WASHINGTON (AP) - Responding to recent incidents in which airliners vanished, U.S. accident investigators recommended Thursday that all passenger planes making long flights over water carry improved technology that will allow them to be found more readily in the event of a crash.
Prompted in part by the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and its 239 passengers and crew last March, the National Transportation Safety Board said one way that could be accomplished is with tamper-resistant transmitters that send a plane's location minute by minute via satellite.
It also asked the government require that planes carry low-frequency underwater beacons whose signals are more easily detected by search vessels. And it wants them to have longer-lasting batteries that can function for at least 90 days after a crash, instead of the 30 days currently required.
The board also asked the government to require that planes be equipped with cockpit video recorders.
But even with such technologies, black boxes trapped under thousands of feet of water can be difficult to find and retrieve. The board suggested black boxes could be made ejectable, so they would float on the surface with a locator beacon.
Another possibility would be to require that planes, just before crashing, transmit crucial data, including airspeed, altitude, pitch and whether the engines were operating. Joe Kolly, NTSB's director of research and engineering, said it is possible to automatically send such information if something catastrophic goes wrong with the plane.
While the board said the technology is available, cost may be a barrier to its recommendations. Missing planes are rare, and none of the recent ocean crashes in which planes were hard to find involved U.S. airliners. The Federal Aviation Administration often has a hard time justifying new regulations unless it can show that the value of saved lives outweighs the cost to the industry.
Many airliners already have flight-tracking devices. The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, which remains missing, was equipped with a digital data-link system that can be configured to automatically report aircraft position periodically to a ground station via satellite. But the airline wasn't paying for that service when the plane disappeared.
Other options include systems that continually broadcast their identification, current position, altitude and speed to air traffic controllers and other aircraft using satellite links. The FAA has required all U.S. airliners be equipped with such systems by 2020 as it transitions from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on satellite technology, although some airlines have complained that they need more time.