ICAO wants all commercial flights to be tracked every 15 minutes

31 Jan 2015

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All commercial flights worldwide will soon be tracked using a system that gives their location at 15-minute intervals. Such aircraft will also send out automated signals every minute in times of distress, to help rescuers to locate the aircraft more easily.

If an ''abnormal event'' is detected, including a change in direction or deviation from a flight path, the signal rate hastens to every minute.

The new tracking rules, prepared by an industry working group, would be phased in by the end of year-end, said the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a United Nations agency

Airlines would be responsible for sharing the data with authorities in cases of emergencies as it would make tracking easy and efficient, source said, adding that search and rescue teams would then be able to zero in on an aircraft within six nautical miles (11 km) of its last known position.

Besides, the ICAO will ask airlines to equip their aircraft with ejectable black boxes, which would float and be more easily retrievable in case of a crash over water.

The ejectable black boxes would be in addition to existing commercial flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders and the new safety norms will be mandatory on new aircraft built after 2021, the source said.

The new measures are in response to last year's disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on its flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The aircraft, with 239 people on board, has not been traced even after a full year, making it one of history's great aviation mysteries.

The draft proposals will now be presented to delegates from all 191 ICAO member states at a meeting in Montreal from Monday to Thursday, and ''a final proposal'' will be submitted to the ICAO Council within six months for ratification.

The move is reported to have full support of ICAO member states and is a done thing.

Currently, radars are used to track planes, but the tracking becomes difficult when aircraft are out at sea or the plane is flying below a certain altitude.

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