Australia announces new trial to improve aircraft tracking

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss announced Sunday that Australia will conduct a trial with Malaysia and Indonesia to more closely track aircraft through skies over oceanic areas.

Truss whose portfolio includes infrastructure and transport made the announcement in the Parliament House with Sir Angus Houston, Chair of Australia's Air Traffic Control Manager, Airservices Australia. The announcement came just one week before the anniversary of the disappearance of Malaysian Airline MH370 on March 8, 2014 with 239 passengers and crew on board.

Under the new trial, the minimum tracking interval for remote oceanic areas will be improved to every 15 minutes from the previous tracking rate of 30 to 40 minutes. Over the continent, aircraft are already tracked in real time by radars or continuous position reporting to Airservices ground stations.

Truss said Airservices had worked closely with Qantas, Virgin Australia and global satellite provider Inmarsat to successfully develop the operational concepts and trial the new use of surveillance technology with selected aircraft domestically since the beginning of February.

Houston, who was once the Chief Coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center for the Search of MH370, said the trial is expected to expand to wider area in Queensland in April and by the end of the year to the whole airspace managed by Airservices Australia, which covers 11 percent of the world's surface.

The governments of Malaysia and Indonesia have agreed in principle to join the trial with Australia. Both governments are expected to have further talks in two weeks with the Australian government on how to implement.

The reporting rate will automatically increase in the event of an abnormal situation to every 5 minutes or less. Air traffic controllers are also able to set the rate to near realtime for individual aircraft if required.

Houston said any changes of up to 200 feet in altitude or two nautical miles to the original route would trigger the automatic tracking of the aircraft.

Truss said that had there been the new system in place for MH370, heighten surveillance would have been triggered seven hours earlier when the aircraft changed direction and therefore left the search and rescue teams with more accurate information.

Houston warned that the new system is not a "silver bullet". However, it is an important step forward toward early identification for any irregularities of aircrafts.

"This is not a silver bullet, but it is an important step in delivering immediate improvements to the way we currently track aircraft while more comprehensive solutions are developed," Houson said.

The trial will use technology called Automatic Dependant Surveillance Contract (ADS-C) which establishes links between aircraft and air traffic control systems to provide information such as an aircraft's position, speed, altitude and direction of flight. About 90 percent of the world's long-haul, wide-bodied aircraft have been equipped with the technology.

As per the current search off the western coast of Australia, Houston said he is quite confident that the search for the 60,000 square kilometers priority area will be completed by the middle of the year. He also warned that as the southern hemisphere's winter months coming, the weather conditions can be very challenging. Endi