LOCATOR BEACONS
flightglobal.com 13-19 January 2015 | Flight International | 35
surveillance technology for aircraft beyond
radar coverage, plenty of alternatives also exist
for automatic dependent surveillance-type sys-
tems reporting via satellite, but since tracking
is not considered essential for air traffic man-
agement (ATM) purposes in low-traffic oceanic
and wilderness areas, it has not been mandated
because of the communication costs involved.Meanwhile Boeing has installed similar sys-
tems on military aircraft, including the F/A-18
fighter and commercial derivatives such as the
E-4B airborne command post (747) and P-8A
maritime aircraft (737). That experience over
more than four decades has made Boeing
aware of potential reliability problems, espe-
cially with aircraft that lack ejection seats as an
activation system for the deployable recorder.
Commercial aircraft must instead rely on
sensors that can detect when a crash or mid-
air collision is imminent, which can lead to
dangerous miscalculations, according to Mark
Smith, a Boeing air accident investigator. He
cites an example from the mid-1970s of an
E-4B inadvertently jettisoning a deployable
recorder over downtown Seattle on final ap-
proach to Boeing Field. Designing a system
that yields as little as one inadvertent deploy-
ment in 10 million flights would be “difficult
to achieve”, Smith says. There are nearly 55
million commercial flights per year, implyingAirbus will install deployable FDR/CVRs with locator beacons on A350s and A380s in the future❯❯Whatever system is chosen,
the authorities have to
consider whether it should be
designed to be tamper-prooflines flight MH370 went missing over the In-
dian Ocean in March, there were concerted
calls for universal flight tracking, because the
idea that a modern airliner could just go miss-
ing and not be found – however rare such an
event might be – is deemed unacceptable by
an incredulous travelling public.
This point was quickly taken up by ICAO
and IATA. The Malaysia Boeing 777-200 has
still not been found, and there is no certainty it
will be. The aircraft’s estimated position infor-
mation at the time it would definitely have run
out of fuel is very imprecise. This contrasts
with the AF447 case where its last transmitted
position left a relatively small circle of uncer-
tainty. Also, in the AF447 case, some floating
wreckage was quickly found, but in the Malay-
sia case no trace of anything associated with
the missing aircraft has yet been identified.
UNPRECEDENTED
Under the agreed ICAO framework, contribu-
tions by industry through an Aircraft Tracking
Task Force (ATTF) coordinated by IATA “will
help address the near-term needs for flight
tracking”. ICAO Council President Olumuyi-
wa Benard Aliu explains: “Malaysia Airlines
Flight MH370 has been an unprecedented
event for aviation and we have responded
here in a similarly unprecedented manner.
While our flight safety work logically focuses
the majority of our energy and resources on
accident prevention, everyone in our sector
also deeply sympathises with the families of
this lost aircraft’s passengers and crew.”
But the slow Malaysian and international
reaction to the MH370 loss indicated a sys-
temic failure of communications that ICAO
believes needs a remedy, even if mandatory
universal flight tracking and DFDRs are im-
plemented. ICAO says: “The meeting also rec-
ognised the challenges faced by states when
coordinating their search and rescue efforts
across national and regional areas of responsi-
bility, stressing the usefulness of regularly run
practice exercises to identify procedural or
operational gaps.”
ICAO has been calling for states to set up
contingency communications systems, and to
carry out joint exercises to prove them.
The highly influential Flight Safety Foun-
dation says it believes that a deployable flight
data recorder or triggered data transmission
should be required “in addition to the stand-
ard cockpit voice recorder and flight data re-
corder already in all transport aircraft”. The
DFDR should include an emergency locator
transmitter as well, it says, adding: “By using
GPS technology, there would be no reason
that it wouldn’t be found and retrieved very
quickly after an accident or incident.”
DFDRs are not a new idea. The technology
for deployables not only exists, it is already in
use with some of air forces. As for tracking or
at least five or six inadvertent recorder de-
ployments annually. Smith adds: “I’m not
saying deployables are a bad idea, but there’s
a balance of benefit and consequence we need
to keep in mind.”
New Jersey, USA-based Finmeccanica
company RDS Technologies is the manufac-
turer of this DFDR technology, which it calls
DFIRS. It is an integrated FDR and ELT that is
standard equipment on the Boeing F/A-18C,
D, E, and F model aircraft. Its built-in ELT,
says the company, provides immediate alert
of a downed aircraft, supporting prompt loca-
tion of the crash site and the crew and recov-
ery of the flight recorder module. The deploy-
ment of the DFIRS is triggered automatically
by an impact sensor or through activation of
the ejection seat, ejecting the device into the
aircraft slipstream where it “flies” away from
the aircraft on deployed aerofoils. It is de-
signed to be impact resistant and to float “in-
definitely”, says RDS.RESPONSIBLE REPORTING
Airbus and Boeing have agreed on other areas
where flight tracking and data reporting via da-
talink can be improved. For example, aircraft
health monitoring systems can already send
updates at pre-selected intervals, such as every
10min or 30min using ACARS (aircraft com-
munications addressing and reporting system).
If the aircraft turns off a flight-planned route or
exceeds predetermined limits, the reporting
updates can be accelerated to once every min-
ute. Whereas an aircraft tracker is designed
only to transmit the aircraft’s position and
identification throughout its flight, existing on-
board FDR/CVR systems just contain the re-
cordings of the aircraft’s operational, engineRex Features