Many airliners do not equip a beacon that transmits to the Iridium satellite array, although regulations in the US are slated to force airlines to upgrade.
The challenge with tracking aircraft over oceans is difficulty in communicating back home reliably and often enough to make position tracking useful.
That's where Iridium comes in - uploading continuously a plane's gps position to globally available satellites would make losing a plane like this dependant upon losing the transceiver.
Suitably protected and hardened, only a missile could destroy such.
Great technology.
If only the airlines considered their passengers last position was of higher import to purchase Iridium transceivers voluntarily.
The challenge with tracking aircraft over oceans is difficulty in communicating back home reliably and often enough to make position tracking useful.
That's where Iridium comes in - uploading continuously a plane's gps position to globally available satellites would make losing a plane like this dependant upon losing the transceiver.
Suitably protected and hardened, only a missile could destroy such.
Great technology.
If only the airlines considered their passengers last position was of higher import to purchase Iridium transceivers voluntarily.
Slave to the Patriarchy no more
