Thankfully, it's a rare occurrence. And having been in some really stormy flights that seemed as if they would disintegrate mid-air, I understand that modern aircraft are fairly resilient. But that makes the current disappearance of a flight all the more intriguing.
My questions to no one in particular, are-
1. Don't we have a simple device that can help us track any flight after it falls off, even if it disintegrates? Apart from the black box, I mean. If not, is it possible to invent one, considering so many millions are now flying?
2. Can't our satellite technology which detects even small objects detect these planes somehow?
3. I am pretty sure military technology is pretty advanced. Can't some of it be applied in civilian distress management?
4. Shouldn't we be looking at rescue as early as possible after a plane goes off the radar? In this case, it was many hours before anyone did anything, it would seem.
5. Can someone (a hijacker, or a renegade pilot) simply switch off a plane's signals so it can't be traced?
6. Why not let passengers use some mobile phones if only to alert or send a message? Or enable the airline to send a coded SOS call if it loses height at an unacceptable rate indicating a disaster?
Of course, a stolen or hijacked plane is still a possibility, and if that is so, intelligence may help identify potential countries or locations where it may have flown.
A malfunction or a mechanical/structural failure is also a likelihood, either due to natural forces or a bomb.
Hope they find the truth soon.
My questions to no one in particular, are-
1. Don't we have a simple device that can help us track any flight after it falls off, even if it disintegrates? Apart from the black box, I mean. If not, is it possible to invent one, considering so many millions are now flying?
2. Can't our satellite technology which detects even small objects detect these planes somehow?
3. I am pretty sure military technology is pretty advanced. Can't some of it be applied in civilian distress management?
4. Shouldn't we be looking at rescue as early as possible after a plane goes off the radar? In this case, it was many hours before anyone did anything, it would seem.
5. Can someone (a hijacker, or a renegade pilot) simply switch off a plane's signals so it can't be traced?
6. Why not let passengers use some mobile phones if only to alert or send a message? Or enable the airline to send a coded SOS call if it loses height at an unacceptable rate indicating a disaster?
Of course, a stolen or hijacked plane is still a possibility, and if that is so, intelligence may help identify potential countries or locations where it may have flown.
A malfunction or a mechanical/structural failure is also a likelihood, either due to natural forces or a bomb.
Hope they find the truth soon.
3 comments:
I am sure I am going to piss off the commercial pilot community but frankly in the age where Autonomous Cars are a possibility (with death rates in this form of transport vastly higher than flying) it is a mystery that we do not actually operate flights without human beings sitting in chairs looking out the window. Modern telemetry and avionics should allow for any flight from A to B to be fully automated regardless of weather or any logical natural or man made event that the flight may encounter.
That would prevent silliness like a plane leaving its planned route for inexplicable reasons.
Also full automation would imply that any exception to flight path is met with instant reaction from a global defense airforce that can reach that point on earth in a matter of hours at most. There is already a large amount of useless military junk floating around with nothing to do.
Secondly, also ironic is that we cannot seem to build large X-ray or Y-ray machines at the beginning of each runway where a plane has to pass through so that any suspicious item could get flagged and the plane removed from queue to never take off.
Oh well they have been promising us a lot of things for some time now.
Even Star Trek, with all its gadgetry, had a Rajesh Khanna lookalike (Captain Kirk) looking out of a weird window, so it's quite unlikely that we'll give up the seat with a view anytime soon.
which brings me to - what is this aeroplane business? I thought we were going to beam up Scotty?
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