More nations ban Boeing 737 MAX jets after Ethiopia crash

Yahoo – AFP, March 12, 2019

Boeing 737 Max planes are being suspended from airspace in countries including
Britain, France, Germany, Ireland and The Netherlands (AFP Photo/BEN STANSALL)

Paris (AFP) - The EU closed its airspace to Boeing 737 MAX planes on Tuesday, joining similar action by nations across the globe following a second deadly accident in just five months.

Fleets of the best-selling workhorse plane were also grounded by airlines as safety concerns swirled, sending Boeing shares tumbling another seven percent in Tuesday trading and wiping billions more off its market value.

On Sunday, a new Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 went down minutes into a flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.

In October, a Lion Air jet of the same model crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people shortly after takeoff from Jakarta.

The widening airspace closures puts pressure on Boeing, the world's biggest planemaker, to prove the MAX planes are safe.

The full extent of the impact on international travel routes was unclear, although there are some 350 MAX 8 planes currently in service around the world with more than 5,000 on order.

Factfile on the Boeing 737 MAX 8 (AFP Photo)

The EU aviation safety agency said it was closing European airspace to all MAX aircraft currently operating.

It noted that the "exact causes" of the Lion Air crash were still being investigated.

"Since that action, another fatal accident occurred," EASA said, referring to Sunday's Ethiopian Airlines disaster.

"At this early stage of the investigation, it cannot be excluded that similar causes may have contributed to both events," the agency said.

'Precautionary measure'

India late Tuesday joined the list of countries to close its airspace to the jet, a day after saying it had imposed additional interim safety requirements for ground engineers and crew for the aircraft.

The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 went down minutes into a flight 

to Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board (AFP Photo/Michael TEWELDE)

Elsewhere, Turkish Airlines, one of the largest carriers in the world, said it was suspending its 12 MAX aircraft from Wednesday, until "uncertainty" was clarified.

Low-cost airline Norwegian Air Shuttle, South Korea's Eastar Jet and South Africa's Comair also said they would halt flights.

On Twitter, US President Donald Trump weighed in on the situation, writing: "Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly."

"Pilot are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT," he wrote, referring to the prestigious university in Massachusetts.

US carriers have so far appeared to maintain confidence in Boeing, which has said it is certain the planes are safe to fly.

The US federal aviation authority, the FAA, has not grounded the MAX but ordered the manufacturer to make design changes.

US President Donald Trump tweeted that modern planes are too complicated

for pilots (AFP Photo/Jim WATSON)

The move was not enough to reassure the UK Civil Aviation Authority, which said it was banning the planes from UK airspace "as a precautionary measure".

Global air travel hub Singapore, as well as Australia, Malaysia and Oman were among the other countries to ban all MAX planes from their airspace.

China, a hugely important market for Boeing, had already ordered domestic airlines to suspend operations of the plane on Monday, as did Indonesia.

Argentina's flag carrier also grounded five MAX 8 aircraft on Tuesday, as did airlines in countries including Brazil and Mexico.

'Significant industry impact'

Boeing has described the MAX series as its fastest-selling family of planes, with more than 5,000 orders placed to date from about 100 customers.

Debris of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane strewn over a crash site outside Addis 

Ababa (AFP Photo/Michael TEWELDE)

But not since the 1970s -- when the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 suffered successive fatal incidents -- has a new model been involved in two deadly accidents in such a short period.

"I think the impact for the industry is significant," said Gerry Soejatman, a Jakarta-based aviation analyst.

"We have a new type of aircraft -- that type of aircraft has only been in service for two years -- and... we have two accidents with seemingly similar circumstances."

The plane involved in Sunday's crash was less than four months old, with Ethiopian Airlines saying it was delivered on November 15.

It went down near the village of Tulu Fara, some 40 miles (60 kilometres) east of Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian Airlines said the pilot was given clearance to turn around after indicating problems shortly before the plane disappeared from radar.

