Airlines move to better track planes a year after Flight 370
(Agencies) Updated: 2015-03-03 16:17British satellite communications company Inmarsat, which helped investigators determine the final flight path of Flight 370, says 11,000 commercial planes already have its satellite connection, representing more than 90 percent of the world's long-haul fleet. Airplanes flying over land would be tracked by ground radar stations.
Flight 370 was also supposed to be tracked by ground radar. Airline experts note that if 15-minute requirement was in place last year, Malaysia Airlines would have realized sooner that the plane was missing. Instead, it took more than a week to determine that the jet most likely went down in the Indian Ocean, roughly 1,100 miles (1,770 kilometers) west of Australia.
Still, in 15 minutes a plane can travel more than 150 miles.
The 15-minute standard "is a nice way to say, `We're making progress' but not really doing anything," said Ernest S. Arvai, a partner with aviation consultancy AirInsight.
That's why there is a second phase to the proposed rules. Any plane with 19 seats or more, built after 2020, would be required to automatically transmit its location every minute if the plane deviated from its route, made an unusual move such as a sudden drop or climb in elevation or if a fire was detected. Pilots could not disable the system.
However, given that aircraft can easily fly for 20 years or more, it would be 2040 or later that every plane in the sky would have such tracking abilities.
"You have to be realistic," said Andrew Herdman, director general of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines. In the future, airlines will benefit from new, cheaper avionics, but now they need "to make best use of existing technology."
The more frequent the reporting, the easier it is to find a missing plane.
Before Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic in 2009, the airline had already had programmed its long-range aircraft to report their position every 10 minutes. The actual crash happened just five minutes after the last transmission. However, there was still a vast search area: more than 6,500 square miles.
A one minute reporting frequency would help pinpoint a jet within about 7 miles.
Industry experts estimate that the 15 minute tracking plan would add about $2 to the cost of a long-distance flight.
However, streaming live data on a plane's performance, which is similar to what's in the flight data recorders recovered after a crash, could cost $7 to $13 a minute depending on the amount of data sent.
"They're happy to provide it for Wi-Fi for passengers because they can make money from it," said AirInsight's Arvai. "But when it comes to an expense that has no money related coming into it, that's a different story."
