The International Civil
Aviation Organisation (ICAO) on Tuesday debated setting a tight deadline to improve the tracking of passenger planes in a push to prevent a recurrence of the still unresolved disappearance of Malaysia Airline flight MH370.
Officials at the United Nations safety conference also sought to tackle risks from conflict zones after another Malaysia Airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine.
The ICAO, the UN’s aviation arm urged airlines at the Montreal gathering not to wait to install tacking systems that are already available.
“We know that there are technologies available today Nancy Grahana, Director of ICAO’s Air Navigation Bureau said.
Britain, China and the United States backed ICAO proposals for new tracking guidelines that would apply from November 2016, an accelerated timetable in the often laborious process of aviation regulation.
Aircraft would have to send their position at least every 15 minutes or more often in case of emergency but it would be up to each country to decide how and when to implement this.
The rare UN gathering reflects pressure to show progress in time for the anniversary of MH370, after regulators and airlines were criticised for responding too slowly to French tracking recommendations after the crash of an Air France jet in 2009.
Malaysia said it was “unacceptable” or its data recorders could be lost, decades after satellites were invented.
But the industry faces competing technologies from equipment makers and some airlines object to the cost of a stop gap plan to make existing technology available within 12 months.
The conference also looked at how to protect airlines from missiles, but critics say this may not prevent another disaster like the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July.
“All the same problem which we already have are still going to be there in terms different countries having different messages and the airlines not really knowing who to listen to”, said Charlie Leocha, chairman of US-based consumer advocacy group Travellers United.
The fallout from MH17 has brought to the surface one of the key contradictions of modern aviation, the system of seamless global standards developed by ICAO over the last 70 years can conflict with individual states’ sovereignty.
Reuters reported that the management of airspace dates back to decisions taken after two world wars when it was decided sovereignty extended upwards to the skies, which would/not be open like high seas.
Now ICAO and airlines are wrestling with how to share information about perceived threats enroute without infringing the rights of other states to open or close their own airspace.
ICAO is proposing a scheme for pooling advice to pilots, though it falls short of demands by airlines for the sharing of genuine but carefully screened intelligence information