Future aircraft tracking standards that could prevent another Malaysian Airlines MH370-type disappearance will fail to fulfil their potential due to what is being branded a piecemeal approach.

Read the GADSS dossier

While industry’s near term efforts will focus on a performance-based approach that would assess existing technical and procedural options to enable flight tracking capability in the global fleet, universal flight tracking standards under the planned Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS) will ensure full implementation around the world and uniform regulatory frameworks.

Under the GADSS concept which is being developed by global aviation rule-setting body ICAO, abnormal events would trigger more frequent reporting to alert the airline and, if the situation worsens, autonomous distress tracking will be triggered using systems independent of the aircraft’s own systems or power supply. In the worst-case scenario, a flight recorder attached to the surface of the aircraft automatically deploy.

The concept is performance-based which means it does not define the technology or systems to be used. Rather, it throws down a gauntlet to suppliers to propose solutions.

Blue Sky Network has released a white paper that tackles what it claims are five misconceptions surrounding the GADSS flight tracking standard.

In this white paper entitled, “Ensuring no Aircraft in Distress is Lost: ICAO-GADSS Concept of Global Flight Tracking,” Blue Sky Network examines misconceptions that bias the global flight tracking discussion away from the search for complete solutions, toward patch-work solutions that fail to fulfill certain basic tenets of the standard. This white paper argues that it is imperative to ensure that any technology implementation, at the very least, fulfills the complete aircraft tracking elements of GADSS.

“Blue Sky Network has been involved in this evolving discussion since ICAO set its sight on creating such a standard,” said Jon Gilbert, president and CEO of Blue Sky Network. “ICAO’s objective of making autonomous global flight tracking a reality, certainly as a result of the frustration around trying to locate Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370, follows the aviation community’s historical movement of learning lessons from the past.”

“However because this new standard is performance-based, certain early commentary has grown to such stature that little has been written to clearly outline ICAO’s GADSS actual tracking vision. The misconceptions surround issues like cost, the capabilities of existing technology, who is responsible, and other ‘gray’ areas. These are all tackled in this document. Our aim was to create a white paper that is educational and informative as well as clarifying for those involved in commercial airline operations, and who will ultimately be responsible for ICAO GADSS tracking implementation.”

The paper can be read and downloaded here.