Comment by adrinavarro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adrinavarro | Hacker News Reader

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Most modern airliners have satellite links (data and voice) with their dispatch centers. They also use the ACARS system to send and receive clearances (they can acknowledge by pushing a button). The old SELCAL+HF radio is no longer in use, except for backup.

Planes have GPS trackers. Not only their company knows where they are, the control center can too. In the case of the north atlantic track system, air control keeps a tight eye on speed, altitude and separation with very precise measurements, even as airplanes are far away from land.

I just fail to see the point of this post. I recently hitched a ride on the cockpit jump seat of a modern airplane for a Europe-East Coast flight and during that I saw the air traffic control knowing exactly where we were, and the pilots communicating via text message (ACARS) with control, as well as using satellite links to contact dispatch (via text messages), as well as satellite phone calls.

Pilots keep paper around them because pilots are there to maintain control, and paper is just another failsafe (with pretty good reliability record!).

Bonus: some planes can notice alterations in the flight dynamics and report an ice buildup. No pilot in this planet is going to let any external person input flight parameters remotely into their aircraft's system while they are in the air.

The author of the article is apparently so uninformed that not only does he realize that ACARS is available, but that is uses the same "awful, really awful" HF radio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Data_Link

It's actually a brilliant system, with network of transmit and receive sites its like globally available text messaging for pilots.

Also, unless the pilot was using atrocious equipment I can't see why HF radio would sound awful. I use my HF radio almost daily and don't have any complaints. I can legally listen to air traffic controllers on HF with no problem as well. The equipment I have is far, far inferior to that in most commercial airliners.

Modern airliners are also flown by entire teams of ground crews, among them Rolls Royce support engineers that monitor an aircrafts engines in realtime every second of operation trough its entire lifespan trough the hundreds of sensors embedded in each and every engine.

This way, most problems an engine would develop that would be hard to spot by ground service, are detected and acted upon long before they threaten the operation of the engine and airplane.

> I just fail to see the point of this post.

Haven't you read about the missing aircraft?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is a missing international passenger flight operated by a Boeing 777-200ER aircraft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

At least two of the passengers were travelling using false identities (stolen passports, tickets bought at the same time).

Edit: last known position: http://www.flightradar24.com/2014-03-07/16:46/12x/MAS370/2d8...

Oh wow. If it's straight-up missing they could be anywhere in Asia right now... nuts.

"Missing" is an euphemism for "very likely crashed" here. They won't say crashed just in case it is later found with people alive, but not communicating and gone from radar over the sea usually ends only one way.

It could be hijacked, landed, and held hostage, but it's incredibly difficult to hide a 777 anywhere in the world where it can safely land. It's possible it was hijacked with intention of being held hostage but crashed, hence no claims of responsibility.

Not likely. It was at cruising altitude and then vanished off the radar screen after sudden maneuvering. If it had diverted it would have continued to be tracked on radar. Even if they had shut off transponders and such, primary surveillance radar would have continued to see them. It almost certainly experienced a sudden catastrophic failure in flight (and I would bet due to a bomb).

Or not a bomb, just some maintenance problem. No group claims responsibility. The point of bombing seems to be to strike fear and send a message. The passport thing is curious but stolen/fake passports can be of use for other things that are nothing to do with terrorism.

Indeed. My money is on "bomb" just because it's hard to come up with a maintenance problem that causes such a rapid disaster at altitude. It would have to be something that caused a massive explosion like TWA 800. Possible, but unlikely. The lack of a claim makes a bombing less likely too, but IMO less so than the improbability of a mechanical problem.

Sudden explosive decompression?

Bingo, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_611

Or other examples that manage to disable enough of the flight controls but don't immediately break up the plane

As I understand it, you'd expect such a thing to happen during the climb. That's what happened with your linked flight 611, if I'm reading between the lines correctly, and it's what happened on e.g. Aloha 243. In general it would make sense that the failure would typically make itself known as the stress on the fuselage is increasing, not after it's reached a steady state. Not that it's impossible, but the fact that this flight was at cruising altitude for a while before it disappeared would seem to be an argument against this possibility.

Also true for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Airlines_Flight_123, the event happened "at near cruising altitude". Although I wouldn't say a plane once cruising is entirely steady state, there are winds and such. But, yeah, as you climb stress on the pressure vessel increases and that's when you'd expect a flaw to manifest.

That makes sense. Ignore my ignorant comment.

And pilot aids that appear to provide more information than they actually do can do more harm than good. If pilots take suicidal risks based on dubious information from "real-time" weather updates specifically designed for pilots[1], just imagine what would happen if consumer-grade iPad "real-time" weather apps found their way into the commercial cockpit.

[1]http://www.maxtrescott.com/max_trescott_on_general_a/2012/06...

FYI, the author of the post owns and pilots a modern jet plane, and is a seasoned pilot. His post was not just about airliners, but any planes up in the sky. And he is right, that the technology in many cases is outdated and prone to errors.

He owns a plane which he does not fly as a pilot and got a PPL which allows him to fly light aircraft in visual conditions but refuses to fly unaccompanied. I would not say that he is a seasoned pilot…

There are planes and planes. Security in airliners and in light aircraft are two matters of their own. You don't expect people who own a Cessna to have a black box and a satellite data link.

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