A Malaysian Airlines flight 370 flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing carrying 227 passengers lost contact with the Air Traffic Control (ATC), deviated from its planned flight path and crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean in March 2014. An expensive multinational search for the missing aircraft lasted for three years due to the vast search area but met with no success in finding any debris even as it raised questions about India’s own preparedness to handle such incidents.
This was when the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and Indian Coast Guard (ICG), agencies responsible for Air Traffic Control (ATC), and Search and Rescue (SAR) operations at sea, respectively, collaborated with the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) here, to develop an application to aid them in locating a missing aircraft at sea.
The Search And Rescue Aid Tool-Integrated (SARAT-I) developed by INCOIS for the purpose was inaugurated by Director General, Indian Coast Guard, Virendra Singh Pathania, in the capacity of Chairman, National Maritime Search And Rescue (NMSAR) at their board meeting held recently in Ekta Nagar, Gujarat.
It is usually impossible to determine the crash location of an aircraft flying over sea that lost contact with the ATC and deemed to have crashed in the sea. The crashed aircraft tends to drift away from the crash site, with factors such as local wind, surface current, and shape of the aircraft influencing its drift. It also varies based on the position and time of its descent which are hard to know exactly, explained INCOIS Group director & scientist for Ocean Modelling, Applied Research & Services (O-MARS) T.M. Balakrishnan Nair.
But with the help of SARAT-I, a statistical approach is taken and the application computes the probability map where the aircraft may have descended into the sea with the input of its mid-air last known position, using the methodology approved by the international agencies concerned, he said, in an exclusive interaction.
“The application runs sequential computer simulations of the probable regions where the aircraft may be located in the sea upon drifting by studying the probable descent of the plane. SARAT-I is based on ‘Leeway’ and ‘Monte- Carlo’ methods for the simulations,” explained the senior scientist.
Most importantly, SARAT-1 eliminates the human error in computation of the probabilities, saves time for rescue operations as time is a crucial factor, and potentially reduces the expenditure required. This integrated application, SARAT-I, is expected to be a new milestone enhancing the search and rescue capabilities of the country, added Dr. Nair.
