SatNav for planes

[Rev. Green]

A car's sat nav is accurate to 5 metres. Is it unreasonable to expect an aeroplane's position to be known better than "mid Atlantic"?

[youngmafbog]

I am sure the position is better known than 'mid Atlantic', however positions aer rarely given out as it attracts all sorts of unwelcome attention and diverts from the 'rescue' process.

Also I even if you know the point where it got to, once it explodes or breaks up thousnads of feet up it could end up anywhere. The 'blackbox' will of course be trnasmitting. If its down deep though we will never know what happened.

[jake-the-peg]

Remember too that the bottom of the Atlantic is not flat. There are mountain ranges down there.

How long did it take to find the Titanic?

[Gromit]

Does your sat nav work under water?

[Gromit]

Aircraft use a Transponder which basically receives a radio signal from air traffic control and the airplane automatically sends a response back. It can be affected by severe weather, and it obviously no use once the plane has crashed into the ocean.

The position of the plane will be known in relation to its last transponder message, but could have flown several miles from there.

[Gromit]

DDebris from the plane, including seats, has now been spotted by search aircraft.

[rov1200]

Strange because if Iran launched a missile towards the US they would know about it soon after launch?

[Gromit]

rov1200

Would they. Terrorists could hijack 4 planes over the US without any interceptor planes being launched for 2 hours.