How do you lose a plane?

I guess my only thoughts are nobody was looking for it right away so they had a head start and when they were looking for it they were looking for it they would have been looking in the wrong place.
The big issue is why are we using 70's level tech to keep track of planes?
We don't do that with our boats.
Some kid trying to sail across the world gets lost and we can find them on the ocean in a matter of hours, so why can't we find a plane?

 

That's what I was trying to explain before but it obviously got lost in the hypocrisy above. Let me try again: There are two parts of a radar signal - the part that "paints" the plane to get the return signal that we all assume is the only function of radar in the first place and the part that queries the transponder for details of the plane. If you turn off the transponder, the air traffic controller (ATC) only see a blip - which might or might not be a plane. It's not "completely off radar", it's an unidentified flying object (which is the original definition of that term - a plane that hadn't revealed it's identity yet). The ATC can see that something is there but doesn't have the usual identifying tags that go along with it - in the case of defensive radar, this is the point where you arm your surface-to-air missiles and scramble your jets because whatever is inbound looks very suspicious. So Part 1 sees the plane but Part 2 never gets an answer to its query, so the ATC is left guessing as to what they're seeing. Some ATC systems - apparently - don't track those objects too well - part of the problem is that they're so easily fooled by the very simplistic nature of radar. Unless they're using Dopler radar (which uses 2 or more sending stations and a single receiving station), the ATC is only getting a 2 dimensional picture of what they're seeing. Last I heard, most but not all major airports use Dopler radar to track planes, but all radar systems have a finite range. As I've seen it explained, MS370 was towards the edge of the screen when it went missing. The next radar system it would have encountered never picked it up.

Honestly, this is getting more and more confusing since there is a lot of conflicting information out there about the exact set of circumstances and who's done what. The Chinese are now retracting that photo of the flotsam they spotted that may or may not be a part of the plane.

The ping of the black box will last another 20-ish days. You have to be pretty close to hear it - within 10 or 20 miles I would think. The best description of the search I have heard is that it's like looking for a specific pickup truck in Pennsylvania from the air but there are a lot of folks out driving their pickup trucks and cars all day.
--- merged: Mar 13, 2014 at 11:12 AM ---

The reason we find the kid in his boat is that he radios his suspected position and asks for help. You know where to start looking. Alternatively, boats come equipped with a radio beacon that activates as soon as the lifeboat inflates. There's not much use for that in a plane that hits the water since the first time that portion of the plane gets wet could very easily be when the plane is under 20' or more feet of water.

The tech may have been invented in the 60's and 70's but it's constantly being updated and upgraded. But there are easy ways to do things and hard ways.

 

I guess I thought the technology was more better.

 

Don't confuse technology with physics. There are things we can do and things we can't. Like broadcasting radio waves through water easily. It can be done, but not easily or cheaply, and there are better ways to get the message there (usually).

 

How many more incidents will it take to spend the extra money? Its peoples lives were talking about

 

Are you cool with the price of a plane that can make this haul quadrupling? Or more?

It's one incident and we don't know what happened. Exactly what fixes are there going to be? There are physical weight and drag restrictions that are in play here. And you can't engineer yourself out of every possible problem. Sooner or later something will happen that you didn't expect.

 

I don't mean just this plane but the others that have taken a while yo find. Like the one that took 2 years. Buy I didn't think about the cost aspect

 

Eh, I'm not so sure I agree with that. They seem to be fairly open to change and to finding better ways to do things safely. Now, they aren't going to change things that don't have an obvious problem, but if - for instance - they discovered that the black boxes weren't surviving crashes (which is NOT the case), then they'd re-engineer them. But there's not a problem, so they don't have a reason to fix it. But they are constantly looking for ways to avoid the problems that they know cause crashes. That's one of the reasons that you'll see a plane come in a lot of different variants. When the airlines refurbish a plane, they usually include the cockpit and instruments too - it's not just a case of slapping new seats and overheads into the cabin. But it also depends on what routes the plane flies and how many people it carries.

 

I think if you presented the airline industry with a simple and obvious change that improved safety, they'd fall all over themselves to implement it once they became convinced that it was as simple and easy as you presented it to be. But they're right to be conservative in making sure that there are no unintended consequences to changes.

 

The Air France one crashed in the middle of the South Atlantic nowhere near shipping lanes (where there's lots of boat traffic) or near land (which planes need because they can only fly so long at altitudes low enough to spot wreckage before needing to refuel. And most planes are not equipped for midair refueling. Add in that the two countries where the flight originated and was destined were not that close to the suspected (and actual) crash site.

 

Because I don't know, I'm going to ask..... what is the difference at flying at 30000 feet and 5000 feet? As far as fuel?

 

There's a big difference between "why they can" and "why they would".
--- merged: Mar 13, 2014 at 3:55 PM ---

Like @Borla said, the air is denser. You use more fuel to go the same distance at the same speed. This isn't exactly right but I think it serves: a baseball flies farther at Coors Field in Denver than it does at Camden Yards in Baltimore because there is a mile difference in altitude. The same hitters (regardless of where they live) have different statistics at higher altitudes because a ball hit exactly the same at sea level in Baltimore goes farther in Denver because there are few air molecules getting in the way and slowing it down.

 

Well put. I understand that now that its in lamens terms. Thanks @borla too