IF MALAYSIA AIRLINES Flight 370 had
been carrying a commonly available radio beacon that costs less than $1,000,
the navies and rescue aircraft of the world wouldn’t be spending millions of
dollars searching for signs of the missing airliner.
I would wager that almost all
sailboats crossing an ocean these days carry with them a 406-MHz emergency
position-indicating radio beacon, known to us all as an Epirb. It’s a compact, battery-driven radio and GPS
combined that broadcasts to orbiting satellites when it’s activated. It tells
the satellite who you are, how to contact your family, and exactly where you
are, to within a few yards.
Epirbs can be activated manually or
they can be supplied with an automatic hydrostatic release, so that they will
float off, transmitting all the while, if your ship sinks under you. The most
expensive Epirb listed in last year’s Defender catalog is priced at $950, and
many others come a lot cheaper.
Why on earth wouldn’t commercial
jetliners be supplied with one or more Epirbs that could be jettisoned on
parachutes over the ocean in times of emergency? Obviously, each airliner would have to be
fitted with a means of dropping them overboard, but the extra cost of that
would be minimal, compared with the price of the plane.
Airlines know full well that their
aircraft disappear from radar screens when they cross oceans. Radar beams
travel in straight lines, and do not bounce back to the receiver when the plane
rides beyond the curvature of the earth.
It’s only once in a blue moon, of
course that a plane disappears as mysteriously as Flight 370, but history
records that it can, and does, happen. That means it will probably happen
again.
Many lives have been saved at sea by
Epirbs and the ground control systems they link to. The system has been in
operation for many years. It’s not as if the airlines haven’t heard of it. If humble sailboats can afford emergency
beacons that pinpoint their position at sea, then surely airlines can make arrangements
to use this technology, too. I wonder how long it will be before they are
shamed into adopting it?
Today’s
Thought
Who
can hope to be safe? who sufficiently cautious?
Guard
himself as he may, every moment’s an ambush.
— Horace, Odes
Tailpiece
"May I print a kiss on your
lips?" I said,
And she nodded her full permission:
So we went to press and I rather guess
We printed a full edition. — Joseph Lilientha
We printed a full edition. — Joseph Lilientha
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
4 comments:
Small aircraft are required to have ELTs that use similar 406mhz technology and transmit a beacon on 121.5. They activate manually or automatically if a crash is detected (I think it uses G-force to determine that).
Why airliners don't have them, I don't know. It's probably because an event involving such a large aircraft is unlikely to go unnoticed or make finding the airplane difficult, although recent events have shown otherwise. I thought that the black boxes had location beacons though?
It's also worth noting that the likelihood of small aircraft going missing and never being found is highly likely, I've heard of 40+ year old, unsolved accidents being found by hikers in mountains. That may be why small aircraft are required to have ELTs and airliners aren't.
It also assumes that a catastrophic event happened that would trigger the ELT, which may not be the case here. In an event where the pilot was incapacitated (hypoxia, attack, etc) or intentionally diverting the aircraft, the ELT wouldn't do any good.
Larger planes also have them. 787 recently burned because of some faulty wiring. Mounted inside though.
A big part of the mystery here is that a 777, like most airliners, is supposed to continuously transmit pretty much the same data that a marine EPIRB transmits when activated. That transmission only cuts off if the plane crashes (in which case the crash position is known), if there's a complete electrical failure (in which case the plane ain't getting very far from its last known position), or if someone overrides it by cutting power to the transponder.
This plane appears to have kept going for something like four hours with its transponder off... at 490 knots. That's twelve million square (nautical) miles where it could have gone.
I already sent a message to the FAA that planes need to carry EPIRBS. The pilot could take it on board.
OR maintenence crew could hide it in the storage compartment. Less that $500.00
Low cost and automatic if they come out of their bracket on impact.
It floats to the surface.
No need to spend millions looking for a plane!
Post a Comment