Airline slow to adopt safety techs

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WASHINGTON, March 5, (AP): Airline-safety standards are changing in the wake of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 nearly two years ago, but the head of one of the world’s top air crash investigation agencies says it’s not happening fast enough.

On Wednesday, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the UN agency that sets global aviation standards, moved to address some of the more glaring safety gaps. Planes in “distress” will have to automatically report their position and other critical information at least every minute to help searchers find the wreckage. But the requirement will only apply to planes built six years from now or later. It could take even longer to implement another ICAO change requiring new planes have a reliable means to recover information stored in “black box” data and cockpit voice recorders, rather than scouring the ocean floor for the boxes.

Several existing technologies could do that, but ICAO’s timeline means it could be a decade or more before planes equipped with those technologies begin entering service. Chris Hart, chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, told The Associated Press that more should be done to put available technologies to use quickly. “We are concerned about the slow pace of progress at both the national and international levels,” Hart said. “We believe this is long overdue.”

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