The doomed Boeing 737 MAX airliner was carrying passengers and crew from 

35 countries (AFP Photo)

Its chief executive Tewolde GebreMariam said the plane had flown in from Johannesburg on Sunday, spent three hours in Addis and was "dispatched with no remark", meaning no problems were flagged.

Investigators have recovered the black box flight recorders, which could potentially provide information about what happened, depending on their condition.

The crash cast a pall over a gathering of the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi -- at least 22 staff from several UN agencies were on board the doomed flight.

Kenya had the highest death toll among the nationalities on the flight with 32, according to Ethiopian Airlines.

There were also passengers from Canada, Ethiopia, Italy, the United States, Britain and France.

#UPDATE The ban on the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft became worldwide after US President Donald Trump joined Canada and other countries in grounding the aircraft amid intense pressure about the safety concerns https://t.co/okBppoGk6W

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 13 maart 2019

Black box data recovered from an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last week shows "clear similarities" with a recent crash in Indonesia of the same type of aircraft, Ethiopia's transport minister said https://t.co/k38qc9WcB6 by @ChrisJStein pic.twitter.com/1Q7SuaGpA6

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 17 maart 2019

Plane parts 'almost certainly' from missing MH370

Australia has concluded that debris found along the coast of Mozambique is likely from missing flight MH370. The discovery could provide a much-needed clue as to what happened to the Malaysia Airlines plane.

Deutsche Welle, 24 March 2016

Australia said on Thursday that the plane debris almost certainly belonged to MH370, which vanished without a trace two years ago along with its 239 passengers.

The first fragment was found earlier this month by an American explorer in Mozambique. After Seattle lawyer Blaine Gibson's discovery was publicized, a South African teenager who had also found a piece of the plane went public as well.

"The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370," said Darren Chester, Australia's minister for infrastructure and transport.

Confirmation of theory

Chester said the discoveries confirmed earlier theories that parts of the plane likely drifted toward Africa after supposedly crashing in the Indian Ocean.

The first major breakthrough in the investigation came when a wing from a Boeing 777 - the model of the MH370 plane - washed ashore on an island in the Indian Ocean.

Investigators are still hoping to locate the plane's black boxes, or flight recorders, which are likely somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.

blc/jr (AP, Reuters)

Russian plane broke up 'in the air': expert probing crash

Yahoo – AFP, Haitham El-Tabei, 1 Nov 2015

Mourners lay flowers at Pulkovo International Airport outside St. Petersburg on

 November 1, 2015 as Russia mourned its biggest-ever air disaster, a crash in

Egypt that claimed 224 lives (AFP Photo/Olga Maltseva)

WADI Al-ZOLOMAT (Egypt) (AFP) - A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt broke up "in the air" strewing fragments across a wide area, an expert said Sunday as investigators probed the disaster that killed 224 people.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged patience to determine the cause of Saturday's crash, after the Islamic State jihadist group (IS) claimed it brought down the A-321 in Egypt's restive Sinai Peninsula.

"The disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large area," said Viktor Sorochenko, a senior official with Russia's Interstate Aviation Committee, quoted by the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti from Cairo.

Sorochenko, who is heading an international panel of experts, said it was "too early to draw conclusions" about what caused the flight from the Red Sea holiday resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg to crash.

Investigators have recovered the "black box" flight recorders and the Egyptian government said its contents were being analysed.

Egyptian soldiers stand guard next to the luggage and belongings of passengers

 of the A321 Russian airliner piled up at the site of the crash in Wadi el-Zolmat

in the Sinai Peninsular on November 1, 2015 (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)

"In such cases, leave it to specialists to determine the cause of the plane crash because it is a subject of an extensive and complicated technical study," Sisi said.

The crash site in the Wadi al-Zolomat area of North Sinai was littered with blackened aircraft parts Sunday as the smell of burnt metal lingered, an AFP correspondent said.

There were no bodies visible, but soldiers guarded dozen of bags and suitcases belonging to passengers from flight KGL 9268.

