Fallout from MH 370

[Dav8or]

But, unless I'm missing something, I don't see an advantage to passenger safety and therefore don't see it as something to worry about.

Have you thought about hijacked and not just a mechanical failure with the passengers all headed for doom? I realize that the Blue Board here has pretty much settled on the idea as a fact, that there was a fire on the plane, followed by a heroic attempt to save the plane, followed by a decompression event leading to everyone's demise, followed by a crash after fuel exhaustion, followed by a submarine knowing exactly when and where the crash into the water happened, followed by a government cover up of this info for xxx reasons, all based on extremely flimsy evidence... but what if the plane were hijacked? Maybe not this airplane, but some airplane in the future. Wouldn't it be nice to know minutes after the hijackers took over that-

1. They in fact have altered the course of the plane.
2. Where the heck they were headed.
3. Where exactly the plane was.
4. How the plane was being managed.

???

 

[Dav8or]

It was only six decades ago that it took days to get information from a war on one continent to the people of another.

Man O' Man you hate the idea of tracking airliners! I suspected that you were making stuff up to solidify your position that tracking airliners would result in the demise of western civilization, or ???, but this one tipped me off that it's true. I knew immediately this claim was bull crap, so I looked it up. The first reliable transatlantic telegraph cable was operational July 28 1866. For 147 years we have known what goes on in Europe just minutes after the news was sent.

I still have to wonder, what are you afraid of? Why is it such a bad thing to track commercial airliners with more precision?

 

[denverpilot]

Man O' Man you hate the idea of tracking airliners! I suspected that you were making stuff up to solidify your position that tracking airliners would result in the demise of western civilization, or ???, but this one tipped me off that it's true. I knew immediately this claim was bull crap, so I looked it up. The first reliable transatlantic telegraph cable was operational July 28 1866. For 147 years we have known what goes on in Europe just minutes after the news was sent.

I still have to wonder, what are you afraid of? Why is it such a bad thing to track commercial airliners with more precision?

Hate? That's an emotion. Kinda useless, as I've repeatedly pointed out. Just because the public is all whiny and a'twitter isn't much of a reason to build something as big as they want. They'll want something else in a few weeks.

Personally I pay for more legroom long before I would pay for tracking toys. If I'm dead, I won't care if someone finds the body.

As far as communication via telegraph goes, please refer to any history book for the answer. You say "We" would all have known in minutes of an airliner down in Malaysia.

Do you think everyone in Western Nebraska have a telegraph receiver on their kitchen counter?

The vast majority of people got their news from the newspaper. Some had the luxury of a single AM radio station. Getting personal news that a family member was missing in Malaysia back then, would probably take a month.

I'm truly amazed at how hot and bothered you are that an airplane crashed in an ocean.

I've stated clearly that tracking airliners better is fine with me, as long as you're paying for the infrastructure.

You want it, you buy it. Not a problem. You spend a lot of time on airliners over the ocean? There's a number of folks here who do who don't have even 1% of the fear you do that they'll be lost at sea. And probably a number of those who'd agree with me... that they won't care if they're dead.

I got a good chuckle out of the terrorism question. Now I know you're in full knee jerk reaction mode.

Like I said before, if there were ten airplanes a month disappearing over oceans, I'd care. There aren't.

How many people traverse oceans on airliners in a year? How many have disappeared? It's a non-problem.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

ACARS augments satellite with hundreds and hundreds of ground stations to handle the message load. To do it entirely satellite would obviously mean outrageous expense, since otherwise they'd already have shut down the terrestrial system and all the telecom links to support it, and moved ACARS entirely to satellite already. You don't even have to do the math, they've already done it for you.

Who says it has to be all satellite? I would expect that it'd be terrestrial where a terrestrial signal is available. All-satellite makes no sense.

You like digging through airline financial reports: What's the current Airinc costs? I bet it's WAY higher than $1M a month.

