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Comment by ganeumann | Hacker News Reader

"...a six-pound tracking system, about the size of a hotel safe, installed in the planes’ electronics bays...if something goes wrong — a sudden loss of altitude; an unexpected bank; engine vibrations — the system begins transmitting data to the ground, via satellite, every second. That six-pound box spits out reams of performance data, as well as the basics necessary for a search-and-rescue: coordinates, speed, and altitude....installation alone runs about $120,000 per plane..."

Should this cost $120k? I'm no expert, but that seems steep. I assume this data is already being written to the black box, so piggybacking off that data feed seems like it would be a pretty simple thing.

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Airlines and regulators have no interest in slapping on crude, consumer grade transmitters to existing aircraft. As is the case with any aircraft part, it needs to be a high-grade, reliable, tested, and certified.

When you start tying in transmitters to the aircraft's existing avionics, the need for a redundant, extremely reliable, tested and fault-free system is even greater. An absolute must.

That's where the big expense comes in. And I believe that's what passengers have come to expect. Personally, I'd rather fly on an airliner without a satellite tracking system than fly with one that hasn't been subjected to the same testing and certification standards as the rest of the plane's equipment.

The cost is the prohibitive factor. I can imagine that Delta, for instance, has no interest in a $90M charge to retrofit their aircraft with a system that they will probably never use.

The money would probably be better spent speeding up ADS-B transmitter installations, as well as incentive payments to Iridium to get their new satellites with ADS-B receivers into orbit. No point in reinventing the wheel.

I'm sure it's something that will be worked out in time. Perhaps the manufacturers themselves will be more interested in rolling out tracking technology in new aircraft versus airlines retrofitting existing planes.

But it's not an industry that responds quickly due to media hysteria surrounding rare and isolated incidents, that's for sure.

This is already being done, by Aireon.

Right, which is a subsidiary of Iridium:

http://www.aireon.com/AboutAireon/AnIridiumInnovation

And yet... and yet, the pilots I know who fly big jets brought their own GPS units into the cockpit decades before 'reliable tested' versions were certified. And used them. Because they were helpful, but not necessary.

And they are free to do so because the GPS units pose no risk to the aircraft, just as I use my iPad or smartphone on a plane.

Once you start talking about tracking systems that are tied into the plane's avionics in order to deliver information about the aircraft itself, that's another story.

A lot of the arguments in this particular thread are based on the assumption that an aviation grade (non-firmware locked to low speed / low altitude like some 90s models) an an antenna are somehow more expensive than $120K or more specifically that it would be more expensive than screwing around with the existing black box and flight avionics.

Making it all even weirder, lets price out something that does an even more complicated task, a TCAS unit that ties into the avionics and A/V headsets and sometimes HUD and the transponder and in real time warns of potential collisions. $15K to $20K installed. But this vastly simpler project is supposed to cost about ten times as much. Don't think so.

Also a lot of confusion about what a black box from 1980 vs 2015 actually records and what is necessary. Yes from a safety perspective a simple location tracker does nothing and you'd need a full black box feed. A classic programming example of not defining your goals means a fail. Have to spec if you just want a lat/lon or if you want a full engineering telemetry feed.

Finally, if the engine controller fails, and you're over an ocean, then you die. Pretty simple. On the other hand, 99.9999999% (seriously) of flight hours, if this flight recorder fails, much like a tcas blowing a fuse, you simply fix it before the next flight. A big old "whatever". Its not like most planes disappear on a regular basis or most planes are involved in near collisions. The MTBF of the all hardware is shorter than the mean time between accidents. So consumer grade is good enough as long as it doesn't burst into flame like a consumer laptop.

My neighbor growing up owned brokerage for refurbished aircraft parts (apparently there is a niche for everything). They'd refurbish some stuff in house but farmed a lot of it out. Anyway, one day he was giving me a tour of his office and they had a garage for storage in the back. He picked up this valve off the shelf, it was the size of an 80 count aspirin bottle. He said he bought it for $1200, spent another $900 to refurbish it and he was going to sell it for $5000. Absolutely mind boggling.

This is aviation engineering where everything needs to be checked and verified multiple times by multiple people because otherwise planes fall out of the sky.

Maybe you're paying for the guaranteed access to the satellite network when it's needed rather than the tech on the plane itself. ....and of course a bit of a "no competition so deal with it" charge.

Companies exist to make money, the market is very limited, the sales process is long etc. but feel free to compete.

People generally dont try to replace a 100k job with another one when they start companies, but are looking for a (multi) millionaire upside instead

I imagine partly because the airline was buying from the "11-20" quantity column. If Delta were to buy, with 700+ planes, they'd likely get a pretty good quantity discount.

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