From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Aircraft Tracking and Flight Recovery Data Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Gerald Dillingham, Director, Physical Infrastructure Related GAO Work: GAO-15-443: Aviation Safety: Proposals to Enhance Aircraft Tracking and Flight Data Recovery May Aid Accident Investigation, but Challenges Remain Released: May 2015 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's May 2015. The 2014 disappearance of Malaysia Airlines, Flight 370, and other aviation accidents, have raised questions about how authorities locate aircraft in distress and recover flight recorders. Government accident investigators, international organizations, and industry have proposed some strategies in response. A team led by Gerald Dillingham, a director in GAO's Physical Infrastructure team, recently reviewed many of these proposals. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Gerald to discuss what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Several recent airline disasters have brought a lot of attention to this issue. Can you talk about some of the challenges to tracking airplanes and recovering data? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] Sure. Just for context, I think it's important to note that aircraft are tracked all over the world globally and data is sent back to air traffic control, as well as airlines. So the, the situation still involves a significant number of challenges, and those challenges depend on whether we're talking about a flight that's over land and has an accident, or a flight that's over international water and has an accident. Largely, the challenge for obtaining the data and monitoring flights and obtaining the boxes for a flight that has an accident over land, it's a matter of just finding the box, because usually the crash is easy to locate. The greater challenges have to do with flights over water, because there are a number of situations that will make it very difficult to find the box. One, if it, in fact, lands in deep water, and they are not able to recover it in the 30 days in which the ping is still being heard. Sometimes when flights cross over various international borders, there is a need to hand off, so to speak, from one country, or one air traffic control space to another. Sometime that can take 10, 20 minutes, and an aircraft in flight can go 200 or 300 miles at that point, and therefore you lose the exact location of it. Another challenge in the oceanic area is the fact that there are less tracking, because the traffic is lighter, but you also run into issues of weather and atmospheric conditions that also interfere with the data being transmitted back. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So then in your review, what kinds of proposals did you see for improving aircraft tracking? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] I think what's important here is that this is an international endeavor. The two major international organizations having to do with aviation are working together to come up with an answer or an improvement in the tracking and monitoring of aircraft. And one of the things that they have come up with in the short term is to have a standardized 15-minute interval for reporting back or for data coming back from the aircraft to the air traffic control, or to the airlines, and they are very wisely talking about a performance standard, meaning that however the airlines decide to make this 15 minute reporting back happen, it's up to them as long as they can meet that standard. In the longer term, what they're talking about is a sort of global net that will report back all the time, 24/7, that will be monitoring and tracking of the aircrafts. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And then how about flight data recovery? Did any of the proposals that you saw seem particularly promising? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] There were two or three things that are also in the international arena. First, and seemingly the easiest thing to do is instead of a 30-day battery, a 90-day battery, which will allow for much more time for that search and rescue to work. And the other thing is they're talking about a technology which they refer to as deployable recorders, meaning when the aircraft is in trouble, and the aircraft starts to descend in a non-standard way, that that recorder would be pitched off the back of the aircraft and float so that it makes it easier, to locate that recorder. And the third thing that they're working on is the idea of a triggered transmission. A triggered transmission is similar to the deployable recorder, but it means that when there is a signal within the aircraft system that there is an issue, that data would be blasted back to the air traffic control organization or to the airline, so that they would have a fix right then and there as to where that aircraft is and what's happening to it. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And finally, what would you say is the bottom line of this report? [ Gerald Dillingham: ] First of all, flying is safe. That is to say, this is a rare occurrence when an aircraft disappears, or even crashes. I think on many different metrics, flying is the safest form of transportation that there is. And secondly, keeping in mind that aircraft are being tracked, data is being sent back, both safety data as well as operational data, and what the industry is doing now, and the international safety organizations are doing now, are moving to enhance what's already in place. And the bottom line, again, I think, is international harmonization, that this is an international issue and should, in fact, be addressed in an international forum. [Background Music] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.