China will track and monitor all Chinese civil flights starting from Dec. 1, requiring them to report longitude, altitude and location every 15 minutes or less, according to a notice issued by China's Civil Aviation Administration. The new guidelines are intended to enhance safety monitoring and strengthen the industry's safety assurance system.
Transmission of such information to ground control is not a new policy. However, the new notice narrows the intervals of reporting and asks for more specific information.
An agreement was reached by 160 countries at the World Radiocommunication Conference in Geneva last November on the allocation of a radiofrequency spectrum for global flight-tracking. A total of 160 countries joined the agreement, promising to report locations every 15 minutes.
China plans to achieve seamless global tracking of its commercial flights before the end of 2020, and establish an aircraft tracking and monitoring system before the end of 2025.
