[gvb]

a) Nobody on the ground knew AF447 was in trouble. The aircraft never broadcast a declaration of an emergency.

b) Even if there was telemetry that sent the aircraft control inputs and instrumentation to the ground, with thousands of aircraft in the air, nobody would have been watching AF447's telemetry, waiting for Something Bad to happen.

c) It was about four minutes between when the aircraft got in trouble and when it impacted the ocean. Even if the aircraft declared an emergency and someone was able to pull up the telemetry for that flight, it is highly unlikely they would have been able to identify the cause before the aircraft impacted.

Ref: http://visual.ly/air-france-flight-447-crash-timeline

[m4x]

So ask yourself why it never broadcast a declaration of emergency - the autopilot had disengaged due to an instrument malfunction, which should have generated an automated broadcast on the spot. Then somebody could start monitoring the telemetry from the the one (or five, or some other low number of planes) that were in trouble of some sort.

It would also be quite simple to be running a bunch of automated tests on the telemetry from every plane in the sky and flagging anything out of spec. AF447 fell into the ocean. It's pretty fucking simple for a computer to monitor the altitude of a plane and say "one of your planes has significantly deviated from it's target altitude".

And "highly unlikely they would have been able to identify the cause" seems highly unlikely. The plane was stalled, and somebody was pulling up as much as possible. Is it really hard to imagine a pilot on the ground being unable to spot what was going on?

Even the captain on board figured it out quickly once he was summoned - the problem was flagging the issue/asking for help was done solely at the pilots discretion and they chose not to tell any body what was going on until it was too late

[ekianjo]

> It's pretty fucking simple for a computer to monitor the altitude of a plane and say "one of your planes has significantly deviated from it's target altitude".

Look, read the AF447 case again and the reports of what happened in the cockpit! The pilots were not EVEN listening to the different alarms being triggered in the cockpit and did not realize that they were in danger no matter how many instruments they had indicating major issues in front of them. In such situations what would make you think they would give a shit at what an automated message coming from a land operation would tell them ?

[m4x]

If a pilot on the ground had checked the telemetry and seen that a) the plane was stalled and b) the elevator was at max deflection, he would have asked why that was the case and the pilot who wasn't in control would have realised what was going on. We aren't talking about giving the flight crew another automated message or bombarding them with unwanted input, just allowing somebody in a more sterile/low stress environment to monitor the telemetry for obvious problems

Sometimes a fresh opinion, or some input from somebody who is removed from the situation, is all that you need to set you on the right track or break an assumption that you were incorrectly holding.

[ekianjo]

The accident occured in minutes, there was no time for a potential operator to do anything about it anyway. Too many "if" in your scenario to make it sound plausible.