Page 38 - Acars News Today

Responsibility. whats your policy? >> back now with the breaking news tonight in the disappearance of malaysia airlines flight 370. an official telling our barbara starr that the intelligence community is quote focusing on those in the cockpit of the plane. they believe that one of the people is deliberately responsible for the missing jet. could terror have been the motivation here? back with me is richard quest and also a terror analyst for cbn news. and richard, last voice in the cockpit, "al...

It wouldnt use the entire runway to stop but that would be a comfortable landing for this aircraft. but in this particular instance, my staff, now i put on my investigators hat rather than my pilots hat, my staff researched all of the airports on the malaysian peninsula and the last reported pings along the course that youve outlined. there are dozens of airports along that route, some 6,000 feet long, some 8,000 feet long, some 5,000 feet long. now, if i were flying a heavy jet during the eveni...

Just kind of projecting where the plane should be, correct? as it moves from one radar station to another, correct? >> there are huge gaps in the radar coverage around the world. and especially over open water. in the north atlantic just every day theres hundreds of flights that go from new york or boston to europe and back. there is a pretty big chunk of the atlantic ocean that that is no radar coverage. and we use other means to communicate. that flight boeing when they built the 777 put satel...

Were pings coming from that location. now assuming that, i find it extremely difficult to think that somehow the system failed, that 777 is the most reliable aircraft in the air in my opinion. and to think that that whole system, the three buses that we have, the three generators, the backup generator which can be driven by air, that can power those avionics and those communication channels as well. so i believe that it was taken off by intent, that that aircraft was intentfully disabled from co...

Other means of communication? >> the only reason i can think of that anybody would do that would be if there was smoke in the cockpit and it was suspected to be an electrical fire. they wouldnt make an essentially a left turn. they would make a u turn. they would go to the nearest field. so very very unlikely in this scenario. >> fran, what do you make of this? >> sorry, go ahead, ron. >> what he was talking about is understandable. but the acars was still working. and the individual that had th...

Supposition or is this looking pretty plausible? >> it looks plausible to me at this point. you know, to think of where the pings are coming from, we touched on this before, its acars, the aircraft communication and reporting system. thank you very much. >> and if you could, for the rest of us who dont live your world, thats the first ive really heard much about acars. i dont really understand much about it. >> acars was set up so the information from the aircraft, maintenance information about ...

Up next well dig deeper into the electronics behind todays news. theres all different systems that a plane uses to communicate. primary radar, secondary radar, adsb system, acars system. were going to look at all of that, all the different ways a 777 can communicate with the outside world and how jim sciutto demonstrated those can be silenced. later what it takes to locate wreckage at sea. why other searches succeed and why this one could be the most challenging one yet. ameriprise asked people ...

>> the acars system can be turned off manually through a circuit breaker, is that right? >> yeah. you would pull a circuit breaker. theres not a switch in the cockpit for it because its on all the time. its for an automatic system. but if there was a fire or a problem you always have a circuit breaker so you can disable the system. if you knew what you were doing you could pull the circuit breaker on that. youd have to have a fairly sophisticated understanding of the airplane to do that. >> mary...

If the data reporting system suddenly shut down, how would the pilots handle that? >> if it was a mechanical failure. >> if the data reporting systems just shut down, what would the pilots do? >> if the data reporting system shut down, like the acars, thats a relatively big deal wechdeal. we would talk to dispatchers and maintenance. they are the folks that make the flight plan. they follow us along the route the entire way. we would talk to them and try to trouble shoot it. >> why is it they ar...

Spinning it out so people can see fuel consumption, things like that. the question of course, anderson, as youre asking tonight what are you getting from acars. >> tom, appreciate that. i want to dig deeper on that now with john hansman, who is a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at at m.i.t. and mary skiavo, who currently represents transportation accident victims and their families. you just heard about the radar one of the most obvious ways of cmmunicating, radio, primary radar and se...