Pilots slow to buy new digital emergency beacons

[CD]

Pilots slow to buy new digital emergency beacons

By Alan Levin, USA TODAY
2009-01-07

The helicopter's twisted wreckage lay in a Louisiana bayou, its crew severely injured and unable to call for help. But a small radio beacon was automatically notifying rescuers.

Within minutes after the crash Sunday, a satellite deep in space alerted rescuers to a possible crash, identified the helicopter's owner and helped pinpoint its location, according to the Air Force.

A Coast Guard helicopter arrived at the remote site within two hours, in time to airlift the lone survivor to a hospital.

New digital distress beacons like the one on the PHI helicopter are revolutionizing rescues of boaters, hikers and pilots across the globe.

But the chopper that crashed on the way to an offshore oil rig was one of only a small minority of U.S.-registered aircraft with the new beacons.

More than 85% of private planes do not carry the improved beacons even as the government prepares to stop listening Feb. 1 for distress calls from the older, outdated beacons installed on most aircraft. The newer beacons cost roughly $2,000 to $4,000, although prices are dropping.

"It's pretty scary," says Lt. Col. Clifton Hicks, who directs Air Force rescue operations in the continental United States.

In recent interviews, ranking officials at the Air Force, Coast Guard, Civil Air Patrol and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors the distress beacons from its satellites in space, urged private pilots to install new Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs) as soon as possible.

"Those people who choose to keep (older) ELTs on their aircraft are going back to 1970s technology," says Lt. Jeff Shoup, operations support officer for NOAA's Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking (SARSAT) system.

Incidents prompted laws

A law requiring ELTs on aircraft within three years was passed by Congress in 1970 following several well-publicized cases of lost planes.

Perhaps the most notorious incident occurred in 1967 when a family of three lived for weeks after a small plane crash in California's Trinity Mountains, but eventually died. According to a diary written by 15-year-old Carla Corbus, the family watched helplessly for days as searchers passed overhead. The last entry was dated 54 days after the crash. A hunter found the wreck months later.

Another incident cemented the need for ELTs. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, D-La.; Rep. Nick Begich, D-Alaska, whose son, Mark, won election to the Senate in November; and two others crashed in a remote section of Alaska on Oct. 16, 1972. No trace of their plane was ever found.

By 1982, the first satellite was equipped to listen for emergency beacons.

The system has been plagued by false alarms and imprecise beacons. Everything from pizza ovens to football stadium scoreboards triggered false alarms, says Allan Knox, the Coast Guard's Mass Rescue Operations Program Manager.

For the past two decades, NOAA and other agencies pushed for a second frequency that minimized the false alarms and allowed satellites to better pinpoint a distress signal's location.

The Coast Guard required the new beacons on commercial vessels starting in 2007.

However, U.S. pilots have balked. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association objected to requiring the new ELTs, arguing that they were too expensive, says Chris Dancy, spokesman for the pilots' group.

Pushed by pilots, Congress in 2000 prohibited federal aviation regulators from requiring the new beacons.

So far, only 30,000 pilots have registered new ELTs with NOAA, Shoup says. That represents fewer than 15% of the 220,000 private aircraft in the USA.

Equipment more precise

Several rescue efforts have been cited by authorities in support of the new ELTs:

*The Air Force's Lt. Col. Hicks says it could have taken hours longer to reach the crashed helicopter in Louisiana if it had had an older ELT.

*Just after midnight on Dec. 26, a sailboat captained by Kirk Ezell began taking on water 200 miles south of Jamaica. Two hours later, when the water in the yacht was waist-deep, Ezell triggered his distress beacon, a newer model that transmitted his precise latitude and longitude obtained by the Global Postioning System, he says from his home in Cartagena, Colombia. Just after dawn, a Coast Guard plane arrived and directed a freighter to pick up Ezell and another crewmember. "The Coast Guard was there much quicker than I thought they would be. It proves ... that everyone should have one."

*On Nov. 27, 2004, a plane carrying Army soldiers in Afghanistan crashed on a remote mountaintop, killing five of the six people aboard. Spc. Harley Miller survived for at least eight hours, but died before rescuers arrived.

The plane, which had been hired by the military, had an older ELT, making it difficult to locate, the National Transportation Safety Board says.

