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Reuters

The UN’s aviation agency has announced new requirements for the real-time tracking of civilian aircraft in distress, following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 two years ago.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation’s governing council on Monday approved proposals for planes to carry tracking devices that can transmit their location at least once a minute in cases of distress. Plane operators will have to ensure their flight recorder data is recoverable, while the duration of cockpit voice recordings is being extended from two to 25 hours, ICAO said.
The requirements for the one-minute tracking and flight recorder data are performance-based, meaning individual airlines and plane-makers can choose the best option for them, from among existing and emerging technologies, ICAO said.
READ MORE: A one-man search for MH370, and a miraculous discovery
The changes will take effect between now and 2021.
Last year Malaysia called for real-time aircraft tracking to become a priority for the aviation industry following the loss of MH370. The flight disappeared on March 8, 2014 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing with 239 people aboard.
“Taken together, these new provisions will ensure that in the case of an accident the location of the site will be known immediately to within six nautical miles, and that investigators will be able to access the aircraft’s flight recorder data promptly and reliably,” said ICAO Council President Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu in the statement.
“They will also contribute to greatly improved and more cost-effective search and rescue operations.”
Two years after the tragedy, MH370 has still not been found.
So far, only a piece of wing, known as a flaperon, discovered on Reunion in July last year has been confirmed by authorities to belong to the missing Boeing 777.
Another piece of debris that was found in a sandbar in Mozambique on February 27 is suspected of belonging to a 777, and MH370 is the only missing 777. That piece of debris was found by American Blaine Gibson, who has been searching for clues about the disappearance of the plane.
It has since been forwarded to investigators who have yet to confirm whether it belonged to MH370.


UN toughens real-time tracking of planes in wake of MH370 mystery 

Blaine Gibson displays a piece of debris found on a Mozambique sandbar on February 27. The debris is thought to be consistent with a part from a Boeing 777. Flight MH370 is the only such aircraft to have gone missing. Photo: Blaine Gibson

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