And I bet you're wrong. While airline financial reports won't show a single line-item expense, it was trivial to find that in 2012, Inmarsat's entire revenue from the aviation sector was $100.8 million for the year, or $8.4 million per month for ALL airlines worldwide. So nobody's paying $1M/month or anywhere near it.

Think you're going to find it's way higher.

Wrong, as noted above. And using your wildly high estimate still only cost 28 cents a leg, so cost truly should not be an issue in tracking airplanes.

You do realize there was an older data system on board that pings every hour and can't be shut off easily, right? It attempts to contact an Inmarsat bird each hour no matter what. I've heard no mention of the searchers searching near the last "hour ping" from that device, which means it had failed in some fashion.

Where do you get that? Inmarsat's last ping is the reason that everyone's searching the southern Indian Ocean now.

Anything you put on board has the ability to fail. Including your $0.28 per ticket system. Make it $5, it can and will still fail pretty regularly when attempting to bounce through a GEO from a patch antenna on the roof of an airliner.

So because something has a tiny chance of failing, we shouldn't try it? By that logic, you should stop flying entirely as there are any number of systems aboard your airplane - i.e., all of them - that have the ability to fail.

I bet AIRINC doesn't publish their packet loss ratio for either system. Multiplying the ping rate by six and adding length to the message to include Lat/Long in every one, won't make that ratio better. It'll make it worse.

The ping rate might cause a problem, but better one ping an hour than none - And you can send a reasonably close (<1nm accuracy) location in 10 bytes of the current 3KB message size. Again, NOT a big deal.

Welcome to the 2000's, Nate - We have the technology.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

How many bucks an airline ticket would ADS-B have cost (to use Kent's analysis method) if it weren't socialized into debt?

Would anyone have chosen to implement it for that cost?

What does it buy the public?

Well, according to UPS, ADS-B allowed them to land 10-15 percent more aircraft per hour - That means a whole lot less money the gov't needs to spend on more airports/runways. Also according to UPS, it saved them a million gallons of fuel per year. And that was with only one site active (KSDF).

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Like I said before, if there were ten airplanes a month disappearing over oceans, I'd care. There aren't.

How many people traverse oceans on airliners in a year? How many have disappeared? It's a non-problem.

As I mentioned earlier, there have been nearly 50 air transport airplanes that disappeared without a trace and have never been found. It's gotten rarer, but it still does happen. 18 since I was born (and I'm not yet over the hill), 4 since I graduated high school, 2 since 2000.

 

[denverpilot]

Well, according to UPS, ADS-B allowed them to land 10-15 percent more aircraft per hour - That means a whole lot less money the gov't needs to spend on more airports/runways. Also according to UPS, it saved them a million gallons of fuel per year. And that was with only one site active (KSDF).

How did it accomplish that? Were they allowed lower separation standards? Was it ADS-B or the lower separation standard that was root-cause?

 

[denverpilot]

As I mentioned earlier, there have been nearly 50 air transport airplanes that disappeared without a trace and have never been found. It's gotten rarer, but it still does happen. 18 since I was born (and I'm not yet over the hill), 4 since I graduated high school, 2 since 2000.

Have you graphed that trend...?

More tech for the sake that we can because we have it has led to a lot of really stupid unintended consequences. Many bad.

ADS-B and ACARS are great. Why haven't they *replaced* radar? (I know why. I'm asking because you're making the "saving money" argument for ADS-B. It isn't "saving money" to run two systems. And public subsidies of FedEx are kinda silly. Couldn't they build their own surveillance system and get it approved, and then even sell it to airlines if it's so wonderful for them?)

 

[flyingcheesehead]

How did it accomplish that? Were they allowed lower separation standards? Was it ADS-B or the lower separation standard that was root-cause?

I'm not sure of all the details, but as I understand it ADS-B allows lower separation standards because it's a relatively continuous (>1Hz) feed as opposed to radar's rate (updates only every 5-12 seconds). Since in-trail wake avoidance is still a problem, I don't know that this was what allowed UPS to land more planes.

