Missing Malaysia Flight MH370 Latest News Update: Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia to Test New Plane Tracking Method

A week ahead of the anniversary of the unexplained disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia will lead a trial of an enhanced method of tracking aircraft over remote oceans to allow planes to be easily found should they go missing.

Airservices Australia, a government-owned agency that manages the country's airspace, has committed to work with its Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts to test a new method that would enable planes to be tracked every 15 minutes.

Australian Transport Minister Warren Truss said the new tracking, an improvement from the previously practiced interval of 30 to 40 minutes, would increase to five minutes or less if there is a deviation in a plane's movement.

Angus Houston, the chairman of the Airservices Australia who helped lead the search for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, said the trial will use a satellite-based positioning technology that is already on board 90 percent of the world's long-haul aircraft.

This positioning technology, Houston explained, transmits the plane's current position and its next two planned position in their bid to boost the frequency with which planes report their positions.

This will also allow air traffic controllers to better track such planes, he noted.

"This is not a silver bullet. But it is an important step in delivering immediate improvements to the way we currently track aircraft while more comprehensive solutions are developed," he added, according to CBC News.

The announcement came a week before the one year anniversary of MH 370 which left 239 people on boarding missing after it vanished without a trace during a flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing in China.

Houston warned that the new method being tried would allow air traffic controllers to monitor Flight 370 — whose transponder and other tracking equipment shut down during the flight — to the point where it crashed.

"I think we've got to be very, very careful because you can turn this system off. What would have happened while the system is operating, we'd know exactly where the aircraft was. If somebody had turned the system off, we're in the same set of circumstances as we've experienced on the latter part of the flight," he added.