MALAYSIA Airlines’ flight MH370 weighed heavily on the minds of aviation industry leaders at an IATA conference today, with the association announcing the formation of a task force for global aircraft tracking and passenger data to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.
Tony Tyler, director general and CEO, said at the opening of the IATA OPS Conference in Kuala Lumpur that MH370 had proven the airline industry has two clear challenges that need to be overcome – aircraft tracking and passenger data.
“In a world where our every move seems to be tracked, there is disbelief both that an aircraft could simply disappear and that the flight data and cockpit voice recorders are so difficult to recover…We cannot let another aircraft simply vanish,” he said.
“IATA will convene an expert task force that will include ICAO participation to ensure that the work is well-coordinated. This group will examine all of the options available for tracking commercial aircraft against the parameters of implementation, investment, time and complexity to achieve the desired coverage. The group will report its conclusions by December 2014, reflecting the need for urgent action and careful analysis,” Tyler explained.
Meanwhile, he urged governments to review processes for vetting and using passenger data, as well as to standardise passenger data collected on ICAO criteria; eliminate collection of data in paper; and create a single harmonised window through which airlines can submit electronic data to governments.
Tyler shared that IATA has set up the Global Aviation Data Management project as a comprehensive safety data warehouse, collecting analysis reports on accidents, incidents, ground damage, maintenance and audits. It also covers data from over 1.8 million flights in the last 15 months
The association also released its commercial aviation safety performance report for 2013 today.
According to the report there were 210 fatalities from accidents in 2013, down from 414 in 2012. In 2013, 81 accidents took place. This is up from 75 in 2012 but below the five-year average of 86 per year.
Sixteen of these accidents in 2013 were fatal, higher than the 15 in 2012 and below the five-year average of 19.
Accidents occurring during aircraft departure from a runway on landing or takeoff were the most common type of accident, making up 23 per cent of all accidents in the last five years, though chances of survival in such cases were high.
– Read Painful lessons from MH370
