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March 2, 2015

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MH370 mystery prompts new tracking system test

Source: AFP | March 2, 2015, Monday | Print Edition

AUSTRALIA, with Malaysia and Indonesia, is to test a system that increases the tracking of aircraft over remote oceans, allowing authorities to react quickly to abnormal situations such as the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

It raises the minimum tracking rate to 15 minutes from current intervals of 30 to 40 minutes. The technology “can increase realtime monitoring should an abnormal situation arise,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.

“In a world first, all three countries will trial a new method of tracking aircraft through the skies over remote oceanic areas,” Truss said.

“Now this initiative adapts existing technology used by more than 90 percent of long-haul passenger aircraft and would see air traffic control able to respond more rapidly should an aircraft experience difficulty or deviation from its flight plan.”

The announcement comes almost a year after the Malaysia Airlines flight went missing en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board last March, 154 of them were Chinese. A massive air and underwater search failing to find any evidence of the aircraft.

While the new system was “not a silver bullet,” it would help to improve current methods of tracking ahead of other solutions being developed, Airservices Australia chairman Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said.

If an aircraft deviates more than 200 feet from its assigned level or two nautical miles from its expected track, the system would automatically monitor the jet more closely, such as every five minutes or almost continuously, he said.

“This is a big step forward. It’s not just changing things, it’s going to make, I think, the monitoring of aircraft over these oceanic areas much more effective,” he said.

“We will have a datum close to where the aircraft ran into trouble, which is in marked contrast to MH370 where the last known position was in the Malacca Straits.”

The trial, using ADSC (automatic dependent surveillance contract) technology, will begin at the air traffic services center in Brisbane before being extended to Melbourne and to Indonesia and Malaysia.

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