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The missing AirAsia jet carrying 162 people could be at the bottom of the sea after it was presumed to have crashed off the Indonesian coast, an official said on Monday, as countries around Asia sent ships and planes to help in the search.

The drop in radar surveillance offshore is why it’s so difficult to find a downed plane if it disappears over the ocean, but it also creates more quotidian problems that raise costs for airlines and extend flying time for passengers. Onshore, where radar coverage is nearly universal in Canada except in the Far North, planes can fly within five nautical miles of each other. But over the ocean, when radar surveillance drops off, that rises to 80 nautical miles for safety reasons. This means longer flying times, higher fuel costs and more emissions.

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Canada’s civil air navigation service, Nav Canada, hopes to change that through a joint venture called Aireon LLC that has the potential to save the global airline industry billions of dollars.

“Probably 80% of the earth is a blind spot to surveillance right now, which forces aircraft to fly under what’s known as procedural separation standards which are very, very inefficient,” John Crichton, president and CEO of Ottawa-based Nav Canada, said in an interview.

“Our plan is to bring real-time surveillance to everyone on the planet and particularly over the oceans.”

Here’s how it will work: Aireon partner Iridium Communications Inc., a Virginia-headquartered satellite company, will launch a constellation of 72 satellites that will carry a technology known as automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, or ADS-B. This will broadcast a plane’s location nearly instantaneously, compared to every 10 or 15 minutes under datalink.