First Air adds live black box streaming to some aircraft

The president and CEO of First Air says it is the first airline in the world to add automatically-triggered, real-time data and live black box streaming capabilities to some of its fleet.

Brock Friesen said it enables the airline to receive real-time information on the state of an airplane.

"For example if there was a mechanical problem on the airplane, an engine problem for example, it would automatically report to the ground that this engine requires some repairs, so be prepared for it," he said.

Friesen said the airline has been working on the new addition for a couple of months and it has nothing to do with the pilots who went off course last month.

First Air fired two pilots who flew a Boeing 737 hundreds of kilometres off course on a routine flight from Rankin Inlet to Iqaluit.