Out of Control - Why Can Pilots Still Shut Off Transponders?

One reason is that doing high traffic times when the radar is cluttered with other aircraft IFF data tags or storm clouds, it can be hard to make out a specific airplane's IFF. The controller will ask you to squawk to see you better. There are also times when all the data tag info does not show up on the radar scope, or it may be incorrect or garbage data tags. Certain atmospheric conditions and equipment malfunctions are normally the case of this. One other reason is to verify CUS SPD and ALT if you are flying close to military restricted airspace and they are doing a live fire exercise, you might be asked to squawk, just to verify your data tags.

Okay, I'll bite.

Find an example of a commercial airliner where no debris was discovered on the surface.

They likely thought it a fruitless effort given they were over the ocean.

Also, most on board were Chinese. Their culture is much more submissive to one in authority.

Exactly... ACARS and Transponder, as well as 99% of all the other CB's are on the Flight Deck. No need to go to the Avionics Compartment...

You have been given multiple answers to your questions in such frank and simplistic form that a child could understand them, yet you refuse to accept them, continuing to harangue this thread with your own views, making statements from a non aviator standpoint, rather than accepting an answer given to you in good faith. When you have gotten this way before, I have simply told you to kiss my a** and that I am outa here. I do it again.

You are expecting to equip an aircraft on the automatic assumption a pilot will at some point intentionally tamper or alter the configuration for the sole purpose of ill-intent. At that point, why not just put monkeys in the flight deck and fly the airliner like a remotely-operated military drone?

The probability of an airline pilot or any pilot carrying out such an act is far south of the 0.08% of concealed handgun license holders who commit a crime. I can think of only one case in the United States and that was an off-duty FedEx pilot facing termination. That's one pilot out of some 600,000 US pilots which includes air carrier and charter operators.

Now, I'm going to turn this around in such a politically incorrect way it's bound to piss off someone though I really don't care....

There is indeed a crash (Egypt Air 990) where the cause was clearly a Muslim suicide taking more than two hundred passengers with him. Though the Egyptian aviation authorities claimed differently and called it mechanical error, I'll put a lot more trust into the NTSB and Boeing who built the plane to say there was no mechanical error. The probable cause was inconclusive only to the point they did not explain why the first officer's actions were as indicated on the FDR. But it does not take a Phd based on CVR and FDR data to understand his actions were intentional to crash a plane.

So... How about we put Muslim pilots through a much greater mental health screening? Or, perhaps we ban all Muslims from being pilots? No other religion in the past couple hundred years has a record of committing acts seated in their religion. Certainly that's a rational basis for such action?

Yes, that's being a bit extreme. And, so is forbidding a pilot from having absolute control over the aircraft and its equipment as his responsibility.

First, I see no sign the author is a pilot, let alone has any significant experience in cockpit resources. He was supposed to have written an aviation section for a book on the 9/11 terrorist acts. But, still no indication of his qualifications. By my book I have more experience than he does just being a single-engine instructor teaching a thousand hours in glass cockpits.

As answered several times, you cannot have any piece of equipment on an aircraft you cannot disable and remove power to in some fashion. To not have such is setting the stage for an electrical fire that cannot have the ignition source extinguished.

ADS-B is a great system but it is still ground-based. It's worthless over water beyond a given distance. I do not know if there are any plans for uplinking data to satellites as there are no satellites that can currently receive a signal to relay to ground-based controllers. Perhaps someday they'll launch such satellites and design an uplink to install in the planes to work with it. Given full use of ADS-B is not mandated until 2020, I figure it will be 2050 before there is satellite use. We're talking government plans. But, just the same as transponders... it must have a means to disable it and disconnect power.

His last point you quote tells me the guy has no experience flying IFR in solid instrument conditions, let alone in a heavy volume area. I do not want a transponder sending erroneous data to a controller. If I'm equipped with only one transponder, that's it. Intermittent transponders are more irritating to controllers than a primary target they tag and follow. They'll ask for my altitude and I'll change only according to their instructions, especially if I'm flying into Hobby or Love with failed equipment.

My qualified opinion as a lowly flight instructor... the author of that article is an idiot.

Me either. I'm just some dumb single-engine flight instructor. ;-)

I've never even stayed at a Holiday Inn Express!

I doubt if you can fathom the scope of concept of ' brain storming '. Or can you ?
Question I am raising is how to guard AGAINST abuse of the ability to switch on/off any crucial system like communication and/or locational kind ! Which involves so many others , whose safety is of prime importance. Those inside and those outside,in other birds .
None of you is trying to answer that.
All you and those from your tribe are trying to do is to project that I am someone with brains located below the shoulders ! Ha !
Bravo for being so intelligent .

That explanation is sufficient short of saying it is an electrical device that can fail, operate intermittently or transmit erroneous information. In the event of that it must have the capability for disabling.

It can also be the ignition source for an electrical fire or the wiring leading to it. That breaker must be accessible to the pilot.