By Jessica Plautz From Mashable

Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker said the airline is working on real-time streaming of flight data.

As the tragedies with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 and Flight 17, and AirAsia QZ8501 have shown, many questions about what exactly happened can’t be answered until black boxes are recovered from crash sites. Introducing real-time streaming wouldn’t prevent accidents, but it would provide faster and potentially better information to those on the ground.

According to Runway Girl Network, Al Baker said last week that the carrier is working with a supplier to test “the system whereby all the flight data recorded in the black box, or the flight data recorder, is also received continuously during the flight on the ground in our operations centre.”

“Qatar Airways will, I hope, be the first to introduce this,” he said. “Qatar Airways will, I hope, be the first to introduce this,” he said.

While Qatar could be the first large commercial airline to stream black box data, it won’t be the first. That distinction belongs to small regional carrier First Air, which introduced streaming in May 2014 to its fleet in the Canadian Arctic.

“First Air was the first to say, ‘We want the whole deal because our crews and our passengers fly in a very difficult part of the world,'” said Matt Bradley, president of FLYHT Aerospace Solutions, which works on streaming and provided the systems to First Air.

Live streaming of black box data would not be a cure-all for airplane accidents, but at a time when video chat connects people instantly around the world, many question the lack of information available about planes in the sky.

Al Baker made his remarks at the unveiling of the carrier’s new Airbus A350 XWG in Doha, where he also took the opportunity to boast of the success of Gulf carriers, saying Doha-based Qatar Airways, Dubai-based Emirates and Etihad in Abu Dhabi are “the fastest growing carriers.”

“This is why we are creating a lot of concern for the European airlines who cannot keep up. We in the Gulf are leading the aviation industry today,” Al Baker said.

The airline industry has previously balked at black box streaming because of the cost and logistics of managing data, although the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has recommended upgrades for flight tracking.

Estimates on the cost of installing and maintaining tracking systems vary. For First Air’s small fleet, the cost of installing the tracking systems was about $1.8 million, with additional data-streaming costs of about $22,000 a year. Costs would potentially be much higher for international fleets, and outfitting every plane could take years.

Al Baker, who is on IATA’s board, has said flight tracking should be automated and tamper-proof.

IMAGE: The first Airbus A350 for Qatar Airways in Toulouse, France, last month. IMAGE: FRED LANCELOT/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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