Not to make light of the situation but wouldn’t that Boeing 737 make the best spy plane then?
In: Technology
You don’t realize just how big the earth is and how limited the range of human monitoring equipment is.
First off, GPS satellites don’t actually “connect” to anything. Satellites give off a signal, and GPS devices on the earth use these signals to figure out their own location.
Satelites themselves are extremely expensive to make and launch, and each one serves specific and important purposes, and they aren’t widely used by normal civilian populations, usually only by large corporations and governments as an alternative form of communication that doesn’t rely of ground wires. No satelites track flights, except for maybe spy satelites.
Both tracking equipment and radar have short ranges, they only extend a few kilometers off their antennas. Airplanes can usually connect to antennas when they are flying over populated areas, but once they’re over open ocean, or uninhabited lands (such as forests or deserts or tundras) there are no antenna to connect to. When this happens, the plane gives a signal its about to go out of range, gives its flight plan, and gives an estimate of when it should re-establish contact.
This is what happens to missing planes. they send their flightplans, their estimated re-establish time, and go offline, and never come back on. Ground control waits a certain period after the estimated re-establish time, hoping theres only a delay to the flightplan. Only after an unreasonable amount of time passes are search and rescue teams sent.
The search first searches the given flightpath, looking for signs of a plane crash. If the crash is not found, the area of the search widens. Expert flight analysts run simulations to figure out where the plane could have possibly gone, and those predicted areas are searched too. Remember, the world is vast, 200 million square miles. There’s only so much area humans can cover, and sadly its not enough. Especially if the plane sinks into the depths of the ocean, it will be basically invisible from above the water. This is how airplanes go missing.
Electronics and water don’t mix. Plane goes down, it usually no longer resembles a plane. It goes down in water, then you have to find the ping of the black boxes, which is difficult at ocean depths. Imagine that you have a tracker on your phone, you have your phone in your pocket, I drop you in the middle of the ocean. How is anyone going to find you?
“normal” tech stops working at certain altitude.
Plane tracking relies on pings back and forth between the plane and transmitting stations on the ground (and not satellites).
There are two “kinds” of radar: commercial and military. Commercial radar works by the tracked object broadcasting a radar signal that then is picked up by receivers. Commercial radar works on the principal that you *want* to be tracked. Military radar tracks things that *don’t* want to be tracked, by broadcasting signals and listening for the echo, basically. But both have a range. That Malaysia flight from years ago was lost to civilian radar before it was lost to military radar, until it flew far enough away the detectors lost it. If you turn the commercial radar off, you can go unnoticed on commercial radar. But military will also only pick you up if you’re high enough (there’s a “floor” so they don’t detect the tree next door) and within range. All the other tracking (gps included) works on the principal that you *want* to be tracked, and relies on the plane sending communications to them. Turn off everything, and suddenly, you’re invisible to everyone but the military.
As far as the spy plane thing goes: If you’re spying on the middle of the Pacific Ocean, maybe you can go undetected. But if you’re spying in a nation’s airspace, they’ll pick you up on military radar- unless you’re flying under the radar, but then you’re careening a 737 a few hundred feet above the ground and it’s hard to miss.
GPS uses satellites in order to give the plane itself it’s position which the plane then sends to ATC via other communication means. It’s a navigation tool. RADAR is another navigation tool specifically used on the plane in order to see land masses, other planes, different weather conditions etc.
The way that ATC’s track planes is through certain types of RADAR systems (and reliance on the plane itself sharing that information in some cases). For the most part those are TACAN systems (although others do exist and are utilised). These are also used to tell the plane where it is by broadcasting a signal with a specific longitude and latitude. Either way though, civilian RADAR systems don’t have Over the Horizon capabilities. Which means you can drop out of their range. They also don’t constantly monitor everything below a certain altitude.
The idea is that commercial planes fly specific routes at specific heights, with the intention of always being in range of a tracking system. This is for safety (in the event that a plane needs to make an emergency landing) (or to prevent planes from crashing into each other by tracking them among other reasons).
Either way, a lot of these systems are passive and rely on humans. There’s also UAB’s or beacons that broadcast a signal saying what they are (type of plane, call sign etc) but those don’t have a very long range. Long story short not every area of the sky is being looked at constantly or tracked constantly.
With all airplanes in the sky and with the bandwith of satellites being limited it used to be just too much effort for a low gain. Since the disappeared Malaysia airlines 777 that has changed though, but I’m not sure if the new tracking has been implemented everywhere already.
The 737 that crashed today did so not far off the coast of Jakarta so I don’t think they mean missing in the sense that they have no idea where the wreckage is, I assume it’s more that they haven’t located its exact position on the sea floor yet. They have a pretty good idea where it went underwater.
In this particular situation, “Gone missing” is poor reporting. It may be based on some rule (e.g. they don’t want to say “plane crash” until there’s an official report).
I’ve read that:
– (1) According to radar, the plane descended very rapidly
– (2) Radar contact was lost at 250′
– (3) Wreckage was spotted in the ocean in the area it was last seen
Under these circumstances, it’s quite likely that it crashed in the ocean.
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