The monitoring of the position of aircraft in-flight and the recovery of “black boxes” have become an important subject since the disappearance of the Air France flight AF447 on 1st June 2009, and the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 on 8th March 2014. The unsolved nature of the latter’s disappearance, and the large number of articles or comments published in the media and on internet or social networks since, have highlighted society’s disarray at the possible total disappearance of a modern, well-equipped aircraft at the beginning of the 21st century.
As part of the investigation into the AF447 accident, the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation Authority (BEA) in charge of the safety investigation conducted work bringing together all the players in the aeronautical sector, before issuing safety recommendations to improve the localisation of immerged wreckage, position reporting over oceanic areas and the timely recovery of black box flight data.
The presentation will describe how far international regulations have evolved on these topics and how connectivity to satellite constellations, in line with the new regulations, should prevent losing an aircraft again and facilitate the timely recovery of flight data for better understanding of the causes of civil aircraft accidents. A particular focus will highlight the benefits of the automatically triggered transmission of flight data to the ground via a satellite constellation while the aircraft is in distress.