Geoffrey Thomas
Appearances
Global News Podcast
US air crash: 64 feared dead
These sorts of things don't happen in the United States anymore. I mean, America has the safest airline system in the world. There are literally tens of thousands of flights every day. Mid-air collisions were supposed to be something in the past before the technology enabled aircraft to electronically talk to each other and warn pilots of an impending collision.
Global News Podcast
US air crash: 64 feared dead
That's a system called TCAS, which is Traffic Collision Avoidance System. It's saved literally tens of thousands of lives over the last decade. 20 or so, 30 years, an amazing bit of technology. All commercial aircraft are fitted with it and most military aircraft are fitted with it.
Global News Podcast
US air crash: 64 feared dead
And basically how the system works is that signal, the transponder signal that goes out to air traffic control and is picked up by all these flight radar apps that we've all got on our phones, The aircraft send those signals out, so what the aircraft also have is a receiver, which also picks up that signal.
Global News Podcast
US air crash: 64 feared dead
And the computers compare the two signals, you know, what am I doing and what's he doing or she doing, and they alert the pilots of an impending accident. collision and tell them what to do, to climb or to descend, and they give the opposite advice to the other aircraft. So technically it should never have happened. It's absolutely perplexing and terribly tragic.