Aireon ALERT To Aid Search-and-Rescue Efforts with Free Space-Based ADS-B Tracking

The pre-registration period opened Wednesday for the Aireon ALERT program, a free service offered jointly by Aireon and the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) aimed at helping to track aircraft in emergency situations.

By registering with Aireon ALERT, aviation stakeholders from airlines, regulators, air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and search-and-rescue organizations will be able to leverage Aireon’s deal with Iridium to provide space-based ADS-B in the event of an emergency. Relative to ADS-C, which provides a signal every 15 minutes, the every-eight-second signaling requirement of ADS-B can search area for a lost aircraft down from over 150,000 square kilometers to 12 or fewer. A lot of traffic gets tracked at one-second intervals, narrowing it down even farther.

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