Plane navigation
While new technologies such as GPS satellite tracking could have provided a more accurate minute-by-minute update on the planes location, not all planes are equipped, and there is no requirement for them to be. Flight Wisdom
That a four year old plane doesn’t have GPS when most four year old executive saloons do strikes me as odd.
Well the plane most likely had GPS onboard, but transmitting that position to a base station automatically is non-trivial, so they tend to rely on pilots telling controllers where they are, generally it works. What is most odd about this one is that the pilots didn’t have time/the ability to radio a mayday.
I am not sure about the non-trivial point, Marcus. When I was flying to and fro from the Dominican Republic on an Iberian A330, they had constant mid-Atlantic in-flight wifi. Holding my PDA to the window, I could pick up GPS signals (which I did, to allay boredom). Sending that GPS data to Google Latitude or Yahoo’s FireEagle over the in-flight wifi would have been incredibly easy. If my £350rrp XDA Orbit (built in 2006, I believe) can do this, why not a multi-million dollar aircraft?