The other thing it enables is a computer system that, knowing the exact position and speed of airborne aircraft, can compute the optimum arrival flow well in advance, and transmit signals back to the airplane that allow them to avoid any sort of vectoring late in the flight by slightly changing airspeeds such that the planes come down final approach exactly at the correct time and in-trail distance. It's essentially a computer doing speed vectoring instead of a human doing directional vectoring.

Finally, the fuel savings comes from two sources: First, slowing down some aircraft slightly as described in the previous paragraph, and also allowing for continuous gliding descents from cruise altitude down to the runway, so that jets don't have to level off (and thus add power) at low fuel-sucking altitudes - They just reduce to flight idle at cruise altitude and start their descent at the precise time that will allow them to descend continuously from cruise all the way to the ground.

(That's the system as I understand it having read about it. No direct operational experience, YMMV, yadda yadda, etc.)

Have you graphed that trend...?

I don't need to graph it to see that it's an n/x type of curve if you smooth it out enough - But clearly we haven't hit 0 yet.

More tech for the sake that we can because we have it has led to a lot of really stupid unintended consequences. Many bad.

So... What do you think those might be?

ADS-B and ACARS are great. Why haven't they *replaced* radar? (I know why. I'm asking because you're making the "saving money" argument for ADS-B. It isn't "saving money" to run two systems.

The only reason for keeping radar, IMO, is national defense.

As for "saving money", that depends on who is saving money. As another poster pointed out, the FAA may save money by foisting the costs of radar onto DoD. Clearly the federal government as a whole is not saving money... But if all the carriers start saving money, they'll have higher profits and pay higher taxes to the government. There's no way to know whether it'll be an overall gain or not, or how long the break-even will be.

So, I'm not saying we'll be saving money for sure, or ****ing it away for sure. I don't know, and neither do you. I'm simply pointing out that there's more to it than a line item that says how much ADS-B costs to develop and deploy. The problem is, there are so many unknowns that a corporation would never do it, not to mention that there aren't any gains to be had unless EVERYONE does it, which means it must be a government requirement, which means it must be a government system. It is infrastructure, after all.

And public subsidies of FedEx are kinda silly. Couldn't they build their own surveillance system and get it approved, and then even sell it to airlines if it's so wonderful for them?)

UPS, not FedEx. And they might be able to do something like they've done at KSDF, but I'm sure they'd like the benefits of having it at both ends. And this would ONLY work for cargo carriers. KSDF for UPS and KMEM for FedEx (possibly KIND) are fairly unique in that they're essentially used for only one company's operations for several hours a day. There aren't any passenger airlines with that luxury, so it would not work for them without the government's involvement.

 

[denverpilot]

Leaving aside a huge number of assumptions in the preceding paragraphs... Which seem to indicate you just destroyed your original thesis that ADS-B = Good because it "saved FedEx money"...

In the last paragraph you directly destroyed the argument saying it won't work for passenger airlines.

So... What's the goal of ADS-B again?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Leaving aside a huge number of assumptions in the preceding paragraphs... Which seem to indicate you just destroyed your original thesis that ADS-B = Good because it "saved FedEx money"...

Put the drink down, Nate - I never said that.

In the last paragraph you directly destroyed the argument saying it won't work for passenger airlines.

So... What's the goal of ADS-B again?

It'll work GREAT for passenger airlineS. It would not work for ONE passenger airline because the only way the system will have the benefits it did for UPS is for EVERYONE to be using it. If American developed ADS-B, do you really think United would buy it from them? And without assurance that that would happen in the first place, there's too much risk in it for American do develop it.

That is why something that must be required of all users must be implemented by the government.

Are you one of the people that thinks everything should be privatized?

 

[denverpilot]

I believe seriously in there needing to be a significant public benefit before utilizing hundreds of millions on a technology and mandating same.

Your post is the closest to a real benefit I've seen yet. The weather data transmissions up are a good one also, but don't reach a point of needing the complexity of mandating ADS-B out.

