EgyptAir says Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo 'disappeared from radar'

boing
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It appears that it lost radar contact over the Mediterranean Sea. That doesn’t bode well for a happy ending.

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Here is a link to the Airliners.net thread about the situation:

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6699386/

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Here are a number of photos of the plane: http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?regsearch=SU-GCC

The plane is registration SU-GCC, model is an Airbus A320, 13 years old. It looks like it was only about 25% full. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family

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condolences to the families of those aboard. :sob:

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We don’t actually know there has been a crash yet.

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I thought we were past the window where the plane could be off radar without having crashed?

Well here’s hoping for the best.

I’m not a fan of the telegraph, but their article has a pretty good timeline and links to info as it comes in:

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Yes but it could have landed, however unlikely that is. However I am seeing posts about debris being seen off Karpathos. No idea if it is from the aircraft though. Several surface vessels have been redirected to search for the aircraft and one of them seems to have stopped entirely.

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Maybe they just switched on Stealth Mode, but I’m expecting the worst.

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‘disappeared from radar’

You’d think by now they’d get a handle on this recurring issue.

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From the last infamous disappeared flight i somewhat recall the conversation of why planes weren’t more accurately tracked. I believe it had something to do with the sheer data and system complexity of doing real time tracking of every single flight and keeping a history for each one as well. I don’t know how accurate this is however, considering how phones are so easily tracked, but i’m no expert.

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From @Matthew_MW_Holl’s link, here’s a likely-sounding comment:

Once a plane has disappeared from radar long enough for the media to get a hold of it, or for the airline to release an official statement… the threshold for “everything being okay” has usually been exceeded.

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Your “humility” is refreshing.

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Hopefully more refreshing than a hot dumpster

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Is that what they call a “Cleveland Steamer” in your neck of the woods?

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No, but i think they should now :smiley:

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From what I’ve heard, a lot of the information from “radar” is planes pinging a receiver with their latest GPS coordinates, identification numbers and such, and that is what’s displayed for flight control. Actual radar may be used, but not always. So to “disappear” may be to stop acknowledging the query.

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So to “disappear” may be to stop acknowledging the query.

Or to stop broadcasting, as in the case of ADS and ADS-B. To summarise, positioning services available to ATC consist of:

  1. Primary radars (work by reflection)
  2. Secondary radars (rely on a transponder on the aircraft)
  3. Aerial dependent surveillance (position and other data transmitted by the aircraft over satellite links)
  4. Aerial dependent surveillance - Broadcast (position and other data transmitted by the aircraft over radio)
  5. Multilateration (aircraft transmits a message which is recieved by multiple ground stations. Sort of GPS in reverse)

Note that older secondary radars transmit limited data over mode c while newer ones transmit more data over mode S, using essentially the same protocol as ADS-B.

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