Hacker News Reader

Comment by kenrikm | Hacker News Reader

Or just automatically eject floating GPS beacons on impact. You only need one good ping to the satellite to define the crash area.

This is not the first time this has happened. After Air France there should have been some added location method, it took two years to find the black box.

View on HN

We do this already. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_position_indicator

This. It's crazy that it doesn't already work this way.

Don't even wait until impact... it should just be the first part that (intentionally) falls off the plane when a critical sink rate threshold is crossed.

Are you seriously suggesting that a passenger airliner deliberately eject an object from itself based on nothing more than the rate at which it is descending?

Hazard to people or structures below? Hazard to the airplane if it impacts a control surface? Hazard to the airplane caused by a misfire of the eject mechanism? Inherent danger of the eject mechanism (I'm assuming it would have to be a chemical explosive due to the need to get it far away from the airplane so it doesn't cause the second hazard above)?

Ejection seats have the same problems, but at least their deployment is pilot-actuated.

Hazard to people or structures below?

Given that they're about to get an aeroplane in the face anyway, an acceptable increased risk :)

You're assuming (a) no false triggers and (b) the path of the airplane is the same path the ejected box will take.

You'd probably be genuinely disturbed to learn just how often stuff falls off of planes.

Actually, no: having been a student pilot at one time, I spent a lot of time reading about the many things that went wrong with airplanes.

That doesn't mean I still don't think this is a bad idea.

Sinkrate is a bad indicator. If this thing flew until it ran out of fuel, it could have had a reasonable decent that would fall into acceptable sinkrates.

True in this case, but here, the eject-on-impact feature would presumably be the relevant one.

I'm sure the plane had some ELTs. Perhaps the impact was just too great? The liferafts contain them as well, but since they're stowed in bags it is unlikely that one would be freed and remain on the ocean surface.

I live in an airport approach corridor. The noise is nuisance enough, don't drop crap on my house or my head because a nut job pilot decided to drop an airliner in one of the most remote ocean areas on the planet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com