I also believe private industry usually does find a way to provide things businesses need when allowed. A private tracking system to help FedEx land more aircraft would have been outrageously cost-prohibitive. But forcing an entire populace to build it for them with borrowed money, not a problem in your mind?

Recall that our government is broke to the tune of $17 Trillion dollars.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I believe seriously in there needing to be a significant public benefit before utilizing hundreds of millions on a technology and mandating same.

Your post is the closest to a real benefit I've seen yet. The weather data transmissions up are a good one also, but don't reach a point of needing the complexity of mandating ADS-B out.

I also believe private industry usually does find a way to provide things businesses need when allowed. A private tracking system to help FedEx land more aircraft would have been outrageously cost-prohibitive. But forcing an entire populace to build it for them with borrowed money, not a problem in your mind?

Recall that our government is broke to the tune of $17 Trillion dollars.

ADS-B will have a significant public benefit:

It'll save millions of gallons of fuel: Any way you slice it, this is a good thing. That's less oil we need to buy from people who hate us and try to destroy us. It's either better profits for the airlines or lower ticket prices or higher pay for the pilots, all of which are good for the economy. It's better for the environment, too.

It'll allow more planes to land on the existing runways. That means a lot less $$$$ spent on upgrading the big airports, and it probably will also mean lower separation standards and easier movements for us little guys when we fly around big airports, too. Maybe Chicago Approach will even talk to us.

And while radar won't go away, it can eventually be reduced to Center radars only. Yes, Casper, Wyoming will probably lose their ASR-9 sooner or later. The Center radars will be able to handle the remaining need of national defense and also be able to feed primary targets to TRACON controllers in most cases. For example, when MSN's approach radar goes down or is taken down for service, they get fed from Chicago Center. Separation standards increase somewhat due to the slower update rate, but it gets the job done. With ADS-B, the separation standards will be lower, not higher, but primary targets will still show up unless they're REALLY low. So yes, there will still be radar, but there'll be a lot less of it, and that will save billions of dollars.

And I sure like the free traffic and weather on my iPad too.

And again, this is not about UPS (and definitely not about FedEx - As I've stated several times, it's UPS that has benefitted the most). They're just one of the earliest beneficiaries, because they made significant investment in upgrading their aircraft and providing some infrastructure at one of their major hubs. Were this not a government project, none of the passenger airlines would benefit, as they all are flying into the same airports at the same time, while UPS has the luxury of having KSDF practically to themselves during nighttime hours so they can saturate the approaches on their own. The only way ADS-B can have the benefits above is if it's required of everyone - This is not something a private enterprise can do on their own.

But the entire preceding paragraph is basically repeats of things I've already said. Please read posts and comprehend them before replying, it'll save us all a lot of time!

 

[TangoWhiskey]

UN (do they have any regulatory say?) requires 1-minute live position broadcasts:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11184544/un-flight-tracking-system-malaysia-airlines-mh370

 

[denverpilot]

ADS-B will have a significant public benefit:

It'll save millions of gallons of fuel: Any way you slice it, this is a good thing. That's less oil we need to buy from people who hate us and try to destroy us. It's either better profits for the airlines or lower ticket prices or higher pay for the pilots, all of which are good for the economy. It's better for the environment, too.

It'll allow more planes to land on the existing runways. That means a lot less $$$$ spent on upgrading the big airports, and it probably will also mean lower separation standards and easier movements for us little guys when we fly around big airports, too. Maybe Chicago Approach will even talk to us.

It does not allow for any of those things. The FedEx trial materially proved years before the full mandate, that you can't cram any more aircraft onto a runway because a fleet is ADS-B equipped.

Cite your source of real-world data that shows more aircraft landing on a runway because the aircraft had ADS-B on board. It doesn't exist. You'll find that lie in FAA Marketing fluff, ONLY.

 

[Stingray Don]

It does not allow for any of those things. The FedEx trial materially proved years before the full mandate, that you can't cram any more aircraft onto a runway because a fleet is ADS-B equipped.

