I have been reading about Canada requiring a 406 ELT on all aircraft operating in Canada on February 1, 2009. This includes USA registered aircraft.

I contacted Transport Canada and the reply I received is below. It certainly is nice to actually get direct correspondence from the regulatory agents themselves.

Thank you for your question regarding the requirements of a 406MHz ELT in Canada.

You asked whether Automatic portable ELT's conform to the Transport Canada regulations. The proposed regulation which we anticipate will come into effect on February 1, 2009 requires the carriage of a 406 MHz ELT or an alternate system that has the same performance as a 406MHz ELT. Similar to the 406MHz ELT the alternate means must also be capable of providing immediate notification of an aircraft incident without activation by a crew member. In this context PLB will not by themselves be considered as meeting the requirements of the proposed regulation. However, a PLB could be used as an additional device to provide location information of an aircraft incident.

I would also like to add that Transport Canada will be offering an exemption to provide a two year transition period to allow all aircraft flying in southern Canada including foreign registered aircraft, to meet the requirements of the regulation. During this transition period such aircraft will be required to carry a 121.5MHz ELT. The transition will not apply to new aircraft, the purchase of a used aircraft or aircraft flying into northern Canada (north of 55 Lat west of 80 Longitude and 50 deg. east of 80 Longitude ) as these situations will require a 406MHz ELT as of February 1, 2009.

That was a very nice reply from Transport Canada which I found easy to read and understand.

Sounds all good until you get to those Lat. / Longs. Are you sure those are correct? I can buy N55.00.00 x W80.00 (somewhere of the eastern shore in the SE corner of Hudson Hay... just off Pointe Louis) The other,50 degrees east of 80 longitude, doesn't make sense at least to me. Of course I'm trying to imagine a line across Canada seperating North from South.

I just received a message from Transport Canada that the regulations outlined in the first post in this thread will probably be released in mid to late March of this year.

If I read the map correctly, pretty much all flights in Quebec and the Maritimes will need a 406 ELT above 50 degrees latitude and all provinces from Ontario West will need a 406 ELT above 55 Degrees Lat.

This of course means those flying to Alaska via the inland route will be effected.

TD

For those who would like to watch these things. The Canadian 406MHz ELT regulation will be published on the Transport Canada Civil Aviation website:

http://www.tc.gc.ca/CivilAviation/menu.htm

And will contain dates and requirements in the appropriate Fedspeak.

You can also have a look at the Canada Gazette II for the published notification of regulations:

http://canadagazette.gc.ca/partII/index-e.html

Canada Backs Off 406 ELTs

Canada's Minister of Transport, John Baird, has overruled his bureaucracy and suspended implementation of a controversial rule that would have required almost all aircraft to have certified 406 Mhz emergency locator transmitters installed by February of 2011 in order to fly legally in Canada. The rule would have applied to aircraft trying to enter Canada from other countries. In an interview with AVweb at Canadian Aviation Expo in Hamilton, Ontario, earlier this week, Kevin Psutka, president of the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association (COPA), said the minister refused to sign the rule as presented by Transport Canada because it didn't include any viable alternatives to 406 ELTs, even though it included language that indicated an alternative method of compliance was possible. "There is no technology that exists today that could meet those (alternative) requirements," Psutka said. He said the minister has ordered his staff to draft a rule that gives new technology a fighting chance for acceptance.

Psutka and COPA have been fighting the mandatory equipage with 406 ELTs for 10 years, arguing the new ELTs, while somewhat improved in the level and types of information they provide rescuers, suffer from the same operational flaws as the old-style 121.5 units. The vast majority of ELT signals are accidental and do not announce any kind of emergency. On the other hand, when a plane does go down, they fail to trigger more than half the time, according to COPA's research. Psutka was urging Transport Canada and the Canadian Forces (which handles search and rescue) to consider new GPS-based systems that leave a "bread crumb" trail of position reports for rescuers to follow but the rule, as written, excluded all of them, he said. TC's position was that 406 ELTs meet International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards that changed when the satellite constellation that monitors search and rescue alerts stopped receiving 121.5 signals. The U.S. did adopt mandatory 406 equipage, but the military and Civil Air Patrol are recommending aircraft owners install the new ELTs.