Signature Industries Limited announced today that it has received approval from COSPAS-SARSAT for it’s recently launched SARBE Advanced Aircrew Personal Locator Beacon.

The latest generation Advanced Aircrew Personal Locator Beacon (AAPLB) is the first product to receive approval from COSPAS-SARSAT that is a replacement for the AN/URT-33 and SARBE 7 Personal Locator Beacons.

Personal Locator Beacons are standard survival equipment for military aircrew around the world and in an emergency transmit an alert on 406MHz that contains precise identification and GPS location to a network of satellites.

As a replacement for AN/URT-33 and SARBE 7, Signature expects demand to be very strong for the AAPLB over the coming months in advance of the termination of the satellite monitoring of the older generation equipment in February 2009. It is estimated that worldwide up to 20,000 units will need to be replaced with 406MHz equipment

Amongst the features of AAPLB are extremely fast GPS, remote antennas and built in self test.