By Pratap John/Chief Business Reporter
Qatar Airways may become the first airline in the world to introduce an automatic aircraft tracking system, if the ongoing tests on the technology are proven, Group CEO Akbar al-Baker has said.
“We are already making an experiment (on automatic aircraft tracking) with a supplier…but I am not at liberty to give more details on this,” al-Baker said in Doha yesterday.
Under the system, al-Baker said, “all flight data that is being recorded in the flight data recorder (black box) is also received continuously on the ground – in our operations centre. Once this has been proven, I hope, Qatar Airways will be the first airline to introduce this in all our aircraft.”
The sudden disappearance of the Malaysian airline MH370 in March last year had thrown up a global debate on the need for better aircraft tracking.
The MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with some 239 people on board left no trace and global search efforts have not revealed anything so far.
Al-Baker, who sits on the Board of Governors of Iata, said, “We are very aggressively pursuing the subject of automatic tracking of airplanes without the control of the pilots. There is a task force in Iata to pressure regulators on the issue.
“In the past, airlines never had the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) and Iata put a lot of pressure on regulators to insist that all aircraft be equipped with TCAS after an incident in the Indian capital New Delhi between two aircraft, which had mid-air collision,” the Qatar Airways Group CEO said.
"The same has now happened after the Malaysia Airlines mishap. We as members on the Iata board of governors are insisting that now it should become mandatory that aircraft should be able to be automatically tracked from the time it takes off until the time it lands," al-Baker said.
The mid-air collision near New Delhi occurred on November 12, 1996 over the village of Charkhi Dadri. The aircraft involved were a Saudi Arabian Airlines Boeing 747-100B en route from Delhi to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin II-76 en route from Chimkent, Kazakhstan, to Delhi. The crash killed all 349 people on board both planes.
Qatar Airways Group CEO Akbar al-Baker
