[Via Satellite 05-14-2014] Inmarsat<\/b>, the satellite company that helped track the location of the missing Malaysia Airlines<\/b> Flight 370, has proposed a free aircraft tracking service over its network. The proposal was submitted in response to a questionnaire by the International Civil Aviation Organization <\/b>(ICAO), which preceded a conference in Montreal, Canada on aircraft tracking. According to Inmarsat\u2019s Aviation President Miranda Mills, this service could be brought online in very little time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe equipment is onboard almost 11,000 aircraft already flying today, so it can be switched on almost instantaneously \u2026 we have proposed to offer this service free of charge, and then we would need to instigate it through our channels and have the airlines requesting it,\u201d Mills told Via Satellite<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Service agreements would be organized through one of Inmarsat\u2019s service providers, either Rockwell Collins <\/b>or SITA<\/b>, and the tracking would be accomplished using Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Contracts (ADS-C). Since all of the necessary equipment is already installed in most aircraft today, no major upgrades would be required \u2014 all that is needed is for airlines to say yes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t switch it on if airlines don\u2019t want to switch it on,\u201d said Mills. \u201cTechnically it could happen instantaneously, however there are certain contractual or legal agreements that would need to be put in place for a specific airline to request that service through its service provider. But it could be a matter of weeks.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
Inmarsat\u2019s free global tracking service pays homage to the company\u2019s roots as an organization set up to provide safety of life services to ships at sea. The amount of data transferred is so minimal for aircraft tracking, that the cost is hardly a factor. The tracking would add about $2 to $3 dollars per flight, depending on length, according to Mills.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have provided free basic services for ship tracking since we\u2019ve been set up, and this is rolling that concept over into aviation where, although we don\u2019t feel the service itself is that expensive \u2014 roughly the cost to an airline is about 20 cents per report \u2014 we just feel that there seems to be some kind of fundamental blockage in terms of paying at all,\u201d said Mills. \u201cWe want to offer this to the airline market as a response to the requests that are coming through now for better coverage and clearer flight tracking around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Transmissions would include the basic location of the plane, along with key parameters such as altitude and speed. Inmarsat is also offering an enhanced position reporting facility to support reduced in-flight aircraft separation, and a \u201cblack box in the cloud,\u201d the latter of which would be more data intensive, but also more infrequent in use. The extra services stream both historic and real-time flight data recorder information as well as cockpit voice recorder information off an aircraft. Triggers such as an aircraft veering off course unexpectedly would activate the black box in the cloud, and ADS-C would enable two-way communication between the aircraft and aviation safety personnel on the ground.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere would be an alert effectively that the aircraft management organizations would receive to say that the aircraft had deviated, whereas today the dot just disappears from the screen or, even worse, doesn\u2019t transfer to the next country\u2019s screen,\u201d said Mills. \u201cBy having that awareness upfront, hopefully it could be taken into hand so that a tragic accident wouldn\u2019t happen, or so that we know what has gone wrong immediately, and it\u2019s not a case of having to search for the black box.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the event of an ongoing crisis, authorities such as the United States Federal Aviation Administration <\/b>(FAA), the United Kingdom\u2019s NATS <\/b>or other Air Traffic Control (ATC) organizations would be able to communicate with the distressed plane and react swiftly as they deem fit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat the service would bring is immediate awareness to the air traffic management team who are tracking the aircraft that something has happened,\u201d Mills said. \u201cThere are always going to be events, but knowing about it as soon as possible gives us at least an opportunity to be able to intervene.\u201d<\/p>\n
The International Air Transport Association<\/b> (IATA) would also be involved in the implementation of the service. Should a new policy be made, IATA would work toward it with ICAO. Mills said the company received hopeful responses regarding the proposal at the ICAO conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeedback so far has been very positive,\u201d she said. \u201cWho turns down a free service?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Via Satellite 05-14-2014] Inmarsat, the satellite company that helped track the location of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, has proposed a free aircraft tracking service over its network. The proposal was submitted in response to a questionnaire by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which preceded a conference in Montreal, Canada on aircraft tracking. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":77532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}