The crash and disappearance of Air France Flight 477 is leading to an international call to track all air flights with Global Position System (GPS) receivers. While the technology has long been discussed as a means to track air travel, the current system relies almost solely on radar signals, which rely on ground-based observations. Over the middle of the ocean there aren’t any monitoring sites, so aircraft are entirely undetected.

Read more about the current technology and the current status of international deployment for GPS-based airplane tracking in this story from the Associated Press.

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