Mandate, yes, it would be the FAA. Of course only for the US but that carries a lot of weight.
Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement Act of 2005 proposed a second jetisonable black box. it would cost about $60000 per plane.
Didn’t know that. Good information but the efectiveness vs cost seems debatable to me.
I’d be astonished if at least a mandatory position tracking mechanism combining GPS and ACARS doesn’t come out of this saga.
Not gonna happen. A second black box cannot provide anywhere near the useful info that real time reporting can.
It will. Most certainly. Give it time.
Bigger battery, dude.
Something like Swift?
That would have continued to transmit “the direction, speed and altitude” of the flight after the transponder was turned off. It’s the technology that lead to the recovery of the Air France plane. However, at a cost of $10 per flight, Malaysian Airlines had not seen fit to install it.
The report of the ping is looking more and more like nothing.
So they only press “record” after they’ve found something? Something which could break the case wide open?
Jeez. The incompetence of this entire airline/country/incident is starting to pile up.
Yeah, like Swift. 
They tow at 1-5 knots. That’s a lot less than my estimate.
Which doesn’t change the estimate of a 4 mile square area once a ping is detected. So far, they haven’t been able to find or verify the source of the ping in that 4 mile square area over the last 24 hours, or it may have gone silent. I’m guessing it was a faulty report like so many so far, but I hope I am wrong.
Agreed, it’s not looking good but maybe it went silent.
Maybe it’s Amelia Earhart. Or Judge Crater?
Now some reports say submarines emit pulses at exactly the same frequency and that’s what might have been heard. I wonder if the Soviets know about that? It would make tracking our boomers much easier.
Here’s a link to support what I said, as I couldn’t find one earlier.
Apparently aberrant nuclear subs transmit pings on 37.5 kHz. Who knew?
I meant, why would they make them last longer on relatively minor things like fishing boats and cargo than on commercial aircraft?
Cheaper costs per pound/kilogram for surface transport, mainly. Also: having to survive impact. Batteries are heavy and carry a lot of momentum. The black boxes are located in the tail, where the space/weight/servicibility constraint is greatest. And boats are more likely to sink than airplanes.
The Soviets?
BBC a short while ago held a news conference with some Australian official. He said the Chinese vessel had detected the ping a second time, this instance being two kilometers away from where they were on the first instance. And an Aussie ship has heard it now too, once. They’re calling it something like an “unidentified audio event.”
The guy was Angus Houston, retired Air Chief Marshal, and he continued to emphasize that there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other that these pings are emanating from the missing airliner.
Until further evidence manifests, the bets are still on it seems.
New details on the flight path
Seems to have flown around Indonesian airspace: “According to the source, the plane may have purposely been flown along a route designed to avoid radar detection.”
A source? Oh FFS, surely we’re over un-named sources by now?
Geez :rolleyes:
The term being used is actually “unidentified acoustic event.”