Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/17/three-year-search-for-missing.html
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To be fair, the ones who save lives by being highly-trained and alert when disaster threatens probably deserve to wear a bit of gold brocade when they’re not in the “office” (since they typically don’t wear their jackets and hats while working), and I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to any that haven’t had their mettle tested by misfortune yet.
Meanwhile, a transponder is like any other electronic gadget on the plane, needed for some conditions and not needed for others, and needs to be switch-on-and-offable. In fact, I think it would be hard to build one you couldn’t switch off.
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“It’s 2017 and they still dress airline pilots up like commodores and let them turn off the transponders.”
WTF is that supposed to mean? I don’t know if there is a case for ever turning a transponder off - but apparently there is a switch.
Some air-head might be able to explain why.
About the uniform - what kind of costume would you think appropriate beschizza? Marseille sailor? Milkman? Sumo wrestler? (those planes are rather big) Maybe Ronald Macdonald? Yeah - that would inspire passengers a bunch, huh?
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The LEAST appropriate costume would be a Superman one. I don’t think someone dressed as Superman is as worried about keeping the plane in the air as much as I am.
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Any non-essential system can be isolated as a precaution against fire.
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I get into all sorts of arguments on MH370. I think more than enough has been spent. The argument that finding the plane will materially benefit airline safety is spurious. Airline safety is already very high indeed. Continuing improvements increasingly rely on simulation, modelling and the analysis of non-crash failures, rather than on air crash investigation. Air crashes are now so rare that their analysis doesn’t contribute much to improving reliability and safety. Air crashes where the plane is hard to find are even rarer. If the cause of the MH370 crash was common, and therefore statistically important, we’ve seen it elsewhere. If it was rare, then understanding of it, by definition won’t add much to our knowledge base, nor materially improve the overall safety of what is already a very safe activity.
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Finding the plane will only benefit satisfying our curiosity.
Not finding the plane will benefit years of “unexplained mystery” shows on The “History” Channel.
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Hopefully CNN has moved onto another story by now.
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The experts and equipment used for esoteric deep ocean searching might also be appreciating the gig. You don’t get the sense that academic oceanography is a chronically over-funded discipline; and the ones from the military side might enjoy a break from playing Sub Hunt all the time.
That’s not a terribly strong justification to keep up the search, though. It would certainly have been nice to find the bulk of the aircraft; but if you are looking for something in the ocean and it isn’t in any of the likely places or the unlikely ones that you’ve had time to check, it is about as lost as anything in this gravity well can be(and quite possibly more lost than objects on some of the better behaved planets and moons nearby).
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It probably has some benefit to the families too, I would think.
ISTR that during the search for MH370 they found several olde tyme sunken vessels.
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