Here’s An Idea: Let’s Put Aircraft Black Boxes in the Cloud

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Companies around the world are putting more and more of their information into the cloud, so the big question here is why hasn’t the airline industry followed suit? That’s the question being asked by the former Chairman of the NTSB, stating that moving flight data to the cloud would speed up investigations greatly.

Clearly there are expenses and technology hurdles to be overcome. Streaming all that data from plane to some sort of database would be expensive, but periodically sending key snippets might not be cost prohibitive.
 
All I have to say is that people in the aviation industry apparently aren't as smart as I thought.
 
Technically, when at cruising altitude, they are "Above" the cloud

har har
 
"Streaming all that data from plane to some sort of database would be expensive"

Yes because clearly adding compressed cockpit audio, GPS, and some other data to the engine telemetry that they already collect over satellite link would be soooooo prohibitive. Think of the "Database"!
 
At least do it for the fight that are over water since land searches are far easier.

Maybe have it tied to the GPS system so when the plane crosses over water it kicks in.
or
Have the pre-flight path set in the computer, any deviation and it kicks in.
 
Didn't read the article or the reasoning behind why this is a better solution... but if they disabled the black box, could they just disable the device that's sending the information to the cloud?
 
It's an interesting idea. The tech/infrastructure is there for domestic flights (e.g. Boingo air-to-ground links). Someone would have to conduct a network QOS feasibility analysis to see how much data we're actually talking about.

Live data streaming over long international stretches of water is still a challenge. Data rates over INMARSAT, Ku/Ka is still ubber expensive. Not the 90's $40 a minute expensive but still expensive.

Blackbox data would have to be live streaming to be effective for its intent. Encrypted. ect.

If the current infrastructure was insufficient, is there enough spectrum access to enable additional data throughput?

"Streaming all that data from plane to some sort of database would be expensive"

Yes because clearly adding compressed cockpit audio, GPS, and some other data to the engine telemetry that they already collect over satellite link would be soooooo prohibitive. Think of the "Database"!

Nothing like shooting from the hip.:rolleyes:
 
Maybe new planes should be made so the transponder and other signaling equipment can't be turned off. Put them somewhere that can't be reached in flight and make sure they have their own power that can't be cut. As long as this stuff is easy to cut off then transmitting to the cloud won't make the least bit of difference.
 
And while they're contemplating moving from the tech of the 60s add a streaming webcam to the cockpit too, please. Oh, could someone please explain why transponders can be turned off? Is it a possible fire-control measure to turn it off, or something?
 
The industry already answered this question unanimously... they didn't have the bandwidth.

Remember with the latest lost aircraft, it wasn't even in range of more than a SINGLE GPS satellite at its location, otherwise we would have known exactly where it was if it had five or six (or hell even 3).

So before attempting to put the huge amounts of data collected by black boxes on the cloud, why not throw up some more GPS satellites over parts of the world with poor coverage?

That would solve the problem of not knowing where an aircraft went down, which happens almost never, but provide a very useful tool 99.9% of the time to people navigating.
 
The idea behind a black box is continuous recording, uninterruptible by anything.
Pilots can't turn off black boxes.
Ground based controllers can't turn off black boxes.
Terrorists can't turn off black boxes.

Radio and satellite links can be interfered with.
So, while dumping it to "the cloud", may sound like a good idea, in practice, it probably won't do what proponents are hoping it would do.
 
The industry already answered this question unanimously... they didn't have the bandwidth.

Remember with the latest lost aircraft, it wasn't even in range of more than a SINGLE GPS satellite at its location, otherwise we would have known exactly where it was if it had five or six (or hell even 3).

So before attempting to put the huge amounts of data collected by black boxes on the cloud, why not throw up some more GPS satellites over parts of the world with poor coverage?

That would solve the problem of not knowing where an aircraft went down, which happens almost never, but provide a very useful tool 99.9% of the time to people navigating.

Because GPS isn't a "universal" system.

Not every country wants to be locked into a US product (GPS is a US-based system, where many other countries use GLONASS (Soviet/Russian counterpart to GPS) instead).
 
Remember with the latest lost aircraft, it wasn't even in range of more than a SINGLE GPS satellite at its location, otherwise we would have known exactly where it was if it had five or six (or hell even 3).

That's not how GPS works.
 
Uploading data isn't a viable solution given that on any given day there are more than 90,000 commercial flights and even compression etc. just cannot make up for the sheer number of data points. Depending on which satellites one considers the problem is either the bandwidth, or the transfer rate, or both.

Ultimately someone has to pay for this "feature" and given how rare such total losses as MH 370 are it's simply not worth the cost. Even the search and recovery of AF 447 was ultimately less expensive than having all 90k flights per day year in and year out uplink data for no reason.

If anything what's needed are biodegradable nanobots that can be dropped from planes and which will listen to the ping of the black box. Visual search is meh, need to be able to drop low cost sensors into the sea over a large area to find the black box quickly.

