More than 300 delegates from the regional and international aviation industry will be in Dubai, UAE to take part in the third annual World Aviation Safety Summit to be held from March 16 to 17.

The summit, being hosted by the Dubai government and Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, will gather regional and international speakers from regulatory authorities, airline operators, airport operators, aircraft manufactures, pilot associations, safety organisations and air traffic control service providers to discuss strategies and challenges required to improve aircraft safety.

The summit will highlight various issues related to aviation safety including the adoption of a performance-based standard for global tracking of commercial aircrafts to avoid disappearance accidents.

The event will also see speakers discuss ways to improve aviation safety through real-time aircraft tracking.

The topic has come under much discussion in the international aviation industry recently following the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 last year, where calls to aviation investigators were made to identify the cause and solutions so a system can be developed to avoid such risks in the future.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) initiated an industry task force to develop recommendations to improve global flight tracking, which presented its conclusions to the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) which is due to issue formal guidelines on aircraft tracking shortly.

The expert task force has proposed that airlines upgrade their aircraft with real-time, global flight tracking systems in order to improve safety, evaluate their current tracking capabilities against the performance criteria and close any gaps within 12 months.

According to experts, the task force has also suggested the use of 4D tracking.

If implemented, this regulation will require all aircraft to transmit information on their longitude, latitude, altitude and local time to permit four-dimensional tracking, which should be accurate to within at least 1 nautical mile and reported every 15 minutes - or more often in the event of an alert, they stated.

Ruben Morales, the head of flight operations safety at IATA, said: "We have welcomed the recommendation of the ICAO’s second high level safety conference (HLSC/2) to move towards the adoption of a performance-based standard for global tracking of commercial aircraft, supported by a multi-national evaluation exercise to evaluate impact and guide implementation."

"We support an approach that is performance-based, not prescriptive," noted Morales.

Airlines have argued that implementing an aircraft location tracking system within a year will be challenging.
They contend that they are open to the idea of upgrading their tracking systems to ensure more safety for passengers and crew but the 12-month deadline is unrealistic.

Establishing the necessary systems to track planes across their entire potential range will require substantial time and monetary investment.

Nils Olof Svan, senior vice president, Strategy at Dubai Air Navigation Services (DANS), summit speaker and member of advisory board, said: "Aviation safety is a critical industry issue, fundamental to ensuring air transport continues to play a major role in driving sustainable economic and social development, not just here in Dubai but all over the world."

"Effective tracking technology that allows us to know exactly where an aircraft disappeared will facilitate search-and-rescue operations and significantly reduce investigation costs for airlines," he added.-TradeArabia News Service