A tiny red jacket underlined the horror of the tragedy that also killed 17 children.

Officers involved in the search efforts said rescue crews had recovered 168 bodies so far, including one of a girl found eight kilometres (five miles) from the main wreckage.

Army helicopters hovered above the site as the search for bodies continued.

IS claim downplayed

Flags flew at half mast in Russia on Sunday and entertainment programmes on television were cancelled on a national day of mourning for the victims, most of them Russians ranging in age from 10 months to 77 years.

Cairo said there were 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers on board, and seven crew members.

Thousands of Russians gathered in Saint Petersburg's Palace Square to observe a minute's silence and release doves and balloons to the darkening sky.

"It was impossible for me not to come," said Nika Kletskikh, 27, who lost a friend in the crash.

"It's so awful to think that she's no longer there."

Both Cairo and Moscow have downplayed the claim from Egypt's IS branch that it brought down the aircraft flown by the airline Kogalymavia, operating under the name Metrojet.

Russia held a day or mourning after 224 people died when a Russian airliner 

crashed in Egypt's Sinai (AFP Photo/Yury Kirnichny)

Prime Minister Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed the militants could not down a plane flying at 30,000 feet (9,000 metres), the aircraft's flight level, and Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim "cannot be considered accurate".

A Russian team including Sokolov and the emergencies minister, Vladimir Puchkov, visited the scene in a remote part of the Sinai. Later on Sunday they left for Moscow.

Two air accident investigators from France -- Airbus's home country -- were also due in Egypt along with six experts from the aerospace giant.

Germany's Lufthansa, Emirates and Air France all said they would halt flights over Sinai until the reasons for the crash were known.

The plane lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes after take-off early on Saturday.

Wreckage and dead bodies were found scattered over a large area south of the town of El-Arish. Many bodies were missing limbs, said an officer, who requested anonymity.

The IS affiliate waging an insurgency in the Sinai claimed it brought down the aircraft in revenge for Russian air strikes against the jihadist group in Syria.

But experts dismissed the idea.

To reach a plane at that altitude "you would need hard-to-use missiles, so it seems unlikely," said Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France's BEA aviation investigation agency.

"This requires trained people and equipment that IS does not have, to my knowledge."

Experts said a surface-to-air missile could have struck the aircraft if it had been descending, and that a bomb on board could not yet be ruled out, but technical or human error was more likely.

Debris from the Russian A321 at the site of the crash in Wadi el-Zolmat 

on November 1, 2015 (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)

Full check

An Egyptian air traffic control official said the pilot told him in their last exchange that he had radio trouble, but Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kamal said communications had been "normal".

"There was nothing abnormal... and the pilot didn't ask to change the plane's route," he said.

Russia has a dismal air safety record, and while larger carriers have begun upgrading ageing fleets, the crash is likely to raise concerns about smaller airlines such as Kogalymavia.

On Sunday, the Russian transportation watchdog, Rostransnadzor, ordered Kogalymavia to perform a full check on its A-321s.

Kogalymavia confirmed the instructions but denied this amounted to a de facto grounding of its remaining fleet of six A-321 airliners.

The last major air crash in Egypt was in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 148 people on board.

Egypt air crash: Accident or attack? https://t.co/SpTFyxSnhJ pic.twitter.com/5LGCZUcf2v

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) November 1, 2015

Related Articles:

Crash means gloomy days ahead for Egypt's tourist jewel

'90 percent' certainty Russia plane downed by bomb - New
Russian airline blames Egypt crash on 'external' factors
Black boxes recovered from Russian flight crash site, says Egypt

Second Germanwings black box found

French prosecutors have confirmed that the second black box from the Germanwings flight 4U9525 has been found. Authorities hope to find more clues about the plane crash in the French Alps.

Deutsche Welle, 2 April 2015

After the first voice recorder suggested that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately locked the plane on a collision course with the mountains, the second black could provide more information about the Airbus A320 that crashed in the French Alps last week, French prosecutor Brice Robin told reporters in Marseille on Thursday.

