Comments on: Air France 447: How scientists found a needle in a haystack

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

They make those where I work. It’s kind of weird seeing one on the bottom of the ocean carrying data that can help explain how a plane full of people lost their lives.

By: wrecksdart

wrecksdart — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hey Anon, ISIYF (Internet Search is Your Friend):
Google Image Search for the Remus 6000

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

So tired overworked people would catch more problems than a fresh pair of eyes? Or is this accompanied by a law that sets a maximum number of employees at Air France? Is there only the one guy or what?

Also, what about pilots? Don’t they work long and odd hours?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

People are working on the problem of remote flight data transmission, here’s a very in depth paper by The International Working Group on Flight Data Recovery: http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/triggered.transmission.of.flight.data.pdf

Very long, very in depth but the summary is good enough to get the gist of it.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

More than a needle in a haystack. A needle in a very big hay loft.

By: Michael Smith

Michael Smith — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why can’t this data be streamed?

No doubt it will be, but development cycles in aviation are very long. It takes time to design stuff when the design has to be exactly right. Its not like the work is going to be trusted to Amazon EC2.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think I’ve figured it out. Video of the cockpit is all but irrelevant. Video of the entire outside skin of the plane could be doable for recorders, with some value.

As for streaming data, surely you could define a range for ‘normal’ — only recorded. Then a range for ‘abnormal’ — streamed, but 95% of the time only for a few minutes.

Finally, if ‘abnormal’ is followed by ‘nonexistent’, you have all the (relevant) data. The unexplored skill of the information age is intelligent filtering.

The only problem is making sure that executives know the real value of transient abnormal. Not usually relevant but occasionally instructive, and especially in accident situations.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well, for one thing, the possibility that the phenomenon that causes the crash will also stop the data stream early enough to render the system useless.

By: MooseDesign

MooseDesign — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It still boggles my mind… I’d be curious to know a little more about the modeling study that he alluded to and how its conclusions for a search area were arrived at… Hopefully the FDR and CVR, both of which appeared to be in decent condition, will reveal quite a bit more information on the circumstances that brought her down.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Streaming Flight Data is nearly impossible. Flight Data is a comprehensive set of information records that includes telemetric lectures, voice, condition metrics and measuring, and detailed time synchronization tracks. Streaming that kind of information is too difficult.

Is not like having a 3G internet connection or something. This is not like having an mp3 file and a txt codified note. Is a complex system of information which really needs an specialized data protocol that nowadays is not supported by any type of wireless conection.

In the other hand there are thousands of flights daily. There is no infrastructure or financial capacity to assume something like that.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

How about an image of Remus?

By: dculberson

dculberson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for this Maggie; fascinating stuff. It’s hard to imagine seeing that image and thinking “there’s the airplane!” They must be very patient and very good.

By: Wally Ballou

Wally Ballou — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Can someone knowledgable explain why air safety investigators have to rely on a hardware black box?

Why can’t this data be streamed?

Compare with the telemetry readings available to the Columbia investigation team, which practically pointed a flashing neon sign at the cause of the breakup.

By: Sam125

Sam125 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Amazing find! Now hopefully investigators will be able to determine the root cause of the of the crash. A tip of the figurative hat to Woods Hole.

By: Sam125

Sam125 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m not knowledgeable in the matter but if I were to guess, the cost of implementing a data collection policy is enormous and with this find, investigators still have a 100% recovery rate of blackboxes.

By: LightningRose

LightningRose — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“Can someone knowledgable explain why air safety investigators have to rely on a hardware black box?

Why can’t this data be streamed?”

Mostly it’s a matter of available bandwidth, but here’s a good explanation from a commercial pilot:
http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/index.html?story=/tech/col/smith/2011/05/06/air_france_black_box_found

By: SharpieSniffer

SharpieSniffer — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Streaming flight data would require monitoring of pilots at work in real time. There is some professional resistance to this kind of oversight. I sort of understand the reluctance to being monitored every second at work but in the case of pilots, I think they should get the hell over it because safety should be the #1 concern.