Cite your source of real-world data that shows more aircraft landing on a runway because the aircraft had ADS-B on board. It doesn't exist. You'll find that lie in FAA Marketing fluff, ONLY.

You might not have been aware that you are responding to a post that is nearly two years old.

 

[timwinters]

Nate,

I think the fuel savings he's referring to is a result of less time in the air...not on the ground. But, I haven't been keeping up with the ADS-B story for quite some time so my memory may be foggy.

 

[Everskyward]

Cite your source of real-world data that shows more aircraft landing on a runway because the aircraft had ADS-B on board. It doesn't exist. You'll find that lie in FAA Marketing fluff, ONLY.

Since most aircraft are not equipped this way it would be pretty hard to show any real-world data at this point. If ADS-B allows for independent or dependent parallel approaches between runways with less distance between those runways than is currently mandated I can see how it would be a big help.

 

[denverpilot]

Ha. The necropost below Kent's kicked this old thread off again and Kent and I have been debating this both here and in person for years.

What'cha think @flyingcheesehead , any fuel savings yet in your Mooney from ADS-B?

As far as the FedEx thing goes, I'll need to go find the links but they put ADS-B into their stuff to attempt to gain operational numbers at Memphis and it basically never worked out. This was around the time FAA was hot and heavy selling ADS-B as a path to "Free Flight" which over time, everyone figured out was just as easy to do with a regular transponder and everyone was bombing around direct flying /G stuff.

Basically the marketing spin of ADS-B has never come to any sort of real fruition for the price spent and still to be spent by aircraft operators by the 2020 deadline.

USAF announced (as expected) this week that their fleet won't be compliant by the deadline. No surprise there.

Nothing about ADS-B really adds any significant *accuracy* to the tracking and in fact, bad data meant that without the mandate earlier this year that installations without *certified* GPS sources would be summarily dropped from the system.

It's one of the biggest fusterclucks ever foisted on general aviation overall. The "puck" thing and having to add 978 MHz shows how shoddy the engineering work was on it.

It's a really impressive boondoggle that had commercially available products that did everything it does, better. And that didn't cost taxpayers billions.

But anyway. It's here. It ain't going anywhere. And the marketing fluff now from the manufacturers is even more fluffy and fun than the original FAA stuff. There's a couple of outright knee slappers in the latest Garmin video. That thing is impressive for its use of questionable statements presented as fact.

The real kicker is still that FAA knows ADS-B still can't be primary. It's simply not engineered well enough. Especially in the realm of non-repudiation. (e.g. data spoofing)

 

[TangoWhiskey]

There's a couple of outright knee slappers in the latest Garmin video.

Link?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

What'cha think @flyingcheesehead , any fuel savings yet in your Mooney from ADS-B?

Never expected that *I* would get any fuel savings. I don't go into high-traffic airports for the most part and the Mooney practically makes its own fuel, so I have no problems with low-altitude sequencing burning up dinosaurs.

As far as the FedEx thing goes, I'll need to go find the links but they put ADS-B into their stuff to attempt to gain operational numbers at Memphis and it basically never worked out.

That's funny, 'cuz UPS had great luck with it in Louisville.

USAF announced (as expected) this week that their fleet won't be compliant by the deadline. No surprise there.

That right there is the best argument I've heard that the deadline should be extended.

However, I think our segment will collectively procrastinate regardless of when the deadline is.

Nothing about ADS-B really adds any significant *accuracy* to the tracking

Sure it does - But not in the way you're thinking. Radar has pretty good point-in-time accuracy, but Center radars only sweep every 12 seconds. Think about how far an airplane can travel in 12 seconds - About two miles in the case of the high-subsonic aircraft that we see a lot of in the skies. That's why the Centers have to keep 'em miles apart. Knowing what is happening up-to-the-second will allow for planes to be a lot closer because their position and direction will be known constantly rather than only 5 times a minute.

