India's DGCA issues guidelines to operators for real time tracking of aircraft

India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued (07-May-2014) guidelines to operators on 05-May-2014 for real time tracking of aircraft, requiring all airlines in India to track aircraft on a real-time basis, a decision regulators said was driven by "the difficulties faced in search and rescue operations after an aircraft goes missing or meets with an accident", as evidenced in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. All scheduled and chartered airlines-both passenger and cargo-must use one of two systems to communicate continuously with their aircraft while they are airborne, according to rules issued by the DGCA. The two technologies are Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) and Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). The carriers also must "devise a procedure for effective tracking of the aircraft while flying over areas where there is no coverage of ACARS or ADS-B," the regulator said. The "flight crew should report the aircraft coordinates, speed and altitude at an interval of not exceeding 15 minutes" in such cases, it said. The DGCA said in its order that, in the disappearance of the Malaysia flight, the ACARS system had stopped making its full transmissions. "While commercial air-transport aircrafts spend considerable amount of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no international requirement for real-time tracking of the aircraft," it said, adding that incidents like the Malaysia tragedy "have prompted the DGCA to take necessary action". [more - original PR]