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FAIRBANKS — Not long ago, general aviation pilots in Alaska were on their own once they left the runway. Only the flight plan they left behind gave an indication of their whereabouts.

“If you went out moose hunting and crashed on takeoff