Global tracking to be the norm in a post-MH370 world, says ICAO

KUALA LUMPUR, May 26 — The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is pushing a September deadline to complete a policy framework for global tracking of commercial aircraft, as airlines voluntarily adopt the mechanism in the wake of flight MH370’s disappearance over two months ago.

ICAO Air Navigation Bureau Director Nancy Graham said voluntary and mandatory implementation of global tracking are running parallel, with an expert taskforce set up to develop global standards for future adoption.

“In fact it’s already begun. There are already many airlines that already do track, so the purpose of the taskforce is to agree on the ways and means (of mandatory implementation),” she said at the sidelines of a dialogue on real-time monitoring of flight data.

Graham claimed that airlines are looking beyond cost considerations in global tracking adoption, and that industry players were “absolutely in solidarity” on the need for the technology.

“We all think this is the right thing for aviation. There is no price you can put on safety or for the certainty of where the aircraft are,” she said.

She said the framework that the expert taskforce is working on will be the basis for future regulations, but stressed that it will need more time before it can be made international standard practice.

International aviation regulators started work on a raft of proposals after the Air France flight 447 crash in 2009, but can only move towards adoption with the consent of the 191 ICAO-member states, she added.

Graham said that global tracking could not have prevented the disappearance of flight MH370.

“I’m very careful to not draw the conclusion that to track would’ve prevented the air crash. That’s wrong.

“Nothing that we would have done would have prevented this... it’s really important to remember that global tracking would not have stopped this situation,” she said.

On May 14, ICAO with the help of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) set up the Aircraft Tracking Task Force to deal with near-term needs for global flight tracking, in response to flight MH370’s disappearance.

The Malaysia Airlines-owned Boeing 777 went missing along with its 239 passengers and crew in the pre-dawn hours of March 8, shortly after take-off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.

An international search team has since focused its efforts in the southern Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia, in what has been described as the longest and costliest search operation in the history of modern aviation.