Looks like the editorial staff on stalon.com runs commentary stories on today's top news stories, including this crashed airliner. Missing are the ones that put their liberal policies in a bad light.

I keep waiting for the news item, commentary or whatever shred of journalistic decency they can spare on the Muslim convert who killed an Army recruiter and wounded another one....the motive solely based on a warped idealogy much like the Tillman murder. But no, as parallel as both motives are, Stalon refuses to pay tribute to these fallen soldiers. Count 5 or 6 stories on Tillman, but can you spare some bytes for the soldiers?..............crickets..........chirping......tribute............for...........soldiers........... At least the insects recognize the soldiers.

First of all my condolences to the families who lost their loved ones in the crash.

Learnt something new today ITCZ. Googling it yielded wealth of fascinating information. Just like TWA 800, EGYPT AIR 990 we may never know the real cause of 447 crash.

Although turbulence may not cause a plane to crash it sure can sink my heart. Thanks for the info Mr. Smith.

It seems incredible that in this age of GPS, airliners can still go "out of range of radar" so that we have no idea where the plane vanished. Shouldn't we know exactly where every plane it all the time?

for writing this. i was hoping i wouldn't have to wait until friday to hear what you had to say.

a terrible tragedy.

GPS only tells you where you are, or tells the plane where it is. There's no way, using GPS, to know where someone else is. The satellites don't "track" a gps device, the device uses signals from multiple satellites to figure out where it is.

If you wanted to use GPS to track an object, like a plane, that'd require a secondary transmitter like a cell phone or some sort of satellite link to relay the information.

can you please go post somewhere else or at least acknowledge the tragedy of what this article is about?

insensitive jerk.

I realize this might be stupid, but why would US (or someone else's) satellites not have picked up SOMETHING when the plane had really crashed into the ocean? I figure if we can find nuclear reactors in Iraq, we can see a plane crash. No? Anyone know? thanks.

Congratulations,

Your determination in leaving no letters column unsullied by your inane drivel is quite impressive.

"Stalon"? What do you have against Silvester Stallone?

he wouldn't have hit the birds in the first place.

that France will spare no expense to uncover the cause of this disaster if possible. The automated message would seem (to me at least), to indicate a sudden break-up of the plane. The possibility that this was caused by some sort of explosive device (and I am NOT saying it was), will spur them to recover as much wreckage as possible (I hope).

No matter what the cause, I think it is imperative that every effort be made to uncover it.

Spy sattelites are not monitoring every inch of the Earth's surface at any given moment -- they have to be pointed to where you want to look. Presumably there was no particular reason to look at this stretch of ocean that night.

Patrick,

You say in this article: "This time, something was different. How so? We might never know."

I have always been under the impression that pilots can radio their situation to wherever they have to in the event of an emergency. Is it a case of things happening too quickly to communicate what's happening? Why else would we not have heard anything from the pilots as it was happening?

Satellites have to be looking at something in order to see it. There's not much use in having a really expensive high resolution satellite looking at an empty stretch Atlantic of ocean. While there may well be weather satellites trained on the area, the aren't going to be the kind that gives real-time imaging of the sort that would show something like that. Oh yeah, the area was covered by a giant storm too, so unless it could see through the clouds...

I realize that self-plagiarism may not be a real thing, but if you're going to cut and paste from your old columns (see here: http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2006/11/03/askthepilot207/), don't you think you should inform your readers? I do.

1. Why aren't passenger airliners passively tracked across the ocean? Why does the location of a plane depend upon that plane's system functioning properly? You would think that with all of the satellites and submarines and tracking devices we have, we could track passenger airliners when they fly over vast unpopulated regions.

2. I would like someone to study the passenger manifest. Was someone on that plane tied to 9/11? Was someone tied to the Bush Crime Family? Did someone know too much, and have to be taken out?

A satellite could only have seen the crash if it just happened to be pointed directly at the site at the right time. Since most countries aren't likely to be interested in monitoring swaths of ocean that are completely empty 99.9% of the time (and even if they were, that particular spot is just one in millions of other empty spots), the chances of anything having seen it are pretty slim.

On the other hand if they have some idea of where to look, satellite imaging might help them find the debris field...

A transatlantic flight like this, well into its flight, would be flying at ~37000 feet, right? Isn't this way above storm cloud level? Maybe someone with more meteorologic skills could help me out here.

I just want you to know that I appreciate your articles, Mr. Smith! I find flying so... unnerving, and something about your sensible and honest explanations is very reassuring.

Spy satellites don't observe every part of the earth's surface at every moment, they're moving around in orbit and need to be told to take photos of certain regions at certain points in their orbit. It seems very unlikely to me that any spy agency would have had their satellites targeted at an empty stretch of ocean.

Furthermore, spy satellites cameras are limited by the same things as any cameras: clouds and darkness. I suppose it's possible that they would have some sort of infrared or UV instruments that might work better, but all in all, I doubt a spy satellite could spot a moving aircraft, at night, in the middle of a cloudy storm.

The poster who noted that a GPS device only calculates its own position is correct. However, it does seem strange to me that aircraft do not routinely relay their own GPS-determined position to air traffic controller by radio. It seems like this would be a simple thing to have happen automatically on a separate channel from voice traffic.

Patrick, any comment?