The complexity above us

Many of our compatriots, even those or especially those who do not fly and have never flown, must sometimes wonder at the complexity of the skies above us, where thousands of aircraft criss-cross the globe every day (for a stunning animation of this see www.flightradar24.com) without incident or mishap, punctuated only rarely by a foul-up or tragedy.  

This is achieved not only by airframes and jet fuel, but by some of the most sophisticated computer technology and information systems on earth.  Systems that do not just direct and navigate the aircraft, but ensure they do not collide with each other, and find each one a landing slot at the airport of destination,even at airports which handle hundreds of flights per hour.  Long before anyone had heard the word internet, SITA, the airlines technical organisation, had a  communication network and email system which linked the globe.  The first online interactive system was SABRE, developed for American Airlines in the US in the 1960's to automate their reservation system, and thus cater for thousands more passengers and fill their flights more efficiently.  SABRE and other systems still exist, with fiendishly complex yield management systems, which enable anyone with access to a website such as expedia.com to request a journey between the most obscure destinations on the planet, on any required date, and have the best fare displayed within a couple of seconds, to be booked immediately, if desired.

There are  still glitches.  Try to explain why, when my daughter's family were confirmed booked on the 'South African Express' (seemingly not the same as SAA) from Cape Town to Windhoek, and even received an email the previous day inviting them to check in online, they arrived at Cape Town airport at 4.30 am for the 6 am flight, only to be told that not only was the flight cancelled, but the route was cancelled, several months before.  They had bizarrely printed out boarding passes for a non-existent flight.

Of course, there are more serious gaps.  Since a delivery van can have its position tracked anywhere in the country at any time to within a couple of metres, you might assume the same holds for aircraft during their flight.  Surprisingly, this is not so: planes flying over land are tracked by conventional radar, but if they fly long haul over the great oceans, they fly alone.  Any accident will necessitate a long an arduous search on the bottom of the sea for the 'black boxes', which are still basically 1970's recording devices.

This of course brings us to the search for MH370, which has just resumed, at a cost of another US$25m.  What are the chances of finding it now?  It was said that our knowledge of the topography of Mars is some 100 times more accurate than our knowledge of the floor of the Indian Ocean, and the months of delay have been caused by attempts to better map the latter, which at least has scientific value of its own.   

But how difficult will it be to locate the remains of the airliner?  Imagine that South Africa was uninhabited; a lunar wilderness covered with 3000 metre mountain ranges and vast sludge and rock filled valleys and ravines.  Now imagine the whole being submerged in 5000 metres of water.  Now search that for some pieces of aluminium.  What are the chances?  And if they do, what are the chances of discovering the causes of the disaster, especially if due to human factors?