No offence taken mate. I do understand the vastness of our planet, i also know that technology is not infallible. Saying that, surely you can see how its hard to understand how we lose a plane.
First of all RIP to those unlucky passengers.
Secondly, to explain how a plane can just "get lost". Imagine you misplaced your phone. You ring it and locate it with the ringtone. Imagine, if its on vibration mode. You take some time. But then you find it. Now imagine if its switched off.
Now extrapolate it to the plane.
Systems:
All planes have a addressing and reporting system (
ACARS) that they use and communicate with the air traffic control. There is a transponder radar that constantly beeps out the lat and lon location of the plane. There is also a
surveillance broadcasting system. In addition that, there is a
Black Box that practically CANNOT be destructed. Or it can be. But requires extreme conditions.
In addition to this, Rolly Royce Engines, have a sensor built in their engines that monitors the engine 24x7. It doesnt give out lat and lon coordinates. But engine parameters. Keep it in mind for a future reference.
Control Mechanism:
As flights travel across one air space to another, the region of control also changes. For example, if an aeroplane leaves Germany and enters French air space, the control (above mentioned paremeters, altitude of flight, speed, whether or not the pilot can use the autopilot, weather updates, security updates, presence of other aeroplanes, their speed, altitude etc) gets transferred. And then when it flies over Spain, the control is once again transferred to Spanish air space. Thats why on very long flights, you have constant altitude and speed changes as they depend on the air space above each country.
Now imagine a flight flying from Germany to Chicago. As soon as they leave the European air space, until they enter the American air space, they dont have a "control" update. Which means, until they receive new updates, they have to maintain the same "settings". Care is always taken to ensure that none of two flights flying in opposite directions the between two countries/continents have the same altitude. This region is called the international air space. There are established protocols for a safe flight through this international air space and contacts arent established unless there is an emergency. Which is why, auto pilots are a mandatory in this region. You set a target coordinate and switch the auto pilot on.
And while flying through the international air space, the pilots leave out frequent status updates (
I think its every 10 minutes. But I maybe wrong) on the go. Satellites catch them, decode them and send them to the two associated airspace control towers. That way, even when flying above large oceans, the status updates about the plane, is received by the concerned parties.
Terrain:
What happens when the terrain is very rough or has a very bad weather. In the following diagram, imagine there is a control tower behind the mountain.
The plane is flying above the mountains, in the green region, so the communication can be established. But what happens when the flight flies below the top of the mountain, in the red region? The signal cannot reach the aeroplane right?
So what went wrong on MH 370?Combine the control and terrain and apply it to the flight that was to fly from Malaysia to China. The Sea between Malaysia and Vietnam was where the international air space came to being. So technically neither Malaysian air space not Vietnamese air space were controlling the settings of the aeroplane. And
someone who know how the tracking systems work on the plane, had it switched off/deactivated. And since no contact would be made unless there was an emergency, a lack of contact was assumed to be normal. There was a status update that was skipped. But nobody cared/bothered to find out why.
The terrain was moderately bad as well if what some reports were to be believed. But I am not sure about that. So lets not go there.
It also happens to be by chance, that the other 2 aeroplanes that were flying in the same region were in a different altitude. So nothing was fishy from the outside perspective.
So back to present.See how difficult it is to lose an aeroplane? And despite everything, the systems were deactivated and the no updates were sent/received. Which is why, the location of the aeroplane is, as of now, a mystery.
The Rolls Royce engines, as I mentioned above, continued to send out engine data for upto 7 hours after the last known contact point.
Which is why, the investigators were able to narrow down on a circle shown below.
Whats for the future?This will surely rise many more questions about the safety of the air travel.
(a)
What needs to be done, is to have a system installed that requests the plane for its coordinates. Or gets it automatically. But it shouldnt be deactivated from the aeroplane. It should be controlled from the land. That way, even if all the electronic gadgets within an aeroplane is switched off, a connection still would exist between the land and the aeroplane. And when no response is obtained, swift action can be taken.
(b)
For a flying aircraft, a working engine is essential. So enhance the system to include the broadcast of latitude and longitude. That way, wven when the airplane is flying over difficult terrain, some of the broadcasted data can be read and saved.
(c)
When an accident occurs, even in areas where there is a difficult terrain, the black box should be able to launch itself 25000-26000 feet, emit those bright light (bright enough for days) and smoke for some considerable hours of time, in addition to emitting SOS signal.
