I've been getting questions from many corners asking how it's possible that Air France 447, or any commercial aircraft for that matter, could cross an ocean without air traffic controllers knowing the exact location of the flight at all times?
Right now the only ubiquitous way to have a real time track of an aircraft is with a traditional radar system over or nearby land. Oceans present a unique challenge to aircraft crossing without radar coverage, even though it is done without incident hundreds, if not thousands, of times per day.
Since the early 1990s, pilots have used a system called
FANS (Future Air Navigation System) that uses
CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link Communications) and the older
ACARS (Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System) in lieu of voice communication with ATC. The CPDLC runs on ground based and satellite communications via
Inmarsat.
Pilots interface with CPDLC via Flight Management Systems (
747-400), Datalink Control & Display Unit (DCDU) panels (
A330/A340) or Multi-Function Displays (
A380,
777 &
787) to send/receive position reports, emergencies, route/speed/altitude changes, enroute weather reports and oceanic crossing clearances.
While cutting down the workload for both pilots and air traffic
controllers, CPDLC was never intended to provide live flight tracking over the ocean. Instead, aircraft report their position at demarcated waypoints along the oceanic crossing and tell controllers when they expect to cross the next waypoint.
I ask: If it can be done on our
cell phones, why not for our aircraft?
Air France 447
made a radio call crossing intersection INTOL, before the ACARS fault message was received from the aircraft about 54 nm from intersection TASIL, though the exact location of the crash is unknown as crews have
begun to locate debris.
This leads directly into the biggest leap in air traffic control technology since the system was first created in the 1940s. The
Next Generation Air Transport System, or Next Gen as it's known, will see the implementation of satellite based aircraft tracking with the GPS, called Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (
ADS-B). ADS-B technology transmits the location of the aircraft to within a few hundred feet of accuracy to both ground stations and other aircraft, rather than the 1-2 miles of accuracy with traditional radar.
The FAA plans to roll out Next Gen and ADS-B over almost a decade or longer, with airlines and industry groups pushing regulatory agencies to both move up deadlines for aircraft equipage and provide additional financial incentives to outfit aircraft. The ground-based portion of the system is expected to be deployed by 2013, but aircraft outfitting timelines remain an open question.
Right now, the FAA is providing financial assistance to United and US Airways to equip
747-400s and A330s with ADS-B equipment for trial testing, respectively. US Airways will have ADS-B on 20 of 25 of its new
A330-200s for Atlantic crossings into Philadelphia. United will install the system on 12 747-400s for testing on Pacific flights between San Fransisco and Australia.
Australia announced in March that it plans to require all aircraft traveling through its airspace above FL290 by December 12, 2013 to comply with ADS-B requirements. The new air traffic system will cover the continent, as well as significant parts of its oceanic airspace. Though the Australians scaled back the plan as it took into account the pace of ATC developments in both Europe and the United States.
As the entire world looks for clues to the cause of Flight 447, technologies that make long haul air travel into areas without radar coverage safer may find themselves at the forefront of the lessons learned. Even if it is found that the cause of the crash is unrelated, a global situational awareness of aircraft position can help speed search and rescue missions, as well as aid in future accident investigations.
Advanced air navigation technologies have come out of air disasters before. In 1974, the FAA mandated Part 121 operators to install
ground proximity warning systems in the wake of several
controlled flight into terrain accidents in the early 1970s and later expanded that requirement to even smaller aircraft over the last thirty years.
Could this tragedy be the spur for global ADS-B coverage?
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