A British company plans to market an inexpensive GPS system for airplanes to prevent another flight from disappearing.
The company Inmarsat, which provided satellites that aided in the search for missing Flight MH370, announced Monday it will offer free tracking systems for the 11,000 commercial passenger aircrafts that are already linked to Inmarsat satellites, the Daily Mail reported. As a result, nearly 100 percent of the world's long-haul commercial fleet will be equipped with the new tracking systems.
The tracking services will "represent a major contribution to enhancing aviation safety services on a global basis," Chief Executive Rupert Pearce said at a conference for the International Civil Aviation Organization, according to The Guardian.
"In the wake of the loss of MH370, we believe this is simply the right thing to do. Because of the universal nature of existing Inmarsat aviation services, our proposals can be implemented right away on all ocean-going commercial aircraft using equipment that is already installed," Pearce said.
After determining the plane's location using GPS, the tracking system will send the location along with the plane's direction, speed and altitude to Inmarsat's satellites every 15 minutes, the Daily Mail reported.
Equipment from Inmarsat and the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch determined that missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean, The Guardian reported.
Flight 370 disappeared March 8 after it took off from Kuala Lumpur headed for Beijing. Despite an endless multinational search, neither the plane nor its 239 passengers and crew have since been found.
Investigators are now beginning to doubt whether the plane really did crash in the current search area in the Indian Ocean.
"Without any kind of proof, uncertainty rules the day," said Tim Brown, a satellite imagery expert at GlobalSecurity.org, the Daily Mail reported. "People still can't wrap their head around how a modern airplane that big could just go missing in the modern world."
