GPS aircraft tracking
By Jain Software In Business, Official BlogBy Author – Samata Shelare
GPS aircraft tracking is used in both commercial and personal aircraft, and it comes along with a variety of benefits both to safety and convenience. What a GPS does on an aircraft in terms of tracking is a lot different than what a GPS may do in your car. GPS tracking can help to ensure your position in the sky and keep you safe while going about a day of flying.
In order to understand the benefits of GPS aircraft tracking, one will first need to understand just how it works. A device with a GPS sensor is fixed into the aircraft, and it is able to transmit real-time GPS positions of any plane to a server board located on the ground. This sensor may be placed in a number of different areas or positions on the plane depending on the specific make and model, but all sensors work similarly in tracking a planes current position at any time. These positions can then be picked up on by air traffic controllers on the ground that will be able to locate airplanes of all sizes and at all elevations, within any given area and at any given time.
GPS aircraft tracking can provide a number of benefits, even outside of the obvious benefits involving safety. The use of this type of technology can help to calculate flight times to and from any number of destinations so that pilots can get a better understanding of their time of departure compared to the time of arrival, and it can also support in the finding of an aircraft in the instance of an accident. Additionally, GPS aircraft tracking can even be used in flight schools to allow pilots in training to follow a certain path or flight plan laid out by an instructor.
There are actually about 100 air traffic facilities already using the ADS-B, which is why they are able to give such a firm estimation of 2020. This is nearly half of the 230 air traffic facilities in the world. Aviation experts believe 2020 is a good estimate for when every one of these facilities will be using the technology, with more and more adding the technology over the next 16 years. The hardest part is simply equipping the planes with the new system.
Tracking planes during their flight isnt the only thing the ADS-B GPS tracking system can do. It also has the ability to provide weather and other pertinent information to pilots in real-time, so they have an as advanced warning as possible about the current environmental conditions that might impact their flying decisions.
One of the big issues in the past with the other 130 air traffic facilities is that it is easy to lose radar in certain areas of the world. As is most likely the case with the recent missing Malaysian Airlines plane, it was likely over water or in another location not easily tracked by the ground-based radar. This makes it difficult to track and almost impossible to find out what happened to it.
Feith also mentioned that some flights require the new GPS tracking technology because of flying over the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean and being more at risk for becoming lost during their flight.
GPS aircraft tracking is quite a bit different from the GPS technology we may use during our everyday lives in a car, but it provides the same amount of benefits when it comes to convenience, safety, and ease of navigation.