While there has been significant enhancements in the tracking of commercial aircraft in recent years there are some limitations to the improvements. The ICAO mandated 15-minute position tracking interval for existing aircraft may not reduce a potential search area enough to ensure that survivors and wreckage are located within a reasonable timeframe.
Although the safety action undertaken by ICAO to implement autonomous distress tracking (ADT) on newly-certified aircraft will have a significant long-term impact on global aircraft tracking, current transport aircraft will only be required to be tracked at 15-minute intervals which, as the ATSB noted, may not sufficiently reduce the potential search area for higher-speed, fixed wing transport aircraft.
The ATSB acknowledges the practical considerations in making ADT mandatory for existing aircraft but notes that the loss of MH370 prompted a global focus on aircraft tracking that resulted in many voluntary initiatives to provide improved aircraft position information, including:
Accordingly, the ATSB continues to encourage regulators, manufacturers, and operators of aircraft that take oceanic or remote routes to consider the feasibility of having aircraft tracking at intervals of less than 15 minutes, and/or the use of ADT equipment on existing aircraft.
The ATSB recommends that States ensure that sufficient mechanisms are in place to ensure a rapid detection of, and appropriate response to, the loss of aircraft position or contact throughout all areas of operation.
The implementation of safety action associated with this recommendation is a matter for consideration by each respective State.
The ATSB recommends that aircraft operators, aircraft manufacturers, and aircraft equipment manufacturers investigate ways to provide high-rate and/or automatically triggered global position tracking in existing and future fleets.
Some operators, including Malaysia Airlines, have implemented aircraft tracking solutions that are capable of almost real-time data to be monitored at ground stations. In addition, aircraft and equipment manufacturers have begun developing and implementing autonomous distress tracking (ADT) systems as a retrofit to existing aircraft in addition to installation in newly built aircraft.
The Boeing Company advised in 2024:
In addition, at least one other major manufacturer (Airbus) has made ADT available on various aircraft models since 2023 and is expanding its availability. Further, it has been reported that airlines, including some based in Australia, have started to implement ADT.
The implementation of ADT is expected to be an effective way of locating an aircraft in distress quickly and accurately, and aircraft tracking at intervals of less than 15 minutes will provide a significant improvement over the ICAO standard.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Amendment 39 to Annex 6 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Operation of Aircraft, Part I — International Commercial Air Transport — Aeroplanes) finalised the Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) relating to aircraft tracking. About this amendment, which applied from 8 November 2018, ICAO stated:
On 18 July 2022, ICAO adopted Amendment 48 to Annex 6 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation requiring the following:
ICAO advised that there were two high-level functional objectives for a system meeting this requirement:
The capability of an aircraft in distress to transmit position information at least once every minute should significantly reduce the emergency response time and potential search area compared with aircraft tracked at 15-minute intervals, particularly in fixed-wing aircraft with high cruise speeds. However, this requirement is likely to have limited application in the coming decades as current aircraft (for which autonomous distress tracking, or ADT, is not mandatory) continue to operate.