Brice Robin

The voice recorder with the conversations between Lubitz and the pilot had been found shortly after the crash on March 24. German co-pilot took the advantage of the captain's absence to lock him out and set the plane on a deadly descent into the Alps.

The Marseille prosecutor in charge of the case, declined to give any further comment, but said he was planning a press conference for later on Thursday.

The Flight data in the second black box contain readings from hundreds of parameters of the Airbus aircraft including any pilot commands.

French search teams were also examining cell phones found in the debris of the plane crash for more clues about the tragedy. However, no video or audio from such devices has been released publicly.

The Germanwings flight 4U9525 from Barcelona to Düsseldorf crashed into the mountains at a speed of 700 kilometres (430 miles) an hour, killing all 150 people on board.

Co-pilot studied suicide methods on internet

Meanwhile, German state prosecutors said a computer seized from 27-year-old co-pilot's home showed searches had been made on cockpit doors and their safety precautions as well as suicide methods.

Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz

"On at least one day, the person also spent several minutes trying out search terms for cockpit doors and their security protection," German prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck said.

"The browser history wasn't erased, in particular the search terms called up on this device in the period from March 16 to March 23 were able to be retraced," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Lubitz's tablet computer was found in a search of his flat in Düsseldorf.

German prosecutors have said Lubitz was diagnosed as suicidal "several years ago," before he became a pilot. He informed Lufthansa about his illness in 2009 after interrupting his flight training.

Two days after the crash, Lufthansa chief executive Carsten Spohr said Lubitz had passed all medical and psychological tests to obtain a student pilot certificate including the one from the US Federal Aviation Authority in 2010.

jil/rc (dpa, AFP)

Leaders see horror of French Alps crash as probe gathers pace

Yahoo - AFP, Daniel Ortelli and Marc Burleigh, 25 March 2015

French President Francois Hollande (3rd left), German Chancellor Angela 

Merkel (centre) and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (2nd right) arrive 

at Seyne-les-Alpes on March 25, 2015, near the site where a German airliner

crashed in the French Alps (AFP Photo/Jeff Pachoud)

Seyne-les-Alpes (France) (AFP) - The leaders of France, Germany and Spain visited a makeshift rescue base near the Germanwings air crash site Wednesday, as investigators ramped up their probe into the mysterious disaster that killed 150.

French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew over the crash site to see the devastation for themselves before meeting rescue workers outside the crisis centre set up on Tuesday after the worst crash in France in four decades.

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy also visited the centre to be briefed on the gruelling rescue operation in difficult mountain terrain where Flight 4U9525 crashed early Tuesday, scattering debris over a wide area.

France's investigators have recovered

 the cockpit voice recorder from the 

doomed Germanwings flight but say it

 was badly damaged in the crash (AFP

Photo)

Buffeted by strong mountain winds, the ashen-faced leaders spent several minutes inspecting a line-up of blue-uniformed rescue workers, chatting intently with the help of interpreters.

"My deepest sympathies with the families and all my thanks for the friendship of the people of this region and in France," wrote Merkel in a book of condolence.

Hollande wrote: "Tribute to the victims. Support to the families."

Grieving families were also gathering near the crash site, where a counselling unit has been established.

Meanwhile, investigators were combing through the pulverised wreckage and examining its badly damaged black box for clues as to what caused the mysterious crash.

Hundreds of firefighters and police were involved in the massive task at the rugged crash site, accessible only by helicopter or an arduous hike on foot.

And in Paris, experts analysed one of the plane's black boxes, hoping to discover why the Airbus A320 went down in good weather -- an "inexplicable" disaster according to Lufthansa, the budget airline's parent company.

Photos issued by the BEA air crash investigation office showed the mangled orange "black box", its metal casing torn and twisted by the violence of the impact.

Officials warned it would take several days to analyse the "very badly damaged" cockpit voice recorder, but hoped it might offer initial clues to the mystery later Wednesday.

