Is worldwide air traffic control broken?

srichards

srichards

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Suz
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How can the air traffic system lose something the size of a massive aircraft? I know there are transponders on planes but relying on this alone seems naive. Are the skies not regularly scanned for flying things that don't have transponders? If they aren't, why not?

If planes do have transponders that can be turned off which person decided that was a good idea? To me it seems a no brainer that the transponder is inaccessible and cannot be turned off under any circumstances and for any reason. If not a secondary or even tertiary transponder should take over if the first or second stops working. The transponder should also be able to survive falling out of the sky and have a method of notifying air traffic control it is falling out of the sky and where it is . This way they can actually find the plane quickly and have a clue where it went down.

This time a flight from Algiers has disappeared. They don't know where it is!
 
I get very confused about all this. Given all the recent stories regarding governments and their surveillance of citizens, I find it how to believe (especially post 911) that governments aren't continually tracking aircraft and monitoring airspace.

Or maybe this is just a case for spooky Mulder :D
 
There's no such thing as world wide air traffic control. The Air Algeria flight was on a route up Northern Central Africa where there doesn't seem to be any aircraft tracking to speak of. See the picture below from just now, there's bound to be flights over Africa but you won't see them on radar because the radar just isn't there.

View attachment 16637
 
I think they should probably install some radar then!

The transponders are supposed to send back their location regularly. Perhaps in areas where there is no radar the frequency of pings should be a lot higher to compensate?

I also think there needs to be some automatic reporting system so that when something goes missing it is known straight away and not hours later when the airline finally admits it's lost it.
 
Steep said:
See the picture below from just now, there's bound to be flights over Africa but you won't see them on radar because the radar just isn't there.
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I guess we make a lot of assumptions :thinking:
 
There are times when turning your transponder off is usefull...
 
Well yes, a bit of a 'mis-statement' to say there's no radar I suppose. but that said, flying that route in the early hours of the morning I don't don't think it's unreasonable to say it probably wasn't being watched carefully.
 
Don't rely on Flightradar 24, or similar programs and assume that there is no radar. That program is reliant on people with a particular type of receiver fitted to a computer and feeding into the site. It isn't a direct radar feed. Which is why you never see a Typhoon or Tornado or Hawk on it, they don't use the same mode of transponder that enthusiasts can receive.

As for transponders, they have to be accessible, as numerous times during a flight the squawk code on it has to be changed. Mostly they 'go off' the air due to finger trouble, dialing in the wrong squawk code.

The picture ATC see is a secondary radar, ie radar sends out a signal, that hits the aircraft. The Transponder recognizes this and sends back various bits of information, like height, speed etc. That is then decoded by the ATC computer, the squawk code is matched to that given to the aircraft and then displayed to the controller.

If the squawk code is wrong, the computer doesn't recognise it and doesn't display a secondary radar return.

Military or primary radar is different, it sees a signal bounced off the target aircraft and displays that.

So thats how ATC 'loose' a contact, its not quite loss in the way we would normally use the word.

Obvious if an aircraft cashed the transponder goes off air, and there's no primary return, so it truly is missing.

The latest info on Sky is that it crashed and fuel is being mentioned. If thats the case, it indicates that it never was 'lost', and the crew were communicating with AATC.
 
if my iPhone can have a GPS tracker why can't passenger jets ?
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Some do, but it's not been cleared for use in ATC yet. Like everything, it may be perfectly usable, but because it's being used on an aircraft, 1. it's costs 5 times as much and 2. They have to spend years testing it, proving it's not a hazard and it will do what it says on the tin.

Logical? In some ways, but it's always stretched a great deal when it comes to flying, but that's aviation!

As an example, the US FAA made a company that fits out luxury aircraft prove that a slab of slate was not a fire hazard. Now we all know that setting fire to slate is like pushing wet spaghetti up an angry cats backside, pointless, but the FAA made everyone prove it!
 
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POAH said:
if my iPhone can have a GPS tracker why can't passenger jets ?
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Many do now, and any new civilian airliner will although the systems don't really play a part in ATC. They also have SELCAL for HF radio (selective calling via an assigned touchtone system similar to a digital telephone exchange) , and CPDLC data communications. Secondary radar (the transponder ping) is just one of many means to communicate with an aircraft over remote areas and by no means the most reliable. If an aircraft goes missing, then usually, it's down, or has been manually taken offline.

MH370 was still being tracked by it's Inmarsat pings for 8 hours after the transponder went offline. Even when Inmarsat released the area of highest probability of crash site.. they still didn't look there for some reason. :thinking:
 
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It's definitely broken. The thousands of planes that take off and land safely every day can attest to that :)
 
What happened to Inmarsat's free global tracking which was in the news that they were going to provide:
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Wont tell you anything if the plane is a smoking hole in the ground. Besides, lost is a term for no longer that usually means it's crashed, but we don't have confirmation yet.
 
Bernie174 said:
Some do, but it's not been cleared for use in ATC yet. Like everything, it may be perfectly usable, but because it's being used on an aircraft, 1. it's costs 5 times as much and 2. They have to spend years testing it, proving it's not a hazard and it will do what it says on the tin.

Logical? In some ways, but it's always stretched a great deal when it comes to flying, but that's aviation!

As an example, the US FAA made a company that fits out luxury aircraft prove that a slab of slate was not a fire hazard. Now we all know that setting fire to slate is like pushing wet spaghetti up an angry cats backside, pointless, but the FAA made everyone prove it!
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not taking about ATC, I taking about the owners having them so they know where they are.
 
