As AirAsia debris recovered, cause of crash still unknown
It's an update and the official story is they found it.
"Jet’s disappearance shows gap in data tracking, analysts say" by Christopher Drew, New York Times December 30, 2014
NEW YORK — Just nine months after a Malaysia Airlines flight vanished, the puzzling loss of another passenger plane once again has highlighted an urgent question: How can modern jetliners simply disappear in today’s hyper-connected world?
As the search for the missing AirAsia Flight 8501 plane off the coast of Indonesia entered its third day, aviation specialists said the difficulty in locating the wreckage underscored the limitations in how planes are tracked and showed how little has changed since the last disappearance.
Airlines use satellites to provide Internet connections for passengers, yet they still do not stream data in real time about a plane’s location and condition.
“Everybody learned a lesson after the 9/11 hijackings,” in which some of the terrorists turned off the transponders that signal a plane’s location, said Peter Goelz, a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. “So if that squawk suddenly goes off, it gets a lot of attention here.”
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"Hiker, 60, missing since Monday
PORT ANGELES — Teams resumed a search Saturday for a 60-year-old man missing in Washington’s Olympic National Park. Jim Griffin went for a hike Monday on the Olympic Hot Springs Trail. His friends reported him missing Wednesday night after he failed to show up at a Christmas Eve dinner. The National Park Service said three searchers spent that night looking for him, and two two-person teams looked for him on Thursday. In the afternoon, they found his day pack 50 feet off the trail (AP)."
"Search suspended for Olympic National Park hiker" Associated Press December 30, 2014
PORT ANGELES, Wash. — Officials suspended a search for a missing hiker in Olympic National Park in Washington state after no additional signs of the 60-year-old man were discovered over the weekend, a spokeswoman said Monday.
‘‘There’s nothing more we can do,’’ Jailene Wray said about the search for Jim Griffin of Port Angeles. His chances of survival were low, she said.
Still, rangers and others were patrolling the area and hoping to hear from other hikers who might have seen Griffin in a hot springs pool, she said.
Griffin went for a day hike on Dec. 22 and was reported missing on Christmas Eve by friends when he failed to show up at a dinner.
His pack was found on Christmas Day about 50 feet off a trail. A can of soda, coffee cup, and bag of freeze-dried food were set up on a nearby log.
Nearly two-dozen people completed an intensive grid search within 500 feet of the pack. They also searched a wider area with steep slopes and heavy brush.
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LAST DAY UPDATE:
"Remains of missing plane found off Borneo coast; Accident’s cause unknown; no survivors found" by Thomas Fuller, New York Times December 31, 2014
SURABAYA, Indonesia — The crash was a particular loss to Surabaya’s ethnic Chinese minority. Flights from Surabaya to Singapore serve as shuttles for residents who do business in Singapore or have family members there. The air disaster seems also to have also disproportionately affected Surabaya’s Christian community.
If passengers from both the AirAsia plane and Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the jet that disappeared in March are included in the calculations, 1,320 people died in air accidents in 2014, the deadliest year since 2005, according to the Bureau of Aircraft Incidents Archives, an organization that tracks aviation accidents.
But three-fifths of the 1,320 fatalities stemmed from just three disasters: Flight 8501, Flight 370, and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine in July with 298 people aboard.
Overall, the number of airline crashes has been on a downward trend for several decades despite the rapid growth in air traffic. Even so, the two-day delay in locating the AirAsia wreckage seems likely to add to the pressure on airlines to do more, by equipping their aircraft with devices that report their location coordinates and other diagnostic information more frequently....
Which indu$try will be benefitting now from the incremental increase in the $urveillance grid??
I'm not saying I want planes dropping out of the sky, not at all, never. But all this in paper stinks these days.
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Are you guys sure it was not Korea behind it as I suggested?
I'm suspending my search of the Boston Globe. Enjoy the flight, readers.