By: dculberson

dculberson — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There’s also the matter of the quantity of data due to the number of flights. NASA has a bit bigger budget per-flight than an airline. There are thousands upon thousands of flights ever day, and streaming the data along the entire flight would require a pretty hefty connection that’s persistent across thousands of miles of unpopulated areas. (I.e. the middle of the ocean in this instance.) The only solution then would be a satellite connection and using that constantly to stream flight data would be really expensive. Of course, the search for this black box was also really expensive, but $30mm wouldn’t go a long way when talking about a persistent satellite network connection for thousands of flights every single day. I imagine more than $30mm would be spent on data every day in that case.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Stellar interview, both the questions and answers.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Just a quick point: It seems it was an engineer and not a scientist that found this. The team lead is credited as an engineer and this is very much a task in engineering.

By: KingBobo

KingBobo — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks for an informative article. Does anyone know whether the actual wreckage location had been previously searched back in 2009 when the locator beacons may still have been active? Given the subsea terrain at the wreckage location, and assuming that the beacons operated as designed, I’m curious to know whether their signals could have been detected, or whether the initial search was simply conducted in the wrong area? From the photos, it looks like the beacon is still attached to the CVR but possibly missing from the flight data recorder.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wally,
Recording to tape is much cheaper than streaming through a sat. connection. I live aboard a boat, when not connected to a GSM/3G/Edge signal, i use Inmarsat BGAN (the only Worldwide sat broadband provider) to retrieve my emails and reads news on the net. The cost is more than usd6 per meg !!!
Air France is a company with no money, that crash is a direct result of bad maintenance. This is due to stupid work regulations in France : working hours are limited to 35hours per week. If you work more, it’s at overtime rates. So Air France can’t actually maintain it’s fleet properly because it would cost them too much in salaries … It’s a well known issue with people working at Air France, but the french “government” will never acknowledge such a fact : ” Sacrebleu, how can you say we are broke, this is France you are talking about !!!”
BenBen, french national (but i saved my life and now live in asia)

By: pao_e_vinho

pao_e_vinho — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I think it should be easier to the plane debris and then the recorders than to find a small box floating at the ocean. Besides that, it’s not very common that a plane crashes in such kind off ocean mountain area as happened to this air france plane.

By: InsertFingerHere

InsertFingerHere — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The next thing that needs to be figured out is why they still use tapes and other sensitive recording materials in those boxes?

And the endless loop audio recorder.. useless. Record the whole damn flight, that CAN be done with today’s modern solid state gear.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Just one link for further reading:
http://www.bea.aero/en/enquetes/flight.af.447/flight.af.447.php

By: MooseDesign

MooseDesign — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

While that is certainly a cause for concern from pilots and a hot topic right now as there is evidently to be far greater audio and video (so I’ve read but not confirmed) recording of the cockpit in the 787… the data streaming question that came up because of 447 in particular is usually around greater systems status and telemetry data and not simply recording the flight crew actions (although to the point about the pitot tubes it is indeed massively important to know how they reacted to an alternate law state). I think the fact that there were ACARS messages at all is what has even raised the question of real time monitoring in the first place. We got a taste of it and want more…

Anywho, implementation, monitoring and subsidizing of such a presumably standardized system across hundreds of thousands of flights across the globe is no small task either logistically or financially. I think there is likely a solution out there, but its unlikely that it is immediately around the corner for the vast majority of aircraft.

Not to forget: part of what makes AF447 of such interest is that it is thankfully an incredibly rare occurrence for a plane to fall out of the air without report, and basically vanish with little trace. Does this incredibly rare incident immediately mandate a reworking of how planes report their location data? Would the associated cost be worth it once its made its way into your ticket price?

By: proot

proot — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Very interesting interview.

I’ll have a question, though.
The picture shows the black box as it was when it was first screened by the search teams.
How come after two years that heavy thing is not (at least a bit) buried into the sand, or covered with naturally generated sea rubbish?

By: Wally Ballou

Wally Ballou — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

It would not be necessary to stream every second of every flight.

If streaming were to be turned on when the plane deviated significantly from the flightplan or normal flight parameters, the volume streamed would be less by a couple of orders of magnitude at least.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Remus 6000 picture and specificaition
http://www.hydroidinc.com/remus6000.html

Google “Remus 6000 AUV”

Looks like a topedo

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why don’t they make the flight recorders capable of floating? At least if they were to be floating on the surface of the sea it would be relatively easier to locate them.