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.)
