest part of the equation.

Heck, just get one of those dash cams from Amazon. $25 for the cam, $35 for the SD card, suction cup it to the window, plug it into the wall, and it'll record the last several hours on the card.

All for less than $100, and 5 minutes installation.

The control tower of an airport is not like a home office. You can't just put things anywhere and run extention cords to power devices.

Not sure how you'd warn a pilot about a crash simply using a camera? Either way, there is already a (practically P2P) collision avoidance system that's pretty reliable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCAS

The cost is trivial in proportion to the benefit (and pretty trivial in absolute terms; for a few thousand you could have a high resolution image shooting at a high frame rate). Most car journeys don't involve an accident either, it's just that there's so many of them.

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