Full story here

[C-FKLY]

Well, at $2,000 to $4,000 for a unit that does the job only slightly better that what we have now... I'm not surprised. It's just too damn expensive for a unit that, despite the incident listed, hasn't really proven itself yet -- in fact, if I understand right, SAR still finds you by the 121.5 signal... And for similar money, you could get a TCAS unit or a satellite WX, which are probably more likely to save your ass in the first place. We, like many others, are waiting in the hope that they become cheaper closer to the Feb. 1 deadline.

[CD]

Old emergency beacons go dead
Not everyone has newer ELT device

Jim La Belle, Community Perspective
Published Sunday, April 12, 2009

Starting in February, flying in Alaska potentially got a lot riskier for some people. Certainly it did for those unfortunate enough to be in an accident with an aircraft without an emergency locator transmitter that broadcasts on the 406 megahertz frequency.

An ELT is a small battery-operated device that mounts in an aircraft and is turned on either manually or by impact forces. When on, it sends a signal to a network of satellites that processes the signal and routes it to the appropriate rescue coordination center.

The 406 MHz ELT is the new generation. The old-style ELT, which broadcast on121.5 MHz, is no longer being received by search and rescue satellites. These are the satellites that have been so successful in getting help fast to those in need. Now, the only 121.5 MHz receivers are those in a few FAA facilities and other select receivers in some aircraft that could be used in a search.

Given weather extremes, the vastness of Alaska and the very limited range of the 121.5 MHz ELTs, being found quickly with the old-style ELT or being found at all is really more like rolling dice. It’s a crap shoot, possibly with your loved ones or your survival at stake.

Unfortunately, it appears that a large percentage of aircraft flying in Alaska today are not equipped with the 406 MHz beacons.

How did this happen? During the past decade, the decision was made worldwide to stop listening to the 121.5 MHz ELTs because of their high false alarm rate and other factors, such as frequency congestion. The 406 MHz ELT was a much better choice because of its ability to immediately send digital GPS signals with a unique, aircraft-specific identifier to search and rescue satellites.

These satellites can tell rescuers very precisely where a 406 MHz beacon is transmitting from, right now. The older analog ELTs required several satellite passes to resolve the position of the accident site, potentially taking hours to get a resolved position, and that position was not nearly so accurate.

The international search and rescue community decided the 406 MHz was obviously far superior, and, in 2000, the date to unplug the old 121.5 MHz satellite receivers was set: Feb. 1, 2009. However, there was no legislation to mandate a change in the United States.

So if you fly in Alaska, or anywhere in the United States, even with a commercial air taxi operator, you have no guarantee that the aircraft is equipped with a 406 MHz ELT.

Last month, there were two air taxi accidents near Nome and Kotzebue in bad weather. Neither airplane had a 406 MHz ELT, only the 121.5 MHz. Fortunately, both were fairly close to airports, and only one required rescue (although that rescue might have been expedited by a 406 MHz ELT).

In 1972, Alaska’s U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and two others were lost in an airplane crash and have never been found. That airplane did not have an ELT and was not required to, although they were readily available at the time. An aircraft flying today without the 406 MHz ELT is in the same situation.

In 1993 and again in 2007, my agency, the National Transportation Safety Board, made recommendations seeking mandatory adoption of the 406MHz ELT. We are not a regulatory agency, however, and only can make recommendations. To date, those recommendations have not been mandated.

Even though some commercial operators have elected to purchase the newer ELTs, no one is keeping a tally, and there’s no way to tell without asking. Also, some of Alaska’s commercial operators are using a satellite–based flight following system — which is an excellent addition to, but not a replacement for, a 406 MHz ELT.

When air safety investigators at the Alaska Region of the NTSB need to fly to an accident site, we ask the operator if their fleet has the 406 MHz ELT. Even though we recognize that aircraft accidents are fairly rare, we want to do all that we can to ensure we are flying with a safety conscious organization. We have seen far too many serious accidents not to realize how critical a timely rescue can be.

Perhaps you, too, will want to know before you take that next sight-seeing tour with a friend, place your family member aboard that chartered aircraft for a hunting or fishing expedition or put the village basketball team on a flight to the next village. Ask what kind of ELT is aboard — just to be on the safe side.

