By John E. Gillick
Prompted
by the crash of Air
France Flight 447 in 2009 (where it took almost two years to recover the
wreckage and “black boxes”) and the disappearance of Malaysian
Airlines Flight 370 in March 2014, the world’s airlines, aircraft and
avionics manufacturers, pilot associations and aviation regulators have come
together to evaluate and recommend enhanced aircraft tracking options for use
by commercial aircraft as soon as available.
Within
a month of the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 from radar over the Gulf
of Thailand en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing, China, the International Air Transport
Association (IATA), the trade association for 240 international airlines
accounting for 84% of global air traffic, created a special Task Force to
evaluate options and develop an industry position on aircraft tracking by the
end of 2014. The Task Force included experts from IATA and the International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO,
discussed below) as well as the Airlines for America (the U.S. airline trade
association), Association of Asia Pacific Airlines, Civil Air Navigation
Services Organization, Flight Safety Foundation, International Coordinating
Council of Aerospace Industries Associations and International Federation of
Airline Pilots Associations, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Airbus SAS,
Bombardier Aerospace and Embraer Commercial Aviation. The initial meeting of
the Task Force was held on May 13th and the group met monthly from
then through October 2014. The original plan was to develop a “draft” set
of recommendations by the end of September 2014, but those recommendations were
not available for consideration and approval by the IATA Board of Directors until
its December
meeting.
