One airline figured out how to make sure its airplanes never disappear

Satellite uplink works if it can. With the antennas on top, if the aircraft goes inverted, or descends into extremely heavy weather, it can loose the link. That would have still been more than they had to start. With luck, it could have even sent GPS updates every 2.5 minutes.

The data charges alone would be expensive. It could be said "It will cost too much.". The problem there is, we're talking about an aircraft with the new purchase price (in 2012) at $88,000,000 USD. In addition, there is the lives and safety of the passengers, crew, and cargo.

Something like Globalstar's "Spot" product is cheap, and would have been a tremendous benefit.

http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=109

With Globalstar Spot, it costs $100 for the device (currently on sale for $50). Basic service is $100/yr, which will send the updated location every 5 minutes. For $200/yr. Is the $100 hardware cost and $200/yr too expensive?! Versus the $88M aircraft? Aren't the passengers lives, and then timely updates to family who are wondering what was happening? If any of the families of passengers could go back in time, I'm sure *any* of them would throw $300 at it in a heart beat.

Iridium also has a variety of products for the same thing. They don't show the prices on the site, but Iridium is always more expensive than Globalstar. That was with good reason for years. Globalstar's coverage was frequently interrupted in service areas. Now that they've launched more satellites, they cover a good portion of the world.

Hell, I'm going on a cruise soon. I bought an old Globalstar sat phone, simply for the peace of mind that if something bad happens, I can call for help as soon as possible, rather than waiting for access to the onboard phones, or swimming impossible distances to shore to use a local line. Mostly, I expect to use it to have *my* phone ring, rather than running it through the ship's phones for a bazillion dollars a minute. :)

We have that system, plus our sat-phones. When travelling over the pole - you need all the help you can get.

Sorry for the misspellings like Melinea air. They seem to happen faster than I can fix them. I guess my fingers got fat at Thanksgiving.

Governments and their agencies are good at commanding everyone to follow a ruls, but not so good at making exceptions. I can understand why an air carrier like the one in the article might need tracking, and certainly Melania Air demonstrated a need in that part of the world, but there are a huge number of air routs that just don't need it. I'm much more concerned about the apparent dependence on electronic and robotic control of aircraft. Yesterday, I heard a news reader express concern over a pilots ability to take control over the programed auto pilot when he may not have been trained well enough to do that. These people vote. Sooner or later government agencies will respond. a hundred thousand dollars per copy for a gizmo we don't need in BOS/WASH will only escalate pricing doing nothing for safety. I do believe that CVRs and CDRs could stand some upgrading but mostly because we can, but One lesson from AF447 was too much information is the same as none. It didn't tell anyone where the crash occurred nor why. There was no indication in the reams of data transmitted that the pitots were iced.

I wonder if it includes a flight deck panic button for a user activated alarm. When we head into the back country, we take along more than we would for a trip along the highways. Sounds similar. There's lots of places to look up there.

Reform Part 23, and perhaps we will see more useful devices installed too.

I am quite amazed that aircraft can just disappear. Here in New Zealand we have mandatory emergency beacons fitted in all aircraft which transmit through the satellite system on 406mhz and can be turned on manually from the cockpit in an emergency and also have a g switch which can turn them on automatically on impact. The shortcoming of the latter is that the exterior transmitting aerial may break off in an accident thus preventing an adequate signal being sent from the distressed aircraft. Because of this, those of us here that fly - especially in remote areas, have for many years fitted on board tracking devices such as SPOT. Spidertrack or Trackplus. These units are small in size, simple to install and relatively cheap insurance with the latter costing the operators less than NZD$5 per hour on average to run. Smaller GA operators of fixed wing and helicopters in this area set their devices to give a position every two minutes or so and the latter two devices quoted show speed. altitude and direction along with a latitude/ logtitude position every time a transmission burst is made. Certainly narrows down the search area when last transmitted position is known. Flight details can be accessed from a computer or iphone type device. I have for many years just clipped my SPOT device on to the sunvisor . Unobtrusive and effective.
I also advise pilots that in an inflight emergency,trigger the emergency beacon manually while in the air so that at least a few bursts of signal may get out to the satellites before the aircraft gets down on the ground and possibly breaks off the transmitting aerial.