The first concrete evidence of a possible link between two deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes came from space.
A new satellite network capable of tracking planes in high fidelity across the globe captured the flight path of the Boeing Co. 737 MAX that crashed Sunday. The data was critical in persuading the U.S. to join the rest of the world in grounding the jet, according to industry and regulatory officials.
The erratic, six-minute flight of the Ethiopian Airlines plane convinced the Federal Aviation Administration that it was close enough to what preceded the Oct. 29 crash of another MAX off the coast of Indonesia to warrant concern.
After reviewing the data “it became clear — to all parties, actually — that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines flight was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight,” agency Acting Administrator Daniel Elwell said Wednesday.
The data was provided by Aireon LLC, which was formed in 2012 by Iridium Communications Inc. and Nav Canada, a nonprofit company that guides air traffic in Canada. After years of development and the launches of 66 satellites into orbit, Aireon will introduce a new commercial flight-tracking service in coming weeks.
The company shared the information with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration, as well as “several European aviation authorities and various African aviation authorities,” said Jessie Hillenbrand, an Aireon spokeswoman.
The Ethiopian pilots had received notice about MCAS and additional training suggested by Boeing after the Lion Air accident, Tewolde Gebre Mariam, chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines told reporters in a broadcast on state-controlled ETV.
The tracking of aircraft from space was made possible by technology designed to move away from traditional radar tracking as the U.S., Europe and other regions introduce more modern technology to their air-traffic systems. By the end of 2020, most aircraft in the U.S. will have to be equipped with devices that use GPS to calculate a plane’s position and then broadcast that and other information about the flight.