Here's Why Airliners Still Don't Have Real-Time Tracking Tech

It's been one year since Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished into thin air. So why aren't we doing a better job of tracking planes yet?

From the moment MH370 disappeared more than one year ago, the world has been asking how a jumbo jet carrying 239 people could vanish. Now, the aviation industry is grappling with another question: Where are the promised flight tracking systems that would prevent this from ever happening again?

The technology would transmit in real time a multidimensional picture of an aircraft's position, measured by longitude, latitude, altitude, and the local time as provided by satellites. This is the same data that is captured by the flight data recorders (the black boxes), which, in the case of MH370, are presumed to be somewhere in the depths of the Indian Ocean. However, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said it might not be possible to meet its goal of making all aircraft traceable within a year—something that had seemed a reasonable deadline in the aftermath of MH370.

Tony Tyler, the former Cathay Pacific executive who heads the 250-member airline trade group, said that while the group is taking the issue "seriously," it's not clear whether all carriers are on board with the timetable.

"There is no silver bullet solution on tracking," he said at a briefing in Geneva. "The industry is working to improve, but some issues…. will take time to address and implement," he added, noting that the sealing of cockpit doors after the Sept. 11 attacks took several years to complete.

So what's the problem? The IATA just released a study from its Aircraft Tracking Task Force, which, after the disappearance of MH370, was charged with developing tracking options for planes. The study's main focus is how to track planes in areas that have no radar coverage, such as remote areas over water. Thanks to the modernization of air traffic control systems, that tracking is already improving, but that alone won't be enough to track all planes if airlines don't make their own upgrades.

The IATA report is supposed to contain information about how many airlines are already equipped for real-time tracking, but the details have not yet been made public. We do know the authors conclude that some may not be able to meet the new standards by target date of the end of 2015.

Plus, there's the question of authority: The IATA can't make the airlines fall in line and add new tracking tech. Any governmental action to require such tracking must come via the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation Organization, which could put pressure on individual countries to act if it sees fit. The issue next goes before them at a summit in February.

The study also raised the prospect of requiring carriers to acquire tamper-proof transponders within three years. A criminal investigation under way in Malaysia is examining the possibility that someone on the plane intentionally disabled the transponder of the 777, which effectively made it untraceable and allowed it to fly undetected for hours. But IATA stopped short of saying that the new transponders should be mandated.

There's also disagreement on how much it will cost. The upgrades could cost tens of thousands of dollars per aircraft, and many airlines have expressed concern about the high cost given how rare it is for an aircraft to disappear.

Of course, those same arguments were made after Air France 447 crashed into the South Atlantic in 2009, when the industry had an opportunity to make the changes that might have prevented MH370's disappearance.