IATA task force preparing draft options for tracking planes

DOHA: With nearly three months passing by without any information on the fate of the missing Malaysian jet, an IATA-led task force is working to prepare draft options by September to ensure permanent tracking of a plane.

"We will come out with draft options in September and present it to the ICAO (UN agency International Civil Aviation Organisation). It would then be presented when our Board meets in December," said IATA Director General and CEO Tony Tyler at the ongoing IATA meet here.

Many airlines could start taking measures to beef up communication capabilities on their fleet even before this, he said.

With almost 100,000 aircraft criss-crossing the globe on a daily basis, it is difficult to continuously track all of them, but at least an airline or aircraft operator should know in real-time where the aircraft is, IATA's Senior Vice President (Safety and Flight Operations) Kevin Hiatt told reporters here.

Noting that such tracking technology was already available, he, however, said the options are not likely to be 'one size fits all' kind of regulations because of a variety of issues like whether a plane is fitted or cannot be fitted with tracking equipment, an aircraft flying over areas not having any radar or satellite coverage in certain parts of the globe or gaps existing in such coverage in some areas.

The wreckage of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 which disappeared on March 8, has not been located yet as there was no real-time tracking of the aircraft in the last phase of the ill-fated flight.

It is now known that after the Malaysian plane's Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System ( ACARS) stopped transmitting, the satellite communication system automatically transmitted seven messages that confirmed that the system was still logged on to the network.