Flight chiefs seek new standards of air safety
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 01 February, 2015, 2:57am
UPDATED : Sunday, 01 February, 2015, 2:57am
Reuters in Montreal
924 people were killed in passenger accidents last year, the worst for loss of life since 2005
Aviation leaders will seek a mandate to implement new safety standards when they meet this week after a string of high-profile accidents made 2014 the deadliest year for commercial airlines in almost a decade.
Efforts to adopt new standards for global plane tracking and cooperation on the risks of flying over conflict zones will dominate the three-day meeting on safety in Montreal from tomorrow, just weeks ahead of the anniversary of the disappearance of Flight MH370, the Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 people on board - most of them Chinese.
Regulators and officials at the meeting will have to juggle political sensitivities and arguments over the budgets of cash-squeezed airlines, especially those from Southeast Asia, which has seen rapid growth in low-cost carriers and was also the area of two recent air catastrophes.
"Issues such as flight restrictions over conflict zones can only be tackled at a global or regional level," Patrick Ky, executive director of the European Aviation Safety Agency, said ahead of the talks at the International Civil Aviation Organisation, of which China is a council member.
While statistics suggest flying is safer than ever in proportion to the amount of traffic, 924 people were killed in passenger accidents last year, the worst for loss of life since 2005, shaking perceptions of air travel worldwide.
The disappearance of MH370, and the downing of a sister plane, Flight MH17, over Ukraine with a combined loss of 539 lives, pose one of the biggest challenges to the 70-year-old UN organisation since security threats in the 1970s and 1980s.
Airlines have called for controls on weapons such as the high-altitude ground-to-air missile suspected of shooting down MH17 over eastern Ukraine last July, and greater sharing of intelligence information on threats.
MH17 was hit during fighting between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. The US said the plane was hit with a ground-to-air missile by rebels. Russia says a Ukrainian military aircraft downed it.
This week's conference is likely to call for planes to send tracking signals at regular intervals in normal flight and to speed them up when they get into trouble. It is also looking at ejectable black boxes as one way to aid searches and solve mysteries like that of the missing MH370.
In December, the International Air Transport Association refused to back a call by an industry-wide committee that had met under its own leadership to install existing systems on its planes within 12 months.
But some delegates have expressed concerns the global response to last year's shock events could be weakened if there is only patchy compliance with the new recommendations.