It's one of the biggest fusterclucks ever foisted on general aviation overall.

I won't disagree there. The fact that the bandwidth for traffic and weather on 978 is so limited is crazy, there was no future-proofing there at all. The fact that it isn't encrypted is inexcusable. But there are benefits to us.

It's a really impressive boondoggle that had commercially available products that did everything it does, better.

What commercially available products help ATC separate us? You've completely lost me here.

 

[Dan Thomas]

All airliners need is a deluxe version of a Spot tracker. The line guy turns it on using a switch under the nose and the controller doesn't issue a takeoff clearance unless he's getting a Spot signal for that airplane. The line guy at the arrival gate turns it off again. The airline's office people track the airplane. If it doesn't show up, they can see where it went or where the signal stopped.

 

[denverpilot]

Sure it does - But not in the way you're thinking. Radar has pretty good point-in-time accuracy, but Center radars only sweep every 12 seconds. Think about how far an airplane can travel in 12 seconds - About two miles in the case of the high-subsonic aircraft that we see a lot of in the skies. That's why the Centers have to keep 'em miles apart. Knowing what is happening up-to-the-second will allow for planes to be a lot closer because their position and direction will be known constantly rather than only 5 times a minute.

I still think they're going to have to keep them that far apart, since they can't allow ADS-B to be primary.

What commercially available products help ATC separate us? You've completely lost me here.

I was talking about the extras that pilots get out of it, not the tracking/ID junk the government gets.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I still think they're going to have to keep them that far apart, since they can't allow ADS-B to be primary.

It doesn't have to be primary. It's supplementing radar. It won't ever replace radar like they said, but that's for national security reasons and has nothing to do with ATC.

I was talking about the extras that pilots get out of it, not the tracking/ID junk the government gets.

Better? Maybe (radar resolution). Cheaper? No. The portable ADS-B boxes are cheaper than the portable XM stuff ever was, and the panel-mount stuff is similarly priced. But the XM nailed you for an extra $600 a year. And that was only for weather, traffic was on top of that and there wasn't any particularly good portable traffic solution.

 

[denverpilot]

It doesn't have to be primary. It's supplementing radar. It won't ever replace radar like they said, but that's for national security reasons and has nothing to do with ATC.

Wide area multilateralization could have done this job for at least a Billion dollars cheaper.

Better? Maybe (radar resolution). Cheaper? No. The portable ADS-B boxes are cheaper than the portable XM stuff ever was, and the panel-mount stuff is similarly priced. But the XM nailed you for an extra $600 a year. And that was only for weather, traffic was on top of that and there wasn't any particularly good portable traffic solution.

So you don't count the billions on the ground stations as something you are paying for? With plenty of interest tacked on? These projects aren't free you know.

 

[wsuffa]

UN (do they have any regulatory say?) requires 1-minute live position broadcasts:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/9/11184544/un-flight-tracking-system-malaysia-airlines-mh370

ICAO. They set standards that various country administrations are supposed to adopt. ICAO can't force carriers by itself, but it sure can apply pressure to country administrations.

The US will almost certainly adopt the requirements, as will most countries. And that will almost certainly force other countries to adopt the standards as they may not be able to fly their planes into a country that has adopted the standards (unless there's a waiver.... And that will almost certainly exempt military planes from this standard.)

 

[flyingcheesehead]

So you don't count the billions on the ground stations as something you are paying for? With plenty of interest tacked on? These projects aren't free you know.

No, but a few bucks in taxes doesn't bother me for what I'm getting for it. I bet even with that I'm spending less than XM.

 

[denverpilot]

No, but a few bucks in taxes doesn't bother me for what I'm getting for it. I bet even with that I'm spending less than XM.

The song of the Statist. "It's only a few bucks, you should help me pay for it!" LOL.

That's fine for true "infrastructure", but there's not much of a true public benefit from ADS-B, though. It doesn't really rise to the level of "needed infrastructure" to me.

Just someone's pet pork project. Paid for with mega loans.