The disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines jumbo jet last March shocked many people unaware that such a thing could happen. That event, combined with Sunday's loss of a second commercial aircraft over the Java Sea (debris from the plane is now being recovered), is spurring calls for more precise, “persistent” tracking of commercial airline flights. For airlines, the real question is how to balance the costs of a locator system that's almost never needed against the hard fact that Airbus A320s and Boeing 777s cannot be allowed to vanish without a trace.
The overarching problem with tracking planes is the vast expanse of earth devoid of radar coverage: Most of the oceans, polar regions, and areas of Africa, Asia, and South America—as much as 80 percent of the world—are “a blind spot to surveillance,” the director of Nav Canada, the company that runs the country's air traffic control system, told the National Post last week. That means ubiquitous flight tracking via satellite is likely inevitable across the industry, and not just among major airlines with flights across the world.
A month after the Malaysian flight to China disappeared from radar on March 8, the airlines’ global trade group, the International Air Transport Association (IATA), convened a task force to assess technologies applicable to tracking and recommend a system of global tracking to prevent a recurrence of MH370. And in May, aviation regulators scrambled into action with a safety conference on aircraft tracking at the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Slideshow: Debris Found During Search for AirAsia Flight 8501
The task force recommended that any tracking protocol provide an airplane’s “4D position”—latitude, longitude, altitude, and time—to within one nautical mile at least every 15 minutes. Any system should also be able to increase its reporting rate if certain triggers are detected during a flight, such as a dramatic change in speed or altitude. The task force also said airlines should upgrade their systems to track aircraft within the next year—a schedule that almost certainly won't be met. And the task force noted that the aviation industry operates without a “consolidated contact list of worldwide aircraft operators, air traffic service units and rescue coordination centers” and that building one could speed communication in an emergency. The IATA-led task force “recognizes that public trust and confidence in aviation is at risk when a large and modern aircraft cannot be located and that, in the absence of confirmed facts, speculation defines the incident,” according to the report, compiled by representatives of 13 groups, including U.S. carriers, pilots, and the four major aircraft manufacturers. The task force sent its conclusions to the UN agency, which is expected to issue more formal guidelines on tracking this winter.
But precise tracking involves a greater expense for airlines, and most are unlikely to respond quickly. The task force recommendations are not mandatory for continued membership in the group. Naturally, airlines aren’t keen to assume the costs for tracking systems that are almost never needed—the industry stresses repeatedly that some 100,000 daily flights occur without incident. “Our members took a very serious look at the recommendations,” IATA’s chief executive, Tony Tyler, told Bloomberg News at a media briefing this month. “While they’re committed to improving, they could not fully endorse what would be practically unachievable for some.”
The carriers also want to ensure that whatever systems are seleced are worth the investment. Barring a regulatory mandate, that means persistent satellite tracking won’t occur “until after the commercial case is made to provide ‘pay-per-view’ entertainment via satellite in the cabin,” said Robert Mann, an aviation consultant on Long Island and a former American Airlines executive. “once airlines facilitate e-mail, Facebook and Twitter feeds, and streaming Downton Abbey re-runs via satellite broadband for a fee … GPS position data cost is below noise level in the overall expense of providing the satellite entertainment facility,” Mann wrote in March after the MH370 disappearance. It’s worth noting that the known facts of the mysterious Malaysia Airlines disappearance differ markedly from those of AirAsia Flight QZ8501. Severe weather is considered a factor and the sea wher the aircraft crashed is far more shallow than in the March incident.
In many ways, the airline industry is struggling to match the precedent set by the maritime industry. In 1992, the International Maritime Organization mandated the tracking of ships worldwide. The IMO says its satellite-based global maritime distress and safety system “should ensure that no ship in distress can disappear without trace, and that more lives can be saved at sea.”
Most airlines rely on the ACARS system (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) installed on commercial aircraft—which operate with satellite or high-frequency radio, depending on the plane's location—for contact with their crews; many airlines also use it for routine tracking. Another common system, ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast) acquires a plane's location via satellite GPS and then transmits that data to ground-based ADS tracking stations. ADS-B is a key part of the next-generation air traffic control system the U.S. has been working to implement, moving planes from radar to more precise GPS location data. This will allow for decreased separation between aircraft, allowing for more efficient airspace use.
In the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, on which its transponder appears to have been shut off deliberately, a periodic, automated signal from the Boeing 777’s ACARS system sent to an Inmarsat satellite is the only data searchers have had in trying to determine the plane’s last possible location. Large carriers with long-haul operations in remote areas typically also employ a system called ADS-C, automatic dependent surveillance-contract, in which a satellite service tracks their airplanes. The U.S. and Europe, along with several Asian nations, have mandated ADS-B use in commercial fleets by 2020; about 65 percent of commercial aircraft are already equipped with ADS-B, according to tracking service FlightRadar24.
The technology to track a plane's location every minute or two exists, but it's not cheap and isn't considered necessary for the majority of flights. For most flights, radar does the job. Out to sea or across the Arctic Circle, a carrier like Delta, United, or British Airways will monitor each flight from its operations center using ADS-B, ADS-C, and ACARS systems. Many airlines also have computers that monitor real-time data feeds on engine performance, fuel consumption, and other systems that can affect a route's profitability. Over time, however, as satellite capacity expands and becomes cheaper, more airlines are likely to migrate more flight tracking and aircraft performance data to the satellite industry. “When ICAO announces its conclusions, there will be a general uptake across the industry and more rigorous tracking,” says Jonathan Sinnatt, a spokesman for London-based Inmarsat.
Even if the UN body publishes a formal recommendation this winter on persistent tracking, individual regulators in America, Europe, and Japan are likely to be the primary force for any changes. And with more people expected to fly each year—and with more flights that are now longer than ever before, in more remote areas of the world—such tracking is rapidly becoming a non-negotiable aspect of safe air travel.
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that areas of "Africa, Asia, and South Africa" were difficult to surveil. Those areas are, in fact, Africa, Asia, and South America.
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