A decade after MH370, will the world finally heed Malaysia’s call for real-time tracking of planes?

Key to the difficulty in tracking MH370’s flight path is the fact that the plane’s transponder – responsible for sending regular location updates – was manually switched off just over an hour after taking off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing.

In the early days of the search, Malaysian air crash investigators proposed that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) consider making it mandatory for commercial aircraft to be outfitted with real-time tracking systems to make sure there is enough information on hand to locate planes in distress in a timely manner.

“The significance of the MH370 disappearance is that it disappeared – when most people would expect a large civilian airliner to be under constant surveillance, this one has eluded detection for 10 years now,” said Keith Tonkin, managing director of Australian-based aviation planning and risk consultancy Aviation Projects.

In a preliminary report submitted to ICAO a month after MH370’s disappearance, the Malaysian Air Accident Investigation Bureau said it would not be possible to accurately pinpoint the plane’s last known location due to the lack of regular updated information on its route.

“While commercial air transport aircraft spend considerable amounts of time operating over remote areas, there is currently no requirement for real time tracking of these aircraft,” the report said.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Families of MH370 victims call for resumption of search nearly a decade after flight disappearance

That same time, global aviation industry players and plane manufacturers convened a task force with ICAO and other regulators to discuss improvements to