Let's see if we can square away some of this “tracking” business that has been getting so much attention.
Christopher Drew, in a December 29th op-ed in the New York Times, said that “Airlines use satellites to provide Internet connections for passengers, yet they still do not stream data in real time about a plane’s location and condition.” Two days later, in a similar Times op-ed written by the editors, it was stated that airplane location is updated only in fifteen minute increments.
Neither of these things is true, usually. It depends where the flight is operating, what equipment is on board, and which air traffic control (ATC) facility the crew is working with. As a general rule, flights are constantly tracked and monitored. By regulation a flight must always be in contact, one way or the other, with both air traffic control and company dispatchers on the ground. This is true in domestic airspace, and over the remotest points of the ocean as well.
In the busiest airspace, such as over the continental U.S. and Europe (and many other regions), planes are generally in radar and VHF radio contact, which makes tracking a cinch. ATC and airline dispatchers can easily monitor a jet’s location, altitude and speed (plus other parameters, depending). The same is true even in some oceanic airspace, such as over the North Atlantic, where cockpit equipment such as CPDLC and SATCOM datalink allow more or less real-time monitoring of a flight’s progress. In addition to basic position data, newer aircraft can transmit data about engine performance and the mechanical status of certain onboard systems.
In some areas of the world, however, position reports are sent only intermittently, at designated waypoints rather than continuously. This is the “tracking gap” that the media has been so fixated on ever since the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. There is room for improvement here, I feel, particularly for long-haul aircraft that operate routinely in non-radar airspace. Planes could and perhaps should be equipped with a relatively simple, inexpensive, and fail-safe technology that allows continuous location tracking, no matter where.
It was a little startling for the Times to begin with a pair of premises that are, at best, only partially true.
Another question that keeps coming up is why the various black box data — the data recorded by the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) — can’t also be monitored via satellite, radio or wi-fi, in real time, rather than stored away on a piece of aircraft hardware. In other words, we could be constantly aware not only of a plane’s position, but any malfunctions and mechanical problems it might be having.
The main reason why is because it would take immense mounts of bandwidth, multiplied by the thousands of airplanes in the air at any one time, to upload all of the hundreds of parameters monitored by the FDR and CVR. And for what practical purpose, exactly? For the one airplane every 25 years or so that is temporarily missing, out of the 40,000 or so commercial flights that operate every day? Such a thing is certainly possible, but it would be technologically challenging and highly expensive. Is it really needed, in practical terms?
This issue comes up all the time. To me, it’s symptomatic of a culture in which people are accustomed to instant explanations and instant access to everything. People are saying, “Why can’t we have all the answers, right now!”
SEE ALSO: AirAsia Crash: Flying Into A Thunderstorm Is The Biggest No-No In Commercial Aviation