'Horrendous' scene

A woman reads a book of condolence for 

the victims of the Germanwings plane crash

 at the Berliner Dom cathedral on March 25,

2015 (AFP Photo/Tobias Schwarz)

A second black box, recording technical flight data, has yet to be found.

Authorities are scrambling to explain why the plane suddenly began a fatal eight-minute descent shortly after reaching cruising altitude on its route between Barcelona and Duesseldorf.

No distress signal was sent and the crew failed to respond to desperate attempts at contact from ground control.

"It is inexplicable," Lufthansa chief Carsten Spohr said in Frankfurt.

"The plane was in perfect condition and the two pilots were experienced."

Officials in Spain said at least 49 Spaniards had been killed in the accident, and Germanwings said at least 72 Germans were dead.

French police set up road blocks near the crash site, ordering all non-official vehicles to turn around, an AFP reporter at the scene said.

Just beyond lay a steep and broken landscape littered with the shattered pieces of what was Flight 4U9525.

"It's a zone that is very difficult to access, very slippery. There was rain and snow overnight. So we need to secure the zone before the investigators begin their work," a spokesman for the French interior ministry, Pierre-Henry Brandet, told reporters.

"We are not in a race against time," he said. "We need to move forward methodically."

The plane was "totally destroyed," a local member of parliament who flew over the site said, describing the scene as "horrendous."

A helicopter flies over the crash site 

of the Germanwings Airbus A320 in the 

French Alps (AFP Photo/Francis Pellier)

"The biggest body parts we identified are no bigger than a briefcase," one investigator said.

'Darkest day'

More than 300 policemen and 380 firefighters have been assigned the grisly task of searching the site.

The plane was carrying six crew and 144 passengers, including 16 German teenagers returning home from a school trip.

Their high school in the small German town of Haltern was to hold a memorial event Wednesday to honour the victims.

"This is certainly the darkest day in the history of our city," said a tearful Bodo Klimpel, the town's mayor. "It is the worst thing you can imagine."

"Yesterday we were many, today we are alone," read a hand-painted sign at the school, decorated with 16 crosses -- one for each of the victims, most of whom were around 15 years old.

Opera singers Oleg Bryjak, 54, and Maria Radner, 33, were also on board, flying to their home city of Duesseldorf. Radner was travelling with her husband and baby, one of two infants on board the plane.

Condolence messages for the victims 

of the Germanwings plane crash are laid at 

a memorial at Duesseldorf airport in western

 Germany, on March 25, 2015 (AFP Photo/

Federico Gambarini)

In Spain, meanwhile, a minute's silence was observed at noon at countless points around the country, including both houses of parliament in Madrid and public offices.

As the probe gathered pace, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said investigators were not focusing on the possibility it was a terrorist attack.

Germanwings, the growing low-cost subsidiary of the prestigious Lufthansa carrier, had an unblemished safety record.

Weather did not appear to be a factor in the crash, with conditions calm at the time, French weather officials said.

It was the deadliest air crash on the French mainland since 1974 when a Turkish Airlines plane crashed, killing 346 people.

Victims were also confirmed from Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Colombia, Denmark, Holland, Israel, Japan, Mexico and the United States, according to officials.

Related Article:

Cockpit: "24 years is not old for an A320"

A year after MH370, Chinese aircraft maker unveils better black box

Want China Times, Xinhua 2015-03-08

A COMAC booth at the 15th China International Industry Fair in
Shanghai. (File photo/CFP)

In the event of a test model plane crash, an emergency recorder and tracking system is separated from the tail section of the plane.

The test, which is shown in a video clip, is part of a series of tests run since October by the US subsidiary of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) on a comprehensive emergency information recorder and tracking system.

COMAC America Corporation says its emergency recorder system includes a data storage device and transmitter called Harbinger. It claims it has been applying new methods that transcend traditional designs of black box recorders used in commercial aircraft.

The yearlong searching effort for Malaysia Airlines' missing flight MH370 has turned up with no sign of the plane, but it has fueled the company's resolve to come up with a more efficient system.

Flight MH370, a Boeing 777-200, disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board. So far no trace has been found despite a massive surface and underwater hunt, in what has become one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history.

The search continues to be jointly carried out by Australia, Malaysia and China over vast swaths of the Indian Ocean some 1,600 kilometers off Australia's west coast, with four ships using sophisticated sonar systems to scour a huge underwater area.

The protracted search for the missing plane's black boxes, or the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, are presenting new demands for aviation security and rescue. Major aircraft makers of the world continue to contribute to black box technologies.

A traditional black box emits distress signals for 30 days after sinking with the plane. It stores 30-minutes of cockpit voice conversation and two hours of flight data before the crash.

However, when the plane crashes and goes down at sea, the sonar signal emitted from the black box only transmits several kilometers, therefore requiring a rather definitive search area, which is often difficult in sea crashes.

If the black box becomes covered in seabed sludge (or heavy snow, in the case of a mountainside crash), distress signals are weak and hard to detect, making it difficult to locate the crash site in a timely manner for rescue.

COMAC America believes that the Harbinger emergency system is a useful supplement to existing black box designs that sink with the plane after a crash.

Engineers of the company say, the Harbinger emergency system is able to capture images of the last few minutes of the plane before it crashes. With the system, the last few minutes of the plane's position, black box data, and video footage is uploaded through cloud technology to a satellite.

The system can also save a copy of the data and is equipped with a parachute and inflation system to enable it to stay afloat at sea. The inflation system can also protect hardware when the Harbinger lands on hard surfaces. It will also transmit distress signals to help rescue teams locate its position.

Based on repeated tests of the system, the video footage of the last few minutes of a plane crash, for instance, offers invaluable insight into the data captured in a traditional black box. The position tracking system and cloud data transmission function also increases the probability of rapid location of the crash site and the survivability of the captured flight data.

"Being able to find the true cause of an air disaster is a crucial step towards improving aircraft designs for safer air travel tomorrow," said Wei Ye, president of COMAC America Corporation told Xinhua. "The Harbinger emergency system will bring revolutionary changes to air rescue and aviation security."

The company has filed a patent application of the Harbinger emergency system with the US Patent and Trademark Office, said Ye, adding that "we believe new models of commercial aircraft in the future will benefit from using this system."

Both engines of TransAsia Airways plane failed before Taipei crash: official

Want China Times, CNA 2015-02-06

Wang Hsing-chung during a press conference on the crash in Taipei,
Feb. 6. (Photo/CNA)

Data from the two black boxes retrieved from a TransAsia Airways plane that crashed into a river in Taipei showed that both of the turboprop aircraft's engines failed before the crash, the Aviation Safety Council (ASC) said Friday.

Neither engine had any power during the last minute and 7 seconds before the aircraft plunged into the Keelung River, ASC managing director Wang Hsing-chung said at a news conference in Taipei.

A warning first went off for engine No. 2 when the plane reached an altitude of about 1,200 feet, according to the flight data recorder, he said.

Forty-six seconds later, power to engine No. 1 was cut off and then turned back on a full 56 seconds after that, just six seconds before the plane hit the ground, Wang said in presenting the timeline of what happened.

He did not give any explanation for why engine No. 1 was turned off.

TransAsia Airways flight 235 crashed three minutes and 23 seconds after getting clearance at 10:51:13 to take off Wednesday morning from Songshan Airport in northern Taipei en route to Kinmen.

Fifteen of the 58 people on board survived the accident while 35 have been confirmed dead and another eight remain unaccounted for.

The ATR72-600 aircraft was less than a year old but had experienced engine problems before.

Representatives from the French Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, the plane's manufacturer ATR and engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney Canada in Taiwan also attended the press conference.

Aircraft set for minute-by-minute tracking

Yahoo – AFP, Marc Brabant, 31 Jan 2015

All commercial flights worldwide could soon send out an automated signal every
 minute in times of distress to help rescuers find downed aircraft more easily
(AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)

Montreal (AFP) - All commercial flights worldwide could soon send out an automated signal every minute in times of distress to help rescuers find downed aircraft more easily.

The new measures are in response to last year's disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in what remains one of history's great aviation mysteries.

The aircraft, with 239 people on board, has never been found, nearly a year on.

The new tracking rules, prepared by an industry working group, would be phased in by the end of this year, said the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency.

The initiative will now be presented to delegates from all 191 ICAO member states at a meeting in Montreal from Monday to Thursday, and "a final proposal" will be submitted to the ICAO Council within six months for ratification.

The measure has unanimous support among ICAO member states, a source said Friday, meaning it is virtually assured to be brought in.

Currently, radar can track a plane, however coverage fades when aircraft are out at sea or the plane is flying below a certain altitude.

Under the new rules, airlines will be required to track their aircraft using a system that gives their location at 15-minute intervals.

If an "abnormal event" is detected, including a change in direction or deviation from a flight path, the signal rate hastens to every minute.

Airlines would be responsible for sharing the data with authorities in cases of emergencies.

"It's the start of tracking (flights) every minute in emergency situations that is the most effective in the short term," the source said.

Following a distress signal, search and rescue teams would be able to zero in on an aircraft within six nautical miles (11 kilometers) of its last known position.

The ICAO will also ask airlines to equip their aircraft with ejectable black boxes. These would float and be more easily retrievable in case of a crash over water.

They will be mandatory on new aircraft built after 2021, the source told AFP.

The ejectable black boxes would be in addition to existing commercial flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders that continually record flight information.

AirAsia Jet’s Alarms ‘Screaming’ Before Crash: Investigator

Jakarta Globe – AFP, Jan 21, 2015

AirAsia Flight QZ8501 crashed in shallow waters with 162 people on board,
but so far just 53 bodies have been recovered. (AFP Photo/Juni Kriswanto)

Jakarta. Warning alarms in AirAsia Flight QZ8501 were “screaming” as the pilots desperately tried to stabilize the plane just before it plunged into the Java Sea last month, a crash investigator said on Wednesday.

The noise of several alarms — including one that indicated the plane was stalling — can be heard going off in recordings from the black box in the Airbus A320-200′s cockpit, the investigator told AFP, requesting anonymity.

“The warning alarms, we can say, were screaming, while in the background they [the pilot and co-pilot] were busy trying to recover,” the investigator said, adding the warnings were going off “for some time.”

The investigator, from Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC), added that the pilots’ voices were drowned out by the sound of the alarms.

The revelation came a day after Indonesian Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan said that the plane had climbed abnormally fast before stalling and plunging into the sea, during a flight on Dec. 28 in stormy weather from Surabaya to Singapore.

“In the final minutes, the plane climbed at a speed which was beyond normal,” the minister told reporters.

The plane crashed in shallow waters with 162 people on board, but so far just 53 bodies have been recovered.

Divers have been struggling for a week against rough seas and strong currents to reach the plane’s main body, which was spotted on the seabed and is thought to contain the bulk of the remaining passengers and crew.

The two black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — were recovered last week after a lengthy search, and investigators are expected to complete a preliminary report next week.

As well as the cockpit voice recorder, the NTSC is examining a wealth of information in the flight data recorder, which monitors every major part of the plane.

They are focusing on the possibility of human or aircraft error, after ruling out terrorism following an analysis of the cockpit voice recorder.

Committee head Tatang Kurniadi said that the preliminary report into the crash would be completed on Tuesday, a month after the accident. He said the full report would not be released publicly but the media would be told some of its contents.

There was a huge international hunt for the crashed plane, involving ships from several countries including the US and China.

All but seven of those on board the flight were Indonesian. The foreign nationals were from South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Britain and France.

Agence France-Presse