So What Happened To The Plane?

[LostLocke]

It's on an uncharted, remote island in the South Pacific.

[KichigaiNeko]

You underestimate how big and deep the ocean actually fucking is!

I fly planes.. I know the capability that they have.. and the ocean has nothing to do with that capability. .

But trying to find one that is downed?

THAT is when you realise just how fucking big the ocean is.

[pocaracas]

I've been following a bit of this incident on the news... it seems the plane just disappeared when it was still at cruise altitude.
If anything had happened, there would have been some sort of distress call while the plane was going down, but nothing.
So, my theory is:
Pirates with an EMP gun disabled the thing and then went fishing for it.

Was it "Oceanic Flight 815"?

[Clueless Morgan]

[Jackalope]

Think about this.. we have $ 200 cell phones that we can ping anywhere and find it.. but a half of billion dollar huge hunk of metal that can fly itself is unable to be found.. WTF!!

Neither of which will work if the power fails. Just sayin'.

[Jackalope]

It's on an uncharted, remote island in the South Pacific.

Man, that would make a great TV series.

[Minimalist]

I can see an update of Gilligan's Island in the future.....

[JesusHChrist]

Man, that would make a great TV series.

Just make sure to include some babes, lots of guns and a monster or two.

[Autumnlicious]

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.

[Autumnlicious]

Another thing of note is that the Chinese jam a lot of communications near their borders – talking to a satellite is easier in those circumstances than any ground station.

As a futher note, over the water even in ideal circumstances, there are few ground stations if any that can receive such data. Space, on the other hand, is almost always available.