How come they don’t know where Air France is, shouldn’t airplane have GPS beacon by now?
pxn11 asked:
What about before it went missing. The beacon should broadcast it position along the route.
harrybrain.
They can really use a Zoombak at Bestbuys.
Techwingless. Have you heard of a Zoombak.
What about before it went missing. The beacon should broadcast it position along the route.
harrybrain.
They can really use a Zoombak at Bestbuys.
Techwingless. Have you heard of a Zoombak.
she had 4 such beacons on board but the satellites have failed to pick them up possibly because the aircraft is now thousands of feet under water – remember it drops to 10,000 in that part of the ocean
It’s called EPIRB, and it’s supposed to jettison and start transmitting automatically in the “event of a water landing”. I’ve been wondering about that, too.
Edit: Apparently on an aircraft it’s called an ELT, but it’s basically the same thing.
With the size of satellite based tracking systems these days I’d say you may well be right. But really they already do, they just missed some bits. If the maintenance link had also sent decent tracking info, and both were battery backed, then maybe they’d know where it had gone down.
There’s no such thing as a GPS beacon. GPS receivers only receive signals; they do not transmit their positions to anyone else.
Air France knows approximately where the flight was when communication and regular position reports were interrupted. If it flew on beyond that point, however, it could be anywhere.