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Airplane disappearances over water....

Dec 29, 2014 5:49AM PST
Canada takes key role in effort to shine light on global aircraft surveillance blind spots

The world's oceans are a massive blind spot when it comes to aircraft surveillance, a fact that was tragically illustrated by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in March. But a new network of satellites that will begin launching in 2015 will offer complete global coverage for the first time — and Canada is a key player.

Today, ground-based radar is generally used to track aircraft as they fly over land. But once a plane is about 200 miles offshore, that surveillance drops off and pilots are reliant on less accurate forms of communication such as high-frequency radio or a text-based system called datalink.

Monday, tragedy struck again when an Indonesia AirAsia plane, an Airbus A320-200 disappeared after its pilot failed to get permission to fly higher to avoid bad weather during a flight from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore on Sunday. The plane was refused permission because of heavy air traffic.

Discussion is locked

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Interesting. 'Mankind tames globe!'
Dec 30, 2014 10:57AM PST

"Oops. Cancel that story, guys."
About 40 years ago a fierce storm surprised the L.A. area because the weather equipment wasn't what it is today. It sort of sneaked in under its own cloud cover, like Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. A previous storm about 30 years earlier had devastated the area, so the governments spent about a billion dollars paving the rivers (not kidding, folks) and building up other infrastructure. It worked and paid back the $1B in damage prevented.
Today the L.A. and other rivers are good for car chase scenes.
Anyway, planes are smaller of course.

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Now they want to un-pave paradise.
Dec 30, 2014 12:48PM PST