Could ELTs save lives?

I knew Jamesie Kootoo as a young man. His disappearance highlights tragically the fact that GPS and mobile phones are insufficient for people who get lost or run into trouble in remote areas.

The staggering amount of time and money spent on searches, too often unsuccessfully, pales compared with an obvious, although necessarily incomplete solution.

Search and Rescue, or perhaps the RCMP, could sponsor and promote the low-cost technology of the emergency locator transmitter (ELT) used by airplanes.

Some years ago my flying mentor, then flying for Air Canada, picked up a signal on 121.5 coming off the Greenland icecap.

He contacted a pilot on Pan Am 150 miles away, and the resulting fixes from the two of them pinpointed a downed helicopter. The crew and passengers were all picked up just four hours after they had crash-landed

Colin Alexander
Ottawa

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