In the same way that we can buy trackers for our road vehicles? Pretty sure such a system could be implemented for aircraft use.
 
Planes are doing badly :-(
 
Better than cars, better than trains, better than cycles (motor and pedal).
 
not taking about ATC, I taking about the owners having them so they know where they are.
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Still won't help. Plane crashes, no power, no point in having it. If it goes down in water, it can't transmit, so no point in having it.
ATC will have a more than vague idea of where it is, like I said, 'lost contact' is a euphemism, meaning it's crashed invariably.
 
ST4 said:
Absolutely, the chances of a plane crash are statistically very low and indeed it is usually human error/intervention that brings them down. However, if that crash happens for whatever reason, you are almost certainly dead.
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You often are if you crash at 145 mph Steve, doesn't stop you though :lol:
 
It's still safer than any other form of travel and infinitely more strictly regulated. I would much rather get in a plane than a car.
 
However, if that crash happens for whatever reason, you are almost certainly dead.
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Not necessarily.
Most crashes are on landing or take off, and as an example, most people survived Kegworth, and a reasonably large number Tennerif.

At Heathrow, we planned for 1/3 killed, 1/3 serious injuries and 1/3 walking wounded or uninjured. The stats for aircraft accidents at airports roughly speaking bore that out in the past. But are actually slighly better now, after 3 fairly major inicents where everyone, or nearly everyone got out in one piece.

But having said that the plan was also based on 2 fully loaded 747's. I'd guess thats now fully loaded 380's, which is a lot of people. So many infact that if the numbers were in terms of the third splits the NHS wouldn't cope with the requirement for Intensive care beds.
As it was we planned to move a large number by RAF Hercules to Hospitals in Scotland, NI and the North of England.
 
ST4 said:
Statistically yes, but I'd still rather travel by rail/car as the odds of survival in a train or car crash are higher than a plane crash.
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That's a very stupid way of looking at it.
Of course, in absolute terms you're unlikely to die in a train or car or plane, but your above statement is still stupid.
 
Bernie174 said:
To be fair, if you assume a mid air break up, then the outcome isn't going to be good.
Although, people have survived falling that far.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/survival/stories/4344037

But I would put any money on it happening!
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That's the point. Even though you are less likely to die in any /individual/ car crash, you are still more likely to die in a car crash than on a plane because of the fact that car crashes are massively more frequent.

If you drive to, say, Paris from Glasgow (where Mr ST4 resides, I believe), you're at greater risk of a fatal accident than if you flew there.

To use an admittedly crude and extreme analogy, let's say you have to use some crazy machine every day at work. You have a choice of two models: one that blows up on average every 200 years, with a 90% chance of killing the operator. Or one that blows up on average once every year with a 1% chance of killing the operator. ST4's logic says that, from a personal safety perspective, you choose the latter.
 
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Well it looks like they've found the wreckage of the plane in Mali, no mention of any survivors.
 
To use an admittedly crude and extreme analogy, let's say you have to use some crazy machine every day at work. You have a choice of two models: one that blows up on average every 200 years, with a 90% chance of killing the operator. Or one that blows up on average once every year with a 1% chance of killing the operator. ST4's logic says that, from a personal safety perspective, you choose the latter.
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I agree, but there are exceptions to all rules.
 
s162216 said:
Well it looks like they've found the wreckage of the plane in Mali, no mention of any survivors.
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yeah generally, when a plane crashes (as in commercial jet, not a cessna) , it meets the ground at a few hundred miles an hour. Chances of survival (not much!)
 
ghoti said:
That's the point. Even though you are less likely to die in any /individual/ car crash, you are still more likely to die in a car crash than on a plane because of the fact that car crashes are massively more frequent.

If you drive to, say, Paris from Glasgow (where Mr ST4 resides, I believe), you're at greater risk of a fatal accident than if you flew there.

To use an admittedly crude and extreme analogy, let's say you have to use some crazy machine every day at work. You have a choice of two models: one that blows up on average every 200 years, with a 90% chance of killing the operator. Or one that blows up on average once every year with a 1% chance of killing the operator. ST4's logic says that, from a personal safety perspective, you choose the latter.
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See, I would take my chances on the latter machine and would only drive or take the train to Paris/Glasgow. I wouldn't personally fly if I could avoid it.

The likelihood of a car crash is higher than the plane crashing but the car crash is still very unlikely to happen and I'd have a fair odds of survival. The plane crash is almost certainly not going to happen but if it did, I'd die. That's not stupid, that's a fact.

How you react and interpret those facts is up to you but I've always been uneasy when I've flown and with good reason to be as if it goes wrong (due to what ever reason )it's death. If my car fails, I might die but it's more likely to be not fatal or just a punctured tyre etc
 
Reminds me of the anecdotal flight attendant's announcement, "We'd like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you'll think of us here at US Airways."
 
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ghoti said:
That's the point. Even though you are less likely to die in any /individual/ car crash, you are still more likely to die in a car crash than on a plane because of the fact that car crashes are massively more frequent.

If you drive to, say, Paris from Glasgow (where Mr ST4 resides, I believe), you're at greater risk of a fatal accident than if you flew there.

To use an admittedly crude and extreme analogy, let's say you have to use some crazy machine every day at work. You have a choice of two models: one that blows up on average every 200 years, with a 90% chance of killing the operator. Or one that blows up on average once every year with a 1% chance of killing the operator. ST4's logic says that, from a personal safety perspective, you choose the latter.
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And is that because Mr ST4 resides there?
 
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