Malaysia Airlines Aircraft Disappearance May Encourage Better Flight Technology

Despite the availability of technology that can track planes and other aircraft in real time, the technology has not been widely utilized by airlines or their regulators because of concerns over cost as well as the small likelihood of flight crashes and disappearances.

The technology for tracking planes, along with their black-box flight recorders, has been around for years; it gained closed attention in 2009 when Air France Flight 447 crashed in the Atlantic Ocean after taking off from Rio de Janiero. All 228 passengers died and it took two years for French authorities to "determine" that an equipment malfunction caused the plane to crash.

But still, airlines and regulators haven't chosen to adopt the technology that could easily locate a plane's black box, or "flight data recorder," which stores hundreds of flight parameters and up to two hours of pilot communications and cockpit sounds. Yet now, this technology could become more widespread since Malaysia Flight 370 is still missing after two weeks.

Flight data recorders were built and designed to survive crashes, able to withstand temperatures in excess of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for over an hour and last up to 30 days in water depths of 20,000 feet, according to New York Times technology.

Basic aircraft trafficking is composed of four elements: GPS, Primary Radar, Secondary Radar, and ACARS. GPS is in the hands of the pilot, who can determine and establish the aircraft's position. The primary radar detects and measures the approximate position of the aircraft using reflected radio signals, but cannot provide information if the aircraft is 240km from land. The secondary radar relies on targets equipped with transponders and requests aircraft information including identity and altitude. These two radars are known as air traffic control. The Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) transmits the aircraft data to the ground, relaying simple messages to these ground stations.

The issue of disappearing flights is that the world's air traffic control network is mostly radar-based, meaning that the GPS shown to the pilots on board is not typically shared with air traffic control. This consumption of flight data is very expensive, but a new system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) will replace radar as the primary source of air traffic control and have the ability to relay GPS data to ground control stations to more easily track flight positions.

To read more about flight tracking and disappearing flights, visit this BBC News article as well as this CNN News article.