Following the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370, aviation experts gave input on how to prevent another plane from ever disappearing.
It is unclear whether the advice was followed, as AsiaAir Jet 8570 disappeared from the same region as the still undiscovered plane that went missing last May.
Weather, including ice and lightning, and pilot error are the top reasons planes encounter difficulties tha lead to potential disaster.
There are steps that can be taken to prevent air mishaps, but also precautions to take to prevent losing contact with an aircraft.
Experts Jim Hall, former head of the National Transportation Safety Board, and Peter Goelz, aviation analyst, told CNN last May that a plane disappearance is something that should never happen again.
In an article penned for CNN, the experts wrote: “Millions of us can be located immediately through technology in our handheld cell phones, but a 300,000-pound Boeing 777 with 239 souls on board disappears from the face of the Earth,” they wrote, referring to the Malaysia Air Flight 370.
“NASA has the capability of photographing stars billions of light-years away, and yet our best minds are forced to guess where this plane might be.”
Hall and Goelz added that the airline industry has invested billions of dollars to prevent such incidents, although blacked out areas in tracking do occasionally occur. They also said "we are only slightly better equipped to locate this airliner than when we were searching for Amelia Earhart 85 years ago."
The experts wrote that if the follwing steps had been in place, the disappearance of Malaysia Air Flight 370 may never have happened.
- All extended overwater flights should be connected to a monitoring system that tracks the aircraft at all times.
- Flight recorder "pingers" should be upgraded to be heard at a further distance and batteries should be upgraded to last 90 days.
- Deployable black boxes must be provided in the aircraft and they should be able to separate from the aircraft on impact.
