GPS better than radar systems to track aircraft
CHICAGO: Get lost in the woods and a cell phone in your pocket can help camping buddies find you. Drive into a ditch and GPS in your car lets emergency crews pinpoint the crash site. But when a transcontinental flight is above the middle of the ocean, no one on the ground can see exactly where it is - in the air, or worse, in the water.
The disappearance of Air France Flight 477 and its 228 passengers over the Atlantic Ocean this week has critics of radar-based air traffic control calling on the US and other countries to hasten the move to GPS-based networks that promise to precisely track all planes. Current radars are obsolete more than 320 km from land.
"The technology's there - we've had this stuff for 15 years and little has happened," said Michael Boyd, a Colorado-based airline analyst. "My BlackBerry can be used to track me, so why can't we do it with planes?"
