Prompted by a groundswell of public concern over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, aviation-safety regulators and airline representatives reached consensus on short-term steps to enhance global tracking of aircraft outside conventional radar coverage.
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| A U.S. Navy P8 Poseidon takes off from Perth Airport en route to rejoin the ongoing search operations for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Perth, Australia, Tuesday, April 15, 201 |
MONTREAL—Prompted by a groundswell of public concern over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, aviation-safety regulators and airline representatives reached consensus Tuesday on short-term steps to enhance global tracking of aircraft outside conventional radar coverage.
Top safety officials of the International Civil Aviation Organization, an arm of the United Nations, and the International Air Transport Association, the main airline trade group, unveiled a plan at the end of a two-day meeting here attended by more than 150 international air-safety officials, airline representatives and industry suppliers. Representatives of pilots, air-traffic controllers and airline dispatchers also signed off on the effort.
Referring repeatedly to moving unusually quickly to calm nervous passengers, regulators and airline officials alike pledged close cooperation to provide airlines with options to better monitor the location of planes over long oceanic or polar routes. The industry has agreed to voluntarily start implementing some incremental changes by the end of the year—many of which don’t require new hardware. Such interim measures are expected become part of whatever long-term standards are ultimately put in place.
“The industry is absolutely in solidarity” on the initiative, Nancy Graham, ICAO’s top safety official, told reporters, partly “because there is this nervousness” in the wake of the Malaysian jet incident. She also stressed the meeting was called on “very short notice” and that reaching unanimity among countries at the helm of ICAO typically takes substantially longer.
Recommendations adopted by ICAO members include encouraging carriers “to use existing equipment and procedures to the extent possible to support flight tracking.”
At times, the two groups appeared bent on outdoing each other to move as quickly as possible. IATA, for instance, talked about the specific goals of a task force before all of its members had been officially appointed. In the past, some airlines balked at expanded satellite tracking of jets due to cost worries.
Still, it is likely to take ICAO and IATA years to work together to complete universal standards. In the interim, airlines and regulators will continue debating the most controversial aspects of aircraft tracking: whether flight data should be automatically transmitted via satellite in case of an emergency or crash, and whether onboard signaling systems should become tamper-proof so they can’t be deliberately disabled by pilots or anybody else on a plane.
In an interview after the meeting, Kevin Hiatt, IATA’s senior vice president for safety and operations, suggested large parts of the industry remain resistant to tamper-proof transponders, equipment essential for radar monitoring of aircraft. Since the investigation into Flight 370 is ongoing, “we may try to do something that is not yet necessary,” he said.
Other alternatives under review include advanced satellite links that would ensure frequent reports of an aircraft’s location, altitude, speed and course, perhaps every few minutes. Emergency alerts could be sent if certain onboard systems experienced sudden or unexpected changes.
With about 120,000 airline flights daily world-wide and nearly 200 countries that belong to ICAO, safety experts stress that the ultimate answer will be different tracking systems based on different airline routes, practices and aircraft types. Despite the challenges, Ms. Graham said both regulators and industry are committed to “moving as fast as we possibly can.”
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak called for real-time tracking of aircraft and acknowledged mistakes during the early days of the search for the wreckage.
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