Several years ago, Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished into thin air and quickly became one of the greater aviation mysteries in history. It is still unclear as to what might have happened, with some offering up some conspiracy theories about the plane being hijacked, while others have offered a more straightforward theory that it simply crashed into the ocean.Whether or not we’ll ever find out what happened to MH370 remains to be seen, but moving forward it seems that the airline company wants to keep better tabs on its flight. According to a report from Bloomberg, Malaysia Airlines has struck a deal with Aireon, SITAONAIR, and FlightAware and will be the first airline company to track its fleet using satellite technology which is due to be completed in 2018.
As it stands, most flights are tracked by transmitting their position with technology known as ADS-B, with these signals being trackable via ground or space. However with this satellite tracking technology, real-time tracking will be one of the benefits of the technology. According to Malaysia Airlines Chief Operating Officer Izham Ismail, “Real-time global aircraft tracking has long been a goal of the aviation community. We are proud to be the first airline to adopt this solution.”
That being said as Bloomberg points out, whether or not it will prevent another disappearance like MH370 is unclear. This is because the flight’s location transmitter went dead (whether it was intentional or not is a different story) and would not have been visible to the satellite network anyway.
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