Missing Planes
We all think airliners are tracked with pin-point precision throughout the flight, but that’s not quite the case. On long haul flights over oceans, airliners vanish from radar for a few hours. Pilots radio their position to the airline’s operations team every hour, making this is the only way for airlines to know where their aircraft are. Consider also that airliners fly at speeds of nearly 850km/h. This results in a very large search area in the case of a missing aircraft. But, through ingenious, locally developed technology, missing planes like Malaysian Airlines flight 370 could be a thing of the past.
Producer: Eugene Botha
Presenter: Nhlanhla Sehume
View the video clip on the Carte Blanche website here