Each of these ways has pointed searchers in different directions-adding to the confusion about the plane's whereabouts. (See: ' Why It's Taking So Long to Find Missing Malaysia Airlines Plane.')įor now, there's only a handful of ways aircraft communicate with the ground. But the time to address the issue is not in the heat of the moment, while the fate of the 239 people onboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 hangs in the balance.
'In a perfect world, you would do it,' says Michael Barr, who teaches aviation accident investigation at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Some say that rather than storing flight data onboard, modern aircraft should be transmitting information in a continuous stream during flight. That's because the most critical information about the Boeing 777's flight path and operating systems are locked up in the flight data recorder, or black box, on the missing plane.Īs up to a dozen nations expand their search over nearly 27,000 nautical miles, aviation experts question whether it's time to change how planes talk to the ground. And yet a 250-ton jumbo jet equipped with space-age systems has been missing for six days. Mysterious disappearances of airplanes belong to age of Amelia Earhart.