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Find My IPhone Used To Locate Plane Crash In Chile 95

spagiola writes "Late last week, a military transport aircraft with 17 people on -board went missing near Robinson Crusoe, Chile. The relatives of one of the crash victims logged into Find My iPhone and were able to isolate the coordinates of the last known whereabouts of the plane before it crashed. From the article: 'Rear Admiral Francisco García-Huidobro explained the founding that garnered a lot of attention today, and it has to do with an iPhone belonging to one of the victims of the aereal accident in Juan Fernández, in a beach in Bahía Carvajal. The phone signal could be captured thanks to the GPS system, however, water ended up shutting it down. Nevertheless, García Huidoro explained that they managed to plot the last position from where the signal was last generated, which will be made public tomorrow.'"
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Find My IPhone Used To Locate Plane Crash In Chile

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  • by Sir Mal Fet ( 1402403 ) on Wednesday September 07, 2011 @06:38PM (#37333932)
    To put this in a bit of context, Robinson Crusoe Island (Isla Juan Fernandez is the official name) is very isolated and mostly inhabited by fishermen, and some scientific personnel. It was heavily struck by the tsunami after the earthquake last year, so the national state TV (TVN) conducted a series of short shows about the reconstruction of the island. The flight was carrying personnel to record a follow-up show.

    This was a military operated flight, but only brought civilians (two well-known TV presenters, persons from the National Culture Council, camera men, producers, and people related with the TV network, a businessman and philanthropist which had a ONG regarding the reconstruction, and personnel of said ONG) to record the show, so to answer your question, no, probably there were no problems regarding the tracking of military operations.

    So far the weather conditions plus the fact that the plane crashed at sea has caused that only few bodies have been found (4 confirmed out of 21), so the signal from the iPhone was an important lead to the victims' bodies whereabouts. It certainly beats the clairvoyants they are also using (seriously).

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