ICAO takes action on tracking of airline flights

ICAO concluded a Special Meeting on Global Flight Tracking of Aircraft on 14 May and set priorities with Member States and the airline industry. The priorities regard short-term, mid-term and long-term actions.

The short-term actions include drafting concepts of operations on flight tracking, which should be delivered to the ICAO High Level Safety Conference in 2015, cooperating with IATA, which has already decided to form a study group on this issue, and improving effectiveness of international SAR operations also through international SAR exercises.

In the mid term, performance-based provisions on flight tracking should be developed and closer cooperation with the ITU and the COSPAS-SARSAT will be pursued. In the long term, ICAO will work together with the ITU to develop aviation requirements for network communications and remote storage of the related data.  

See the ICAO conclusions and recommendations here and the relevant press release here.