For all those of you, who like me, have been pondering over the abruptness of the disappearance of the doomed Air France flight AF447, and asking yourselves why, in this age of high technology, there seemed to be so much difficulty in locating the wreckage, here is an interesting piece from Innovation Analysis Group (IAG) Blog http://iagblog.blogspot.com/. Please note, this is not a definitive technology article, rather an opinion…

We need broadband on planes - like now

The wake of this week’s AH447 tragedy highlights something crucial. While we don’t know why the plane crashed, we should have known where it crashed immediately.This is not some outlandish idea.This is the 21st Century. We have the ability to track cell phones for 911 purposes (let’s forget other sneaky reasons for now). The A330 had GPS, but it was a one way system like found on cars. The crew knew where they were, but there was no live feed back to Air France. Its clear from the absence of a “mayday” message that the crew had no time to even think of sending one. Whatever happened, it came too fast.

The Airbus A330 is a marvelous airplane - fitted with the latest technologies. But how come that the space shuttle has had real time telemetry all these years and airline’s have not installed this on their planes? The short answer is cost. But that is a sufficient answer. It costs a fortune to build in redundant systems too, but its done for safety. Ask anyone in commercial aviation what is their #1 priority? They will all say safety.

Well, its time to add another layer of safety and that is make broadband mandatory on every commercial plane. Broadband would not have saved AF447. But it would have enabled real-time telemetry and Air France would have known the plane was in trouble sooner and where it was in the world.

This is not to say lives could have been saved on AF447. But we learn from accidents.What can we learn from a crash where the evidence is miles underwater? Not enough obviously. To save lives going forward it seems reasonable to recommend that all commercial planes be required to carry broadband. This will allow not only passengers to communicate - more importantly, airplanes can generate continuous streams of data to airlines. This data stream could allow the operator to monitor systems - taking pressure off pilots when things start to go wrong. And eventually they do go wrong.

The technology exists. It may add a cost, but which passenger would refuse to pay (say) $5 more for such a system to be added? Indeed, don’t be surprised to see insurance companies require this technology to be installed. The AF447 crash will cost them a fortune, as every crash does. For the sake of maintaining the airline industry’s magnificent safety record, IATA should take the lead on this matter. Accidents happen - thankfully they are becoming ever more infrequent (which is why this one is getting so much attention). The cost of learning from accidents need not be repaid time after time. Posted by IAGblog