Malaysia Airlines has become the first airline carrier to sign up for satellite tracking. The service will begin in 2018 and use low-earth-orbit satellites. The satellites will communicate with an air transport connectivity corporation SITAONAIR, a surveillance company called Aireon, and a flight tracking company called FlightAware.
The Malaysia Airlines Chief Operating Officer Izham Ismail released a statement about the decision.
“Real-time global aircraft tracking has long been a goal of the aviation community. We are proud to be the first airline to adopt this solution.”
Three years ago Malaysia Airlines had an incident where a plane vanished on route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Pieces of the plane eventually started washing up on shore in the Indian Ocean, but there are details about what happened. Everyone on the flight is presumed to be dead. This new tracking opportunity would help provide more details on the real-time locations of planes in the future.