Yes, that is how GPS works. Its called trilateration, and its because it only picked up one GPS satellite is why the search pattern was in a wide arc. 3 is the minimum, four gets you altitude, and more gets you greater accuracy.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Accuracy_of_GPS_data

You are confusing GPS with Inmarsat which is the satellite that picked up the engine data ping. It's literally impossible to only see one GPS satellite in the sky unless one is in a deep valley of some sort.
 
No, what they need to do is allow amnesty to the counties that have data on lost planes from their illegally placed / secretly placed spy satellites. That is why information is slow to come through, if at all. They know where stuff is, they just don't want to give themselves away.
 
Great idea, the data wont be tampered with.
I concur with post 2
 
Here's an idea. Make the on-off switch to the transponder not accessible to the pilot. I thought they would have learned this after 9/11.
:confused:
 
Here's an idea. Make the on-off switch to the transponder not accessible to the pilot. I thought they would have learned this after 9/11.
:confused:

I could not believe this was still accessible to the pilot. I mean what legitimate reason does a pilot have to turn the transponder and ACARS system off? I guess if either were on fire the pilot could disable them?
 
As a pilot I can see that there is a lot of folks posting that don't know how transponders are used.

There are very good and valid reasons for the pilot having the ability to turn them off.

Electrical fire is one, and reducing radar clutter when they are on the ground is another. ATC routinely tells pilots to turn off the transponder once they have landed.

Want to make aircraft that are downed a sea easy to find? It's quite simple really.

Just mandate large dye packets in each wing and in the nose and tail section.

Now as for MH470, I'm betting that if/when it's found that the cause will be pretty mundane. My bet is that it was an electrical fire or the Lithium batteries in the cargo hold that caused the crash.

Pilots put plane on auto pilot while trying to trouble shoot smoke in cockpit, which means turning off electrical components (including transponder), then incapacitated due to smoke inhalation, airplane on autopilot flying until it ran out of fuel.
 
No, what they need to do is allow amnesty to the counties that have data on lost planes from their illegally placed / secretly placed spy satellites.

Just out of curiosity, how do you illegally place a satellite?

I could not believe this was still accessible to the pilot. I mean what legitimate reason does a pilot have to turn the transponder and ACARS system off? I guess if either were on fire the pilot could disable them?

Uhm ...., so first of all, the ACARS cannot be easily switched off. In order to do that you'd need to pull the circuit breaker. You are probably familiar with the purpose of a circuit breaker, so I'll skip explaining why it's necessary and why pilots have access to it in the cockpit.

The primary purpose of the transponder is to let ATC know where the plane is at. Transponders usually have 5 settings, off, standby, on, altitude (which transmits the altitude and at times additional info), and test. Some transponders have an auto setting where the machine will figure out which is the most appropriate setting. Whenever you turn the transponder on your position shows up on ATC radar but there are many cases were you turn the transponder to standby or from altitude to on to declutter the ATC screen during ground operations, approach, and/or departure.

These settings are usually airport dependent and ATC will ask you to change your transponder setting as they see fit.

Lastly there's once again the circuit breaker.

There are over 30 million commercial flights per year, so if one of them purposefully turns the transponder off to fuck with people that's no reason to change a method that works well for the other 29,999,999+ flights.
 
Pilots put plane on auto pilot while trying to trouble shoot smoke in cockpit, which means turning off electrical components (including transponder), then incapacitated due to smoke inhalation, airplane on autopilot flying until it ran out of fuel.

I can see this happening but i though pilots all have a backup oxygen mask they put on....
 
Uhm ...., so first of all, the ACARS cannot be easily switched off. In order to do that you'd need to pull the circuit breaker.

I was quite shocked to find out that the pilot had access to that circuit breaker and also a few others like the breaker that pressurizes the cabin.

You are probably familiar with the purpose of a circuit breaker,

I have a BS in Electrical Engineering. No need to explain that..

There are over 30 million commercial flights per year, so if one of them purposefully turns the transponder off to fuck with people that's no reason to change a method that works well for the other 29,999,999+ flights.

I see that point.
 
They want this so they can more easily track aircraft, more data for the government's server farms.
 
The idea behind a black box is continuous recording, uninterruptible by anything.
Pilots can't turn off black boxes.
Ground based controllers can't turn off black boxes.
Terrorists can't turn off black boxes.

Radio and satellite links can be interfered with.
So, while dumping it to "the cloud", may sound like a good idea, in practice, it probably won't do what proponents are hoping it would do.

There's dumping it to the cloud, and dumping it to the cloud IN ADDITION TO having a local copy.

Being at least somewhat rational and reasonable, I make assumptions that they meant that. IT is entirely possible they did not.
 
How about moving from ground based radar to track flights and instead go to a satellite GPS based tracking system that can dump black box data into the feed. No need for the 'cloud' at that point. It's all transmitted in real time.
 
Costs for using satellite for transmission of data costs above a few dollars per megabyte. something small like a BGAN which is a portable solution the cost of approximately 500MB a year is $5000.

and thats if they have the data stream available.
 
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