The United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is meeting today and tomorrow in Montreal to discuss implementing new standards for better tracking of aircraft over open water.
Fueled in large part by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-370 - still missing after nine weeks - the U.N. will listen to several proposals in the hopes of avoiding another such tragedy.
The ICAO meeting consists of representatives from 40 nations, the airlines, pilots associations, airports, air traffic controllers and more.
"For the general public it has become unthinkable that a flight can simply disappear," the European Union said in a paper presented in advance of the two-day talks, according to Reuters. "An aircraft should be permanently tracked, even beyond radar coverage, and in case of an accident it should be immediately located."
As with any multi-entity discussion, however, finding a solution to flight-tracking has prove difficult in the past. The ICAO has met previously in the wake of the 2009 Air France Flight 447 crash, but the only conclusion it agreed upon was to extend the life of batteries in the black boxes to 90 days from 30 days.
But that requirement will not be fully phased in until 2018, and the black boxes on Malaysia Airlines MH-370 did not have the new 90-day batteries.
"It's complicated work to get 191 states to agree on anything," Anthony Philbin, a spokesman for ICAO, told the New York Times.
The International Air Transport Association, the aviation lobby group for nearly every major airline, has already set up a special task force to discuss the issue. Separately, Immarsat, the British satellite company that aided the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, said it would begin offering a basic tracking service to its aircraft customers - which comprise nearly all of the world's airlines - free of charge.
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