MH370, two years on

It is the greatest mystery in aviation, civil or military. The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 on March 8, 2014 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew on board still baffles scientists and aviation experts, although two fragments believed to be from the plane have been found so far.

A wing fragment confirmed to be from MH370 was found on an island thousands of kilometres from the search area last year, delivering the first proof that the plane went down. The search effort has so far cost more than US$ 125 million, at least a part of which could have been saved if there was a better tracking mechanism.

Answers

The incident, for which there still are no clear answers, however brought to the fore the need for better aviation safety technologies. In fact, most of these technologies already exist and many have wondered why they are not being used more widely. Marking the second anniversary of the disaster, the council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in Montreal, Canada, has adopted new measures requiring aircraft to have tracking devices that can transmit location information at least once a minute when in trouble, effectively providing real-time updates.

Other new measures, also brought in response to the MH370 mystery, include extending the duration of cockpit voice recordings to 25 hours, regardless of a given flight's duration. There is still no consensus on whether these recordings should be beamed to the ground in real-time, along with a live camera feed of the cockpit. The capability for both already exists, but this will require an enormous data capacity and bandwidth.

There is even a proposal to enable remote (ground-based) operators to take over the controls if the pilots are incapacitated for some reason or if one or both pilots behave in an unusual manner. This proposal was prompted by the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash of March 24, 2015, which was deliberately caused by co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who locked the chief pilot out of the cockpit. In response to the incident and the circumstances of Lubitz's involvement in it, aviation authorities in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom implemented new regulations that require the presence of two authorised personnel in the cockpit at all times.

Recoverable

All plane operators will now be required to ensure that the flight data are recoverable even under extreme circumstances. Longer lasting batteries for the black boxes (Flight Data Recorders) are also being considered. A better beacon system is also being touted to make finding the black boxes easier. The new requirements "will now greatly contribute to aviation's ability to ensure that similar disappearances never occur again. Taken together, these new provisions will ensure that in the case of an accident, the location of the site will be known immediately to within six nautical miles, and that investigators will be able to access the aircraft's flight recorder data promptly and reliably," said ICAO Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu in the statement. "They will also contribute to greatly improved and more cost-effective search and rescue operations."

All new planes now being built buy Airbus, Boeing and other smaller players including business jet makers will have to build the beaming devices and better black boxes and the airlines also have the option of retrofitting the distress signal delivery system. There are many other measures that can be taken by the airlines to improve in-flight safety and security. However, we have to bear in mind that air travel is still the safest form of travel. You are much more likely to die in a road accident than in an air crash.

Fatalities

The number of air accidents and resulting fatalities dropped in 2015 from the previous year, and was well below the five-year average, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has said making 2015 'an extraordinarily safe year'. Some 68 accidents occurred last year, compared with 77 in 2014 and an annual average of 90 over the past five years, according to IATA's latest annual report on aviation safety. Of 2015's accidents, four were fatal, versus 12 a year earlier. "In terms of the number of fatal accidents, it was an extraordinarily safe year," Tony Tyler, IATA's director general and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The accidents covered by the report killed 136 people, down from 641 in 2014 and a five-year average of 504, according to IATA, which represents some 260 airlines or 83 percent of the world's total air traffic. (Note that this figure does not include the Germanwings crash and the Metrojet crash over the Sinai Peninsula, both of which have been classified as deliberate acts of unlawful interference with aircraft navigation). IATA said the 2015 global jet accident rate, measured in hull losses per 1 million flights, was 0.32, compared with 0.27 in 2014 and 0.46 in the previous five years. This is a great achievement, considering that at any given time, there are around 12,000 civilian planes in the sky.

However, with more than 20,000 new planes expected to take to the sky within the next two-three decades mostly in Asia-Pacific, existing aviation safety technologies will be tested to the limit if they are not improved drastically. Apart from technologies such as satellite based aircraft tracking and navigational aids, there is an urgent need to step up pilot training.

Dependent

Thousands of new pilots will also be needed to fly these planes. A recent report disclosed that pilots are so dependent on autopilot and other automated systems that most have nearly forgotten how to fly a plane manually, which can be of critical importance during an emergency. The introduction of modern computerised systems for automatic piloting and throttle control means that for over 90 per cent of some flights, a computer is in control.

The report by the US Department of Transportation Inspector General said: "While airlines have long used automation safely to improve efficiency and reduce pilot workload, several recent accidents, including the July 2013 crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214, have shown that pilots who typically fly with automation can make errors when confronted with an unexpected event or [when] transitioning to manual flying.

As a result, reliance on automation is a growing concern among industry experts, who have also questioned whether pilots are provided enough training and experience to maintain manual flying proficiency."

As a consequence of reports such as these, manufacturers such as Airbus are now insisting airlines train pilots to fly manually because of fears that they are relying too much on automation.

Flying is very safe and we need to keep it that way. This can only be done through a combination of advanced technology and better human interaction with such technology.

It may not be possible to ensure 100% accident free skies, but the aviation industry is making rapid progress in that direction.