Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine August 2017 - 4

Feature Paper:

DOI. No. 10.1109/MAES.2017.160161

Enhancement of Safety Measures to Prevent Air
Accidents
Ramanpreet Singh Ahluwalia, Sukhwinder Singh, PEC University of Technology,
Chandigarh, India

INTRODUCTION
In today's world, with time at a premium, people increasingly use
aircraft for travel and for transporting goods from one place to another. This has resulted in greater chances of aircraft accidents.
There are many reasons for these accidents, ranging from pilot
error to instrument or machinery failure. Basically, there are five
phases of air travel during which these accidents can occur: take
off, initial climb, en-route, landing-approach, and touchdown. In
the last few years, the accidents during the en-route phase are on
the increase, e.g., from 2012 till 2014 they have increased from 3
in 2012 to 8 in 2013 to 13 in 2014.
Though during the last few years the overall number of air
accidents has reduced, especially those at the take-off and landing phases due to improvements in avionics both on board and on
shore, the incidents of aircraft veering off their intended or planned
routes and being completely lost thereafter are on the increase. A
total of 36 aircraft disappeared and remained undetected between
1948 and 2014 [1]. Two examples: the disappearance of Malaysia
Airlines Flight 370 (MH 370) on 08 March, 2014 [2] during its
intended flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China
killing all 239 people from 15 nations on board, and the disappearance of a DHC-6 aircraft operated by an Indonesian Airline,
Aviastar Mandiri, on 02 October, 2015 [3] during its flight from
Masamba to Makassar in Indonesia, whose debris was located on
05 October, 2015 confirming the killing of all 10 people on board,
indicate that in spite of having advanced avionics and tracking systems in place, there still exists a scope and requirement for improving the tracking and safety systems on passenger aircraft.
In this article, we present the results of our research into the
causes of en-route air disasters, our assessment of the hypothesis
that en-route disasters can be made less fatal, and recommendations
to the aviation industry for improvements in onboard avionics that
include tracking systems, improvements in procedures for alerting
ground stations and initiation of positive response by ground forces,
Authors' address: PEC University of Technology, Chandigarh,
Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sector 12,
Chandigarh, Chandigarh 160012 India, E-mail:
(ramanpreetsingh716@gmail.com).
Manuscript received July 28, 2016, revised April 30, 2017, and
ready for publication May 24, 2017.
Review handled by M. Braasch.
0885/8985/17/$26.00 © 2017 IEEE
4

and some structural enhancements wherein the aircraft may glide
down safely with less force of impact. We assumed that the flight
crew would be fully trained in regards to procedures to be followed
and for operating the avionics on board, and that the aircraft would
be fitted with modern avionic systems available off the shelf that
includes Global Positioning System (GPS) and satellite communication (SATCOM) systems, etc. The scope of this research has been
limited to commercial passenger aircraft because military aircraft
keep their missions and routes secret due national security interests,
and to prevention of disasters during the en-route phase of flight
only.

DEFINITIONS
Definitions of some important equipment and words used in this
article are appended below:
C

Accident (noun). An unfortunate incident that may happen
unexpectedly and/or unintentionally, that may result in injury and/or damage. It could be an event that has happened
by chance or without any deliberate/apparent cause. As per
"Convention on International Civil Aviation" (ICAO) [4], it
is defined as "an occurrence associated with the operation
of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight until all
such persons disembark, where a person is fatally/seriously
injured; or the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure
or the aircraft gets missing or is completely inaccessible."
Aircraft (noun, plural is aircraft). Any machine supported
for flight in the air by buoyancy or by the dynamic action
of air on its surfaces, especially powered airplanes, gliders,
and helicopters.
Airway/Flight Path. A legally defined corridor that connects
one location to another at a specified altitude, along which
an aircraft may be flown. It can be thought as three-dimensional highways for aircraft.1 They have defined segments
within a specific altitude block, corridor width, and are between fixed geographic coordinates for satellite navigation
systems, or between ground-based navigational aids.

Most airways are eight nautical miles (14 kilometers) wide, with
flight levels that keep aircraft separated by at least 1,000 feet vertically from other aircraft on the flight level above and below it.

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

AUGUST 2017

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