The disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 -- missing for two months now -- has prompted India's civil aviation regulator DGCA to issue guidelines instructing airlines to track all their aircrafts in real time.
The directives will apply to both passenger and cargo planes, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) said, adding that operators should use all suitable means to track all their aircraft from take-off to landing.
The Flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, which had 239 people on board, went missing on March 8, raising a global alarm due to its mysterious disappearance. It is believed to have ended in the ocean west of Australia, however, no trace of the plane has been found yet.
The DGCA said operators will need to ensure serviceability of Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) /Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) before every departure for real-time tracking.
Among other things, ACARS enables automatic detection and reporting of changes to the flight phases and also transmits information from the aircraft to ground stations about the conditions of various aircraft systems and sensors on real-time basis including maintenance faults and abnormal events for health monitoring of equipment and better planning of repairs and maintenance related tasks.
“ACRAS data is, therefore, of great significance in locating the last position of the aircraft and launch search and rescue after it has met with an accident,” the regulator said.
Aircraft wherein the ACARS system is not available/disabled, operator must ensure real time flight tracking using Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B).
Regulator said operators will need to ensure that ACARS/ADS-B are fully functional before every departure, while laying out strict instructions that flight crew should not switch it off during the flight.
Operators have also been asked to devise a procedure for effective tracking of the aircraft while flying over areas where there is no coverage of ACARS/ADS-B. While flying over such areas, the flight crew will need to report the aircraft coordinates, speed and altitude at an interval of not exceeding 15 minutes, the official statement said.
While commercial air transport aircrafts spend considerable amount of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no international requirement for real time tracking of the aircraft.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has created a Task Force to make recommendations by this year on how to continuously track commercial aircraft operations.
DGCA said it will review the implementation of this circular in its surveillance inspections.
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