> We should instead supplement our sturdy but silent black boxes with a chattier partner. The new device would not survive a catastrophic breakup. Nor would it receive the omniscient breadth of data trusted to a black box. Instead, it would (1) receive a subset of flight data (e.g. location, alerts, and pilot inputs) and (2) immediately send them to a ground-based datacentre. These data would back up air traffic controllers' radars in real time.
It seems to me you've described ADS-B[0], which this plane had and which will become a requirement in US and EU soon. Looking at sites like flightradar24.com, which use ADS-B data, it would seem most airliners already use it. The only difference from your requirements is that ADS-B doesn't broadcast any information about pilot inputs.
According to records from one of the sites which use ADS-B, the signal from this plane just stopped [1]. This could have happened because of a severe failure in flight, or maybe because the plane descended below cruising altitude which happened to take it out of receiver range. In either case, it shows that the proposed scheme would be of limited use and it might not have helped in this particular case.
It seems to me you've described ADS-B[0], which this plane had and which will become a requirement in US and EU soon. Looking at sites like flightradar24.com, which use ADS-B data, it would seem most airliners already use it. The only difference from your requirements is that ADS-B doesn't broadcast any information about pilot inputs.
According to records from one of the sites which use ADS-B, the signal from this plane just stopped [1]. This could have happened because of a severe failure in flight, or maybe because the plane descended below cruising altitude which happened to take it out of receiver range. In either case, it shows that the proposed scheme would be of limited use and it might not have helped in this particular case.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_dependent_surveillanc...
[1] I'll search for the source when I get back to my computer. It was discussed in /r/aviation.