During the opening joint session of the 2017 Airlines Electronic Engineering Committee (AEEC) and Avionics Maintenance Committee (AMC) general session, representatives from the world"™s two biggest commercial airplane manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, provided an overview of the work they feel is necessary to standardize onboard aircraft hardware necessary to support the International Civil Aviation Org.’s (ICAO) initiative to improve global aircraft flight tracking.
In March 2016, on the two-year anniversary of the Malaysia Airlines MH370 incident, the ICAO approved new provisions as amendments to Annex 6 of the Chicago Convention. These provisions include three new amendments that the ICAO will adopt to Annex 6 by 2021, designed to enable commercial airline flight operations to support its concept of the standards and recommended practices to address this Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS) concept of operations. While presenting Boeing"™s perspective of the provisions, Charles Adler, a senior avionics engineer at Boeing, outlined the ICAO provisions as the following:
1. Commercial airliners should be equipped with a 90-day low frequency underwater locator device by January 2018. So far, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) is the only civil aviation regulator with a mandate for this type of equipage, which Adler noted would have the biggest airline impact.
2. By November 2018, when aircraft are in normal flight conditions, operators should have the ability to track them every 15 minutes, with optional abnormal event tracking capability. According to Adler, several states have already introduced new requirements around this provision, including India, Malaysia, China and Singapore. EASA has 2018 applicability for this provision as well.
3. By 2021, new-production airframes should be equipped with the ability to produce position reports once per minute when under abnormal flight conditions, independent of aircraft power and not isolatable. This capability has remote activation capability…
