Aircraft tracking is very interesting subject as there are many aircraft that requires attention on searching after accident.
Ever since 2009 after Air France Flight 447 accident, French BEA recommended ICAO in 2011 to Regularly transmit flight parameters Particularly over maritime or remote areas, on emergency to trigger data to locate Aircraft, to further study activation of Emergency locator transmitter, and to enable freedom of Logon from ATSU data logon
Egypt Air MS804 still in search progress, and even during MH 370 (8 Mar 14) search continues, the ICAO have announced special meeting of State and industry experts on the global tracking of airline flights. In May 2014 ICAO, States, Industry, & ANC panels have Recommended concept of operations (ConOps) on aircraft tracking followed by ICAO High Level Safety Conference (HLSC Feb 2015) on GADSS (Global Aeronautical Distress & Safety System ) with the following recommendations:
Short term ICAO should :
a) Deliver Concept of operations to HLSC 2015;
b) Increase resources to SAR national and regional boundaries;
c) Identify operational SAR challenges with Annex 12 provisions, and provide assistance to States;
d) Facilitate the sharing of experience from States that were recently involved in accidents;
e) encourage States to regularly run practice exercises involving airlines, ANSPs and RCCs;
Mid Term term ICAO should :
f). Develop Performance Based, on flight tracking to locate accident site in a timely manner for SAR & accident investigation;
g) addressing flight tracking requirements
h) encourage States & ITU to take action, provide the necessary spectrum allocations . (ITU World Radio Conference 2015);
i) COSPAS‐SARSAT should be invited to continue to investigate, with industry, in improving the reliability ELTs; and
Long‐term
j) ICAO should work in coordination with ITU to develop aviation requirements for network communications associated with remote storage of flight information
ICAO Working Group Issued several working paper to ICAO HLSC Work Paper 7 Flight recorder panel : ICAO Annex 6.17 on ELT. For AC mass greater than 27ton from 01 january 2020, shall either :
- Automatically transmit regular position information,
- Transmit ELT signal prior to accident, or
- Deployable ELT to establish location within 6 NM radius of accident site.
Aviation safety analyst ; Capt Anaziaz Zikir MSc, review the aircraft tracking requirements; there are many providers who can provide tracking the aeroplane real time from every 15 minutes to two minutes that are commercially feasible, We need this yesterday, we hope that ICAO can recommend the implementation at least on real time tracking to all airlines flying over water or remote area earlier than 2020.