There’s is no indication so far of what doomed Boeing (BA) 777-200 and the 239 passengers on board. Without recovering the black box, there’s no way to know what has caused this 777-200 plane cruising at 35,000 feet to disappear from radar. The question being asked is Why not planes transmit the flight data off the plane in real time so it’s accessible almost instantly by the crash investigators in case of a tragic disaster? The answer is cost. Sending data from each flight in real time via satellite is enormously expensive. A 2002 study by L-3 Aviation Recorders (LLL) and a satellite provider found that a U.S. airline flying a global network would need to spend $300 million per year to transmit all its flight data, even assuming a 50 percent reduction now in satellite transmission since 2002 costs the costs are still astronomical.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 00:40:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015