Jim La Belle of Anchorage is chief of the Alaska Region of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Full article here...

[Four1oh]

Well, at $2,000 to $4,000 for a unit that does the job only slightly better that what we have now... I'm not surprised. It's just too damn expensive for a unit that, despite the incident listed, hasn't really proven itself yet -- in fact, if I understand right, SAR still finds you by the 121.5 signal... And for similar money, you could get a TCAS unit or a satellite WX, which are probably more likely to save your ass in the first place. We, like many others, are waiting in the hope that they become cheaper closer to the Feb. 1 deadline.

"Slightly"?? It transmits your coordinates for Christ's sake!

[DowneastGuy]

The 406 ELT will only transmit the coordinates if it has been installed with a nav interface to an onboard GPS system, which is optional. I suspect that many aren't being installed this way.

[Four1oh]

Well, then, sounds like it's only slightly better!

[nite_owl]

15-20 km search area is reduced to 3 km (Artex propaganda). $1300 elt uninstalled.

[Hornblower]

C-FKLY likely has it right. There are hundreds, if not thousands of aircraft in this country for which you would literally have to re-invest up to 10% of the value of your aircraft in one little plastic box that is questionably effective in actually fulfilling its intended role.

Let’s face it, there are many items or modifications that one can buy for their aircraft that would have a statistically greater likelihood of being more effective at savings one’s ass in the event of an emergency. Two that come to mind quickly are: Ballistic chutes, and air bag seat belts; I’m sure there are others.

In fact it would possible for many owners to invest an amount equal to or greater than the actual value of their aircraft in safety stuff. ELTs, I believe, are so highly prized as safety equipment because we have been conditioned over the years to believe, and I mean believe, that they are essential pieces of equipment. Over 40 years of mental conditioning, … since long before there were satellites to pick up the signal.

One of the most important criteria in developing, and then regulating the 406, is the cost saving to the Search and Rescue folks (read fewer false starts). If it is still so important to get them installed fleet wide, why do they not subsidize the cost, so that we can buy them for a reasonable price. You could probably outfit the entire GA fleet for less than the cost of one new search and rescue chopper.

I know, … it’ll never happen, so don’t waste the fuel in your flamethrower.

[petpad]

One of the most important criteria in developing, and then regulating the 406, is the cost saving to the Search and Rescue folks (read fewer false starts).

Bang on. This is all driven by DND and NSS. Support for the 406 at TC and TSB is actually very soft - but they sing the tune of a good soldier and team player (governement team I suppose). Unless I missed someting, Baird has that hot potato sitting on his desk and he must be wondering how to mash it, peel it, bake it or fry it. The fact that the americans do NOT require it weighs heavily in the balance, and COPA has been spilling their guts out on that one issue alone. My dollar goes that Baird will blow this apart and will exempt private owners. If he does not, DND and NSS have bigger balls than TC.

[Hornblower]

Ya but, ... the reality is people will be left with a lesser S&R response if they elect not to get one, ... cause the satellite is already shut down. The whole situation really sucks if you ask me. In the long run, I guess most will get one, but not without experiencing a certain amount of angst aimed at the dicks who shut the 121.5 system down.

[Old Dog Flying]

I worked in Edmonton RCC in the late '50s and during August we had 3 searches going back to back. All Americans. All survived! A Tri-Pacer ended up inverted in a dry stream bed and if ELTs had been invented back then, it probably would not have worked. A PV-2 burned then crashed...one parachute, two pilots...and a Cessna 140 flying the highway to Alaska landed in a shalow lake.

The interesting thing about all of these was that the pilots all walked away from the crash sites which we found within 48 hours...and no friggin' ELTs! We found all 3 pilots about a week after each crash.

In 1974 when ELTs became mandatory equipment, we had plenty of the early Narco and Shark 7s returned due to corrosion, exploding batteries and other failings. I had a steel locker loaded with these crappy life-savers and TC kept changing the bloody specs and believe me when you are running 12 aircraft, it gets expensive to keep up with the problematic unitss.

So I'm not holding my breath over the 406 situation but I am looking at a PLB or Spot beacon.