Aircraft tracking with large gaps between transmissions

Stupidity set to work, or system error. Take your pick. Having flown military and civilian aircraft for 40 years and 20 000 flight hours, I have difficulties with this. Why not opt for a system which gives the SAR units almost pin point accuracy, namely ELT with GPS/SARSAT upload with its position. Simply fit it with a repeater of FDR data and you`ll have a simple fool proof system.


Airlines to test new tracking system to locate lost flights
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. -- Airlines are set to begin testing a tracking system that would ping flights every 15 minutes, a technology that could have helped locate two flights last year that went missing in hard-to-track regions of the world, the head of an international trade group said Thursday.

Tony Tyler, CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) that represents 250 airlines worldwide, said the tests will be conducted somewhere in the Asia-Pacific region and should be completed by the fall. The lessons learned from those tests would lead to a uniform set of rules they could propose to governments and transportation industries around the world.

"The plan is that there will be some sort of 15-minute reporting," he said. "How it will work will be very much influenced by this implementation initiative that's going on."