'Black box should be a thing of the past' - Ahmad Shabery

The Malaysia Airlines MH370 and MH17 tragedies have directed the attention of the international community towards the role that ICT can play to help prevent such mishaps in the future or at the very least facilitate investigations.

In this regard, Malaysia's Minister of Communications and Multimedia, Datuk Seri Ahmad Shabery Cheek has reiterated Malaysia’s call for the implementation of real time flight tracking and monitoring systems.

The call was made in his speech at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Plenipotentiary Conference here today.

Ahmad Shabery put forth this proposal to ITU for the first time at the World Telecommunication Development Conference in Dubai in March, just a few weeks after the disappearance of flight MH370.

"Four and a half months later, Malaysia lost another Boeing 777 – flight MH 17 was shot down over Eastern Ukraine on July 17, and along with it all 298 passengers and crew, including 83 children perished," he said in his address to the 3,000 delegates.

The Minister said with the two air tragedies, Malaysia was determined to do its part to intensify efforts for ICT to play an even bigger role in the aviation industry.

"More than ever, I believe that locating and searching for the black box should be a thing of the past, because its technology is from the 60s.

"Even more so, I am certain that today’s technology should be transmitting data from aircraft, including from the black box, in real-time," he said.

ITU is a United Nations agency responsible for the coordination, management and regulation of global ICT issues.

Held every four years, the Plenipotentiary Conference is the top policy-making body of the ITU, where 193 Member Countries set the Union's general policies, adopt four-year strategic and financial plans and elect the senior management team of the organisation, and the members of the Council.

Malaysia’s policy statement was seen as a powerful call-to-action and the international community has heeded this call and taken positive steps to establish international standards for real time monitoring of flight data

ITU has received proposal submissions from four out of its five regions for this.

Ahmad Shabery also thanked the ITU for acting so swiftly on Malaysia’s call to work with industry experts to find a way to establish international standards for real- time monitoring of flight data.

Together with the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), an Expert Group Dialogue was held in Kuala Lumpur in May this year.

The outcome of this Dialogue provided the basis for both ICT and aviation experts to further this work.

"Malaysia has very high expectations from this Conference; that it will help us to make sure that air travel will be safer because of ICT, and because we trust in the ITU, to make a difference,” Ahmad Shabery said.