EgyptAir 804 Disappears Over Mediterranean (opens in new tab)

As always - never read the comments.

> Why is it that we can track boats with satellites but not planes?

Satellites don't track either ships or aircraft, except for huge nuclear-powered RORSATs that watch the fleets of rival superpowers.

However whilst many trans-oceanic aircraft do have VHF / UHF datalink uplinks through the Inmarsat satellite network the majority use line-of-sight UHF transponders ( beacon-tracking ) to supplement radar ( skin-tracking ):

https://fr24.com/2016-05-19/00:28/12x/MSR804/9c0b766

Transponder interrogation is often referred to as "secondary radar" but that's a misnomer that unfortunately took hold in the industry. It relies on 'squitting' a generated response, not on reflections from the aircraft structure.

Boats are tracked by their AIS beacons on board, not passively by radar. The beacons can be switched off or stop working just the same as the beacons on planes.

The article says it disappears from radar. When tracking aeroplanes there are two kinds of radar primary and secondary. Primary is actual radar, secondary isn't really radar at all but instead radio transmission of telemetry such as position, altitude, speed etc. This is equivalent to AIS, the system used to track boats that produced your image.

So we were tracking the plane but then the plane stopped transmitting tracking info for some reason (no idea if they even had it on primary radar). Someone could have turned it off or the plane could have crashed.

Like another commentor here I don't have a huge amount of trust in early media reports but what I read was that it was within radar range when it disapeared.

Those boats are presumably sending a signal that allows them to be tracked. When we "lose" a plane, it stops sending its tracking signal.

You have a complete image of flight activity in the area as well (see flightradar24). No doubt the plane crashed.

lets also not forget that there is a substantial presence of military fleets in the area, all equipped with radars etc if it was anything other than a crash they'd have noticed.

I could have missed something, but wasn't it 803 days? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=days+between+8+March+2...

Please stop.

Oh wait. Flight number is 804: 8 + 0 + 4 = 12

66 people aboard: 6 + 6 = 12

Must mean something!

Could someone have moved the Bermuda Triangle? Or find another one?

Lets wait for a few days before coming to any strange conclusions.

A volunteer to take BA 1 flight LCY to SNN departing in 3 hours?

What is the significance of 804?