Flight Safety - The Future

The recent tragedy involving Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 brings many questions regarding flight safety to the fore. The plane travelling from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing crashed in the Indian Ocean .  

A six month long intensive search of the entire area by the navies of many countries in the region did not yield any clue, let alone debris of the plane.  Airline travel is the safest among all modes of transport. Statistics proves this. You are more likely to die in a car accident than in a plane crash. However whenever a plane crash happens it attracts immediate world attention as the  loss of life is total and immediate.

 However new international safety standards are coming into force which will make it more simple to track a plane on its journey.  Satellite tracking systems are being developed which will continuously track a plane once its airbourne all the way till it reaches its destination. Today a plane travelling over the ocean  is off the ground radar screen. The crew reports to the assigned ground station of their position.

A new constellation of satellites will be in place by the end of next year.  These will be able to track a plane throughout its flight. The plane will carry transponders which will relay a signal to the nearest satellite. This will give all the flight parameters like course, speed, altitude etc.  The signal will be relayed every 15 minutes.  It is observed that this interval will give the searchers (in case of a crash) an area of 100 square miles.  This will make the search more manageable. The  MH370 search covered nearly a quarter of the Indian Ocean.

Other flight safety standards are coming into force from 2021. The push is in response to the MH370 disaster. The new (ICAO) International Civil Aviation Organization rules will require a plane crew to report their position every minute. This reporting is currently done by the pilots manually. But it will soon be made automatic . Thus a satellite will be able to track a plane as soon as it leaves the tarmac. The entire flight path of the plane will be available for records in real time.

It will take some time for the changes to kick in as these systems will cost money. And airlines will have to be given time to adjust the costs.  The new planes will come with the navigation systems installed, but the older ones will need to be upgraded.  As the effective life of an airliner is about 20 years, it will take some time for all airlines in the world to convert to the new system.

However there is no doubt that the new safety standards will definitely make air travel a lot safer.