Modern aircraft - Poor technology implementation

[cashmax]

I'm sure this has been answered before, but why on earth don't aircraft stream live blackbox data?

Cars & even fridges tend to do this nowadays, the technology is mature and an aircraft in the air can maintain a permanent, high bandwidth data connection anywhere in the world. I just don't understand why when something goes wrong, governments are required to spend millions to try and retrieve a hugely outdated "black box" that stores minimal data and can often be damaged too badly to be of use anyway??

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

[LimaDelta]

Mainly because up until Starlink global coverage was incredibly patchy, especially over unpopulated areas.

Also, how exactly does your iPhone know your airspeed? Mine certainly doesn't.

[Mr E]

Airspeed relative to ground isn’t as useful as airspeed over the wings.

[Tony1963]

If you don’t understand the technology fitted to new aircraft, or have absolutely no awareness of it, maybe consider not criticising new aircraft… maybe consider asking questions. There are some very knowledgeable and experienced forum members.

[TGCOTF-dewey]

I've not worked there for nearly 20 years, but I seem to recall RR have live monitoring as part of power by the hour.

[ecsrobin]

cashmax said:

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

How often do you think pilots are getting lost? Also quite standard for the last 10+ years to be using an iPad or similar as aircraft nav. Charts and iPad or 2 x iPads is/was the requirement.

[48k]

cashmax said:

I'm sure this has been answered before, but why on earth don't aircraft stream live blackbox data?

Cars & even fridges tend to do this nowadays, the technology is mature and an aircraft in the air can maintain a permanent, high bandwidth data connection anywhere in the world. I just don't understand why when something goes wrong, governments are required to spend millions to try and retrieve a hugely outdated "black box" that stores minimal data and can often be damaged too badly to be of use anyway??

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

There are not many fridges (or cars for that matter) streaming live black box data.

My 3 year old Volvo has quite a sophisticated API. But it's still request-response.

What's the reason for starting this thread? Are you aware of pilots getting lost a lot? Has it become a global problem ?

Or have you been reading up on MH370?

[Crafty_]

The "black box" isn't the only recorder onboard most aircraft.

There is data transferred whilst in in air - ACARS / Satcom Direct for example can send a variety of messages whilst in air.

There are other systems that can do so, usually used for critical data. There are even methods for data to be requested from the ground, send the request to the aircraft and the aircraft respond whilst in air.

As someone said, starlink are fairly new to the scene. Competitors are coming along too (note Gogo's acquistion of satcom direct).
If you look around there is quite a bit of activity in companies getting STC approval to fit starlink connectivity, but generally speaking aircraft hang around a long time so may not have cutting edge equipment onboard.

The bigger question is if you did stream data to ground who is going to receive it ? what are they going to do to the data and what benefits would doing so provide ?

Edited by Crafty_ on Monday 9th December 20:26

[Biggles Flies Undone]

cashmax said:

I'm sure this has been answered before, but why on earth don't aircraft stream live blackbox data?

Cars & even fridges tend to do this nowadays, the technology is mature and an aircraft in the air can maintain a permanent, high bandwidth data connection anywhere in the world. I just don't understand why when something goes wrong, governments are required to spend millions to try and retrieve a hugely outdated "black box" that stores minimal data and can often be damaged too badly to be of use anyway??

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

As mentioned, "black box" data is only a tiny subset of the overall FDM (Flight Data Monitoring) system that monitors and gathers data for all sorts of purposes.

On a modern jet such as a 787 or A350, the volumes of data are massive. We are talking Gb of data on every single flight. This is way too much to be sent via the traditional methods of sending aircraft data, which is via ACARS. (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) which tends to use VHF as the main transmission method when within range of ground receivers or bcks off to Satcom if fitted when out of range. (It can use HF, but we're talking very low bandwidth comms there.) ACARS can only send small messages and in terms of bandwidth, think 14.4k dial-up modem speed on a good day.

High-speed, low cost Satcom is a relatively new thing, especially in the world of aircraft design and technical certification. You can't just lob a Starlink terminal on and go from there, it takes a lot more work than that. Especially when the aircraft is at 40+k ft and moving at 0.8M in oceanic airspace.

I won't go into your comment on "just pull your phone out" thing, as well, that just isn't how it works. That is a "just no" from me.

Sat coverage is by no means pole to pole and certainly hasn't got 100% coverage or anything like that. It is massively better than it was and with the advent of V-SAT use as well as Inmarsat, iridium and the new LEO constellations like Starlink, then it is getting better, but all of these are different system and require different aerials etc etc.

All airlines are required by our regulators to capture at least 75-80% of all flight data at all times. We need a robust system that can be guaranteed to work. We do send back aircraft info in real time, but it is a limited sample for real-time engineering health monitoring and ops messages to communicate with the ops teams. The real bulk of FDM data is recorded on board and then either spat back via 4G when landing, or downloaded daily on an overnight maintenance check. Some airlines go for a 2 or 3 day download cycle depending on their operational model. Again, this is vastly more data than the "black box" records.

[Shy Torque]

ecsrobin said:

cashmax said:

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

How often do you think pilots are getting lost? Also quite standard for the last 10+ years to be using an iPad or similar as aircraft nav. Charts and iPad or 2 x iPads is/was the requirement.

Genuinely curious - can you point me to the regulations allowing the use of an IPad as a primary navigation aid?

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Shy Torque said:

ecsrobin said:

cashmax said:

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

How often do you think pilots are getting lost? Also quite standard for the last 10+ years to be using an iPad or similar as aircraft nav. Charts and iPad or 2 x iPads is/was the requirement.

Genuinely curious - can you point me to the regulations allowing the use of an IPad as a primary navigation aid?

I don't think you can as a legal primary, but obviously using it as the backup that gets all of the use is pretty common!

When we started using iPads as Electronic Flight Bags, then we went through a process where we could replace paper charts and even use them as navigation tools, as we could feed positioning info from the aircraft directly to them, that then was approved, but obviously, the normal aircraft system are always primary in terms of navigation and the charting aspect means we always have 2 ipads for the crew, plus one fully charged spare onboard as a backup in case of failure.

[smallpaul]

We have been able to navigate the globe perfectly fine since before GPS was even a thing. If you're considering using your phone then It might surprise you that aircraft have multiple systems which are capable of calculating your position on its own without the use of GPS.

[Mabbs9]

TGCOTF-dewey said:

I've not worked there for nearly 20 years, but I seem to recall RR have live monitoring as part of power by the hour.

I remember getting a message from London that RR had sent. They pointed out that our number 3 engine was losing oil. It was barely visible on the instruments at this point. Rather good service I thought and a good prompt to put down my cup of tea.

[Uncle boshy]

Black boxes in fridges could be a winner, with both my kids now students, I’ve seen some real disaster areas in their fridges

[48k]

Mabbs9 said:

TGCOTF-dewey said:

I've not worked there for nearly 20 years, but I seem to recall RR have live monitoring as part of power by the hour.

I remember getting a message from London that RR had sent. They pointed out that our number 3 engine was losing oil. It was barely visible on the instruments at this point. Rather good service I thought and a good prompt to put down my cup of tea.

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Mabbs9 said:

TGCOTF-dewey said:

I've not worked there for nearly 20 years, but I seem to recall RR have live monitoring as part of power by the hour.

I remember getting a message from London that RR had sent. They pointed out that our number 3 engine was losing oil. It was barely visible on the instruments at this point. Rather good service I thought and a good prompt to put down my cup of tea.

Their trend monitoring and analysis is absolutely superb. They saved us a fortune in preventative maintenance over the years.

[Evanivitch]

Biggles Flies Undone said:

I won't go into your comment on "just pull your phone out" thing, as well, that just isn't how it works. That is a "just no" from me.
.

There's little reason you couldn't. You can have sufficient mapping on a phone (so no data needed) and cockpit provides sufficient signal for your phone to get a GPS position within a few hundred metres at worse. The issue is reliability, as phones rarely display error and occasionally show erroneous results before they've got a good fix.

ETA I agree it's not helpful for airspeed.

Mr E said:

Airspeed relative to ground isn’t as useful as airspeed over the wings.

Agreed.

[Shy Torque]

Biggles Flies Undone said:

Shy Torque said:

ecsrobin said:

cashmax said:

I also don't understand why when pilots get lost or don't know their airspeed, they just don't pull out their smartphone, which can provide their exact location and speed relative to the ground at all times?

How often do you think pilots are getting lost? Also quite standard for the last 10+ years to be using an iPad or similar as aircraft nav. Charts and iPad or 2 x iPads is/was the requirement.

Genuinely curious - can you point me to the regulations allowing the use of an IPad as a primary navigation aid?

I don't think you can as a legal primary

Correct.

[Biggles Flies Undone]

Evanivitch said:

Biggles Flies Undone said:

I won't go into your comment on "just pull your phone out" thing, as well, that just isn't how it works. That is a "just no" from me.
.

There's little reason you couldn't. You can have sufficient mapping on a phone (so no data needed) and cockpit provides sufficient signal for your phone to get a GPS position within a few hundred metres at worse. The issue is reliability, as phones rarely display error and occasionally show erroneous results before they've got a good fix.

ETA I agree it's not helpful for airspeed.

Mr E said:

Airspeed relative to ground isn’t as useful as airspeed over the wings.

Agreed.

There are lots of reasons it won't work. Some aircraft get very little GPS reception inside. Cockpits can be terrible places for it, especially with the foil inside the windscreens for example, as well as heating elements etc. That's why you have external aerials.

The power of a phone is not the issue. Most aircraft have a fraction of the processing power of a modern smartphone and do just fine. Nav Databases are tiny in size for example.

Error is a huge issue, as is the certification of the device and the security. Using a phone as a primary navigation aid is so patently ridiculous, that other than as a last resort back-up in case of total electrical failure and all the charts suddenly finding themselves eaten by termites, then I'd be loathe to even contemplate it really. I know plenty of people do, but I was brought up in the days of fully analogue, steam driven, no RNAV at all cockpits and it worked pretty well.

It was lovely going to a glass cockpit, it almost seemed like cheating until you got into the Sim and a miserable git of a trainer decided to send you back to the stone age with manual reversion on the controls and stby instruments only...

[TGCOTF-dewey]

Mabbs9 said:

TGCOTF-dewey said:

I've not worked there for nearly 20 years, but I seem to recall RR have live monitoring as part of power by the hour.

I remember getting a message from London that RR had sent. They pointed out that our number 3 engine was losing oil. It was barely visible on the instruments at this point. Rather good service I thought and a good prompt to put down my cup of tea.

Did the bill arrive simultaneously?