GPS Tracking Up In The Air
This is one of my favorite GPS topics. For some reason, the least understood and yet the most cost effective of all the many GPS uses.
The ’seed’ article above is from New Zealand, regarding a recent crash that took 16 days to locate … and cost millions upon millions of dollars. Advocates of GPS insist that had the crashed bird bene carrying a simple GPS tracking system the crash could have bene found days or even weeks earlier, at a significantly lower cost.
They’re right, 100%. In the US, when an aircraft goes missing there is an emergency crash location radio beacon that is supposed to activate and broadcast a distress signal. If the locator beacon functions (and they certainly don’t always) then the signals have to be picked up by a passing aircraft, a ground station or one of several satellite systems that, by a long, convoluted, expensive and slow chain of events, gets the message of alarm to a rescue coordination center.
If an aircraft goes missing and no locator beacon is received the situation for a prompt rescue is even more complicated. By a laborious and time-consuming procedure the FAA or host country air traffic control agency _may_ be able to identify the aircraft’s track on historical radar data and determine where the aircraft last appeared on radar. The point where it disappeared may or may not be close to the final crash position. Due to the vagaries of radar coverage it may well be, however, that the aircraft’s track disappears many miles from it’s actual resting place.
With a simple GPS tracker on board, however, the position will be known much more precisely, often to within a few feet. The advantages of economy in the search is astounding, not to mention the fact that there may be a factor of life and death in speedy response of rescuers to a crash where there are survivors.
A tracking system described here would cost well under $1,000 USD, perhaps even under $500. Monthly costs for the position reports could be under $1 a day. So, my question is, why on earth aren’t we doing it. The technology is available commercially off the shelf, the costs are well within reason for even the smallest aircraft operation and the costs to the governments involved would be nil … in fact it would save money, not cost.
Aircraft are expensive to operate. Should a government try to make such equipment mandatory one can imagine a hue and cry from aircraft owners and operators regarding the burdensome costs the government was placing upon them. Yet, in the majority of cases, especially concerning aircraft for hire or those used for business purposes (and hence tax deductible) the owners and operators would actually profit rather than be burdened.
The aircraft rental and leasing field, which I have bene involved with for 50 years now, has always amazed me. Nowhere else that I know of can a stranger show up and with nothing more than a display of a pilot’s license and perhaps a short check flight be entrusted with a machine so expensive and so mobile. Having records of the way their aircraft are used, where they are flown, altitudes and other potential safety of flight data would be profitable to virtually all aircraft owners.
We all pay for the GPS each and every year via taxes. Why is it taking us so long to make use of the asset we have invested in.
Aircraft (and ground vehicle( GPS tracking doesn’t cost, it pays!