Post MH370 Indian carriers go for tech aid on plane tracking

Overall, 15 airlines globally including Singapore Airlines, Royal Brunei, Malaysian Airlines and Norwegian Air Shuttle have signed up for SITA OnAir’s AIRCOM Flight Tracker.

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AIRCOM FlightTracker is a ground-based software upgrade that uses existing equipment to allow airlines to follow aircraft positions and identify any unexpected deviations or gaps in position reports. It uses multiple sources of data so airlines can guarantee tracking intervals at 15 minutes or less for every flight. It was developed after ICAO and IATA called for global tracking technology that uses existing equipment and procedures as much as possible.

More airlines in Europe and the Middle East are currently assessing AIRCOM FlightTracker with a view to making the necessary upgrade, SITA OnAir’s chief executive officer Ian Dawkins said.

An upgraded version of flight tracking system to monitor diversion of aircraft from specified flight path would be ready the end of 2015, work is also on to use existing cabin equipment for tracking purposes.

To collate information about movement of planes in a more comprehensive manner, Dawkins also said SITA will soon test streaming of data from the blackboxes of aircraft.

Streaming data from blackbox would help get more information about a flight and bring “more situational analysis to some of the data” being used to track planes, he said. “We are trying to stream all that data (from the blackbox) to the land…,” he told The Indian Express .

(The writer is in Brussels on invitation by SITA)