La Tribune : Aeronautics: in Toulouse, a distress beacon connected to save lives

Published on La Tribune, May 2017

Read the PDF File (French)

Written by Sophie Arutunian 

Aeronautics: in Toulouse, a distress beacon connected to save lives

January 20, 1992, 7:20 pm: the crash of an Air Inter A320 on Mont Saint-Odile, Alsace, kills 87 passengers. At the time, the Argos beacon of the aircraft (satellite tracking and data collection system) was completely destroyed at the time of the accident. The rescue takes several hours to arrive at the scene of the crash. At stake: a perimeter of research too large, and men delayed by a road cluttered with onlookers alerted by the media. More than four hours elapsed between the crash and the arrival of relief. During this time, several survivors would have died.

It was as a result of this tragedy that the presence of a distress beacon on a commercial aircraft became mandatory in 1995 in order to better locate the aircraft. In Toulouse, in the district of Basso Cambo, an SME with 83 employees specializes in the design and manufacture of these beacons, thanks to highly specialized skills in security electronics, radiofrequency and radionavigation.

The Life-Saving Beacon

"ELiTe" is the name of a small embedded aircraft that will be put on the market in 2017 to equip commercial aircraft with the objective of saving lives in the event of a crash. This machine full of technology (nothing to do with the black box, which is a simple recorder) is developed by the Toulouse based company Elta, specialized in distress beacons. Its products are present on the aircraft of the world's largest airlines (350 of the 440 companies in the world, including major airlines such as Air France and Emirates).

ELiTe, Elta's new product, has two distinct features: first, the beacon adapts to a new ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) regulation that will come into force in 2021.

"The regulations, based on events in distressed aircraft in recent years, call for more precise tracking of aircraft, even before the crash comes," says Éric Pautal, Elta.

For this, the new beacon will be able to read the "bus" (the axis of communication of information between all the active organs of the airplane). "The beacon will then know if there are parameters that indicate that the aircraft is in danger, so that a first signal can be sent to detect a distressed aircraft as soon as possible. Of the location of a plane in distress, which will be reduced to 6 nautical miles (approximately 11 km, Ed.) "

The second feature of this beacon is that it will be ready when the constellation Galileo satellites is put into service.

"At present, if a beacon detects an anomaly on an airplane, it sends a signal via the Cospas / Sarsat system, which consists of six satellites, sometimes two hours before the signal is detected by a satellite "With the Galileo coverage, a constellation of thirty satellites, the scale changes: the distress signal can be detected in less than 30 seconds," describes Éric Pautal.

Finally, another novelty: in 2021, a return signal will be possible and the ELiTe beacon will be able to capture it. The content of this return message has not been defined, but it could be "a kind of acknowledgment, which could be psychologically very important for people in distress." This last option is the subject of a collaboration between Elta, Cnes and Thales, within the framework of the European Horizon 2020 program.

Elta, acquired by ECA Group

Elta (15 million euros in turnover in 2016) was until December 2016 an AREVA company. In order to strengthen its skills in aeronautics, the ECA Group (112 million euros in turnover in 2016, listed on Euronext Paris), has bought out the SME. Gilbert Rosso, director of the group's Aerospace division, became the new CEO of Elta:

"Elta and ECA Group have significant synergies, both technologically and commercially, which makes it possible for Eca to position itself more on embedded systems, but also on space." ECA also achieved a critical size to be visible to contractors waiting for a financially robust supply chain, "he insists.

ECA Group, Aerospace division is aiming for a turnover of 60 million euros in the 4 to 5 years, compared to 28 million at the present time (about 30% of the Group's activity). Elta continues to grow, not only in the beacons sector

Learn more : ECA Group awarded contracts to equip 680 aircrafts with Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs)

Discover the new ELiTe ELT Solution

Learn more about ECA Group's Aerospace Emergency Locator Transmitters ELTs