News Backgrounder
Support for global tracking system falters
After the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in March, the aviation industry began investigating options for a standardized worldwide aircraft tracking system. It has become clear a solution will be hard won as some industry figures doubt there is value in a global system.
November 1st 2014
As a new Australian Transport Safety Bureau-led search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 aircraft commenced in the southern Indian Ocean last month it emerged that finding a comprehensive solution to track all aircraft in real time could proving to be as challenging as the hunt for the lost B777 and its passengers and crew. Read More »
The International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Aircraft Tracking Task Force (ATTF), set up soon after the jet went missing on March 8, was scheduled to publish its draft options in September, but the deadline for delivery of the recommendations has stretched to next month.
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| Tony Tyler, IATA director general and CEO: prudent decisions on aircraft tracking upgrades must be made in line with global standards |
At the same time, at a public forum held by the U.S. Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), serious differences about the merits of a new real-time tracking system emerged between U.S., European and international air safety authorities. The dialogue clearly indicated a global agreement on standards and regulations affecting key safety enhancements will likely take years to come to fruition.
And while International Air Transport Association (IATA) airlines, at their June gathering in Qatar, unanimously declared they would do whatever was necessary to ensure their aircraft were tracked at all times, at least one IATA member, Emirates Airline, has since said that despite the disappearance of MH370, there is no need to improve modern aircraft tracking systems. Emirates president, Sir Tim Clark, instead wants measures put in place to ensure pilots can’t turn off tracking devices.
“The Boeing 777 is one of the most advanced planes in the world, with the most modern communications systems,” he said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel. “It is already difficult to turn off current tracking systems such as transponders and the ACARS (Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System).
“Manufacturers should work to make them impossible to switch off. We have to ensure ACARS runs continuously. If that happens, then we can monitor planes over the seas, and we wouldn’t need extra tracking systems,” he said.
The delay by the ATTF in completing its draft options was uexpected. According to an International Air Transport Association (IATA) spokesperson, Mona Aubin, the decision followed am “exhaustive internal review” that determined “that we needed more clarification on the recommendations and on guidance for implementation”.
No details were given about the issues that required clarification, but IATA director general and CEO, Tony Tyler, has cautioned against hasty solutions. Earlier this year, after the MH370’s disappearance, he said IATA “also must ensure that prudent decisions are made in line with global standards. This is not the time for hastily prepared sales pitches or regional solutions”.
At the NTSB’s public forum, it quickly became clear that some agencies are in no hurry either. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), is not drafting rules that would mandate enhanced tracking of planes. The FAA’s top safety official, Peggy Gilligan, indicated these and some other long-discussed changes would be hard to justify under current federal cost-benefit trade-offs.
She said the agency is working on dozens of other, higher priority safety rules that offer more readily quantifiable benefits. It isn’t clear, she added, “when and if” the agency can fit real-time tracking requirements into its agenda.
A leading European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) official said his agency is only months away from proposing rules that would call for practically universal, real-time tracking of aircraft. European lawmakers could take action on the rules as soon as early next year.
However, what has become evident is that airlines as well as equipment manufacturers are working on improving aircraft tracking. During the NTSB forum, airplane and cockpit manufacturers and satellite-service providers said they were developing procedures that transmit position, speed, altitude and other airliner data to the ground if there is a catastrophic failure inflight or an airplane goes down for any reason.
Boeing executive, Mark Smith, told the forum the U.S. planemaker favours more effective use of the technology and capabilities aircraft have, rather than mandates for new hardware. With some 69,000 airline flights daily world-wide, he spoke of the dangers of “unintended consequences” if new devices or procedures were embraced.
Steve Kong, business and development manager for London-based satellite operator Inmarsat, said the company has offered to provide free of charge every-15-minute location updates to airlines with systems compatible with those of Inmarsat. Some airlines can pay for updates as frequently as every 60 seconds or even less. Boeing and Inmarsat are working on enhanced systems intended to transmit more extensive data to the ground as often as every 10 seconds if there is an emergency.
Separately, Airbus has outlined plans to make it easier to locate the black boxes – the data and voice recorders – if a plane crashes into the sea. Airbus Head of Security Operations, Pascal Andrei, said the manufacturer intended to install deployable black boxes on future A350 and A380 aircraft. They would be ejected from the plane in the event of a crash and are designed to float. Asked how soon they would be installed, he said it would be “very soon after some more studies and assessments” are completed.
Boeing’s Smith said the company has placed deployable recorders on various aircraft it builds for the military, but has no plans to put them on commercial jets. “We think they need study” before widespread adoption, he said, and pointed out there were dangers in unintended or accidental deployment.
In his interview in Der Spiegel, Clark surprised some observers by casting doubt on the official version of events surrounding MH370’s disappearance in March. He believed the aircraft was always under control and may not be in the southern Indian Ocean.
“MH370 was, in my opinion, under control, probably until the very end. Experience tells us that in water incidents, where the aircraft has gone down, there is always something. We have not seen a single thing that suggests categorically that this aircraft is where they say it is, apart from this so-called electronic satellite ‘handshake’, which I question as well.”
He said there was “not even a seat cushion” of evidence that the plane had ended up there and that all the “facts” needed to be re-examined. “There hasn’t been one overwater incident in the history of civil aviation - apart from Amelia Earhart in 1939 - that has not been at least 5% or 10% trackable. I am totally dissatisfied with what has been coming out of this investigation, he said.
