I think the other part of trying to find the black box is, if there is a mechanical reason, lets check all the other planes to see if they have the same problem.
Anyone ever have this thought? Theres this ugly girl I went to college with that I knew through friends. I never had a meaningful conversation with her or anything other than the normal platitudes. Nice enough person, nothing wrong with her at all (except her face looks like something melted silly putty onto a skeleton) but shes kind and has a bubbly personality that seems to generally enjoy life. However, if she vanished into thin air one day I wouldn't care. Not something tragic or violent per say, but if she spontaneously popped like a grape or was abducted by aliens and was never seen again, I wouldn't feel a single emotion about it. Not even empathy for her sure to be devastated loved ones. Its kind of an interesting feeling. This person did nothing to me and I should feel bad for her if she was abducted by an alien race (perhaps to rejoin the silly putty-face people), but I just wouldnt. It would have no impact on my life whatsoever aside from not gagging on my food when I check Facebook during lunch sometimes.
A study I read years ago outlined how aviation safety rates drop exponentially for aircraft flagged outside western Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, South Korea, etc due to lack of and enforcement of stringent safety, maintenance and training standards. Essentially it said you're taking your life in your hands by flying on a non-first world flagged aircraft. A floating flight recorder is worthless if it's still buried inside the aircraft when it hits the water. Detachable floating ELT's exist (the jet I flew on in the military has one) but figuring out how it'll detach only when the aircraft is about to crash and not during a normal flight is a difficult problem to figure out. Yep, all of those things exist, but even ignoring the cost, it will take a lot of time to develop a solution for every aircraft type and then retrofit every commercial aircraft in the world.
I get that, but is that need enough to justify rolling out a global satellite tracking and/or real-time data telemetry system? If there are problems, odds are they'll also happen in areas that are already tracked or the box is "easily" recovered, like the continental US or Europe. People generally have absolutely no concept of square footage involved in covering the major air routes outside of those areas. I remember reading something that said it would almost triple the cost of airfares, and that's assuming the global entities can get their shit together and actually agree how to do it. Those companies that want the data, are collecting it. Rolls Royce, for instance, has satellites in place that collect basic engine stats every 30 minutes (or some other set frequency), but nowhere near the data for the black box. I heard it explained this way... the global satellite data system currently in place for this is the equivalent of a dial-up modem, and tracking flights and providing black-box telemetry is akin to watching Netflix in HD. Needless to say you need a huge infrastructure upgrade (more like a whole new one) in order to pull it off.
Every time I get paranoid about air travel, I just go through the catalog of dumb shit I have done behind the wheel. And then compound that dumb shit with all of the people who are doing dumber shit than me. And then I remember that a special ed kid at my high school rolled the student driver vehicle with the instructor in it and yet still got his license. That keeps things in perspective.
After reading the last few pages, I had the following thought: I want a black box for my penis. I'd really love to remember where it's been. Am I alone in this? If so, I'll shut the fuck up.
Woman leaves sex toy in vagina for 10 years Kudos to her kegels. And speaking of kegels, http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/exercise-your-coochie
What, exactly, about United planes and pilots makes you think that they're going to do a better job evading a surface-to-air missile fired by rebel groups?
C'mon...there's got to be ONE other Yankees fan on this board...right?...RIGHT? Goddamnit...(shuffles away)
I wasn't referring to that specific incident but the Air Algerie and TransAsia Airways crashes, the ones which made people be like "oh snap, its a crash epidemic". The Star Alliance network of carriers has a pretty awesome safety track record, flying through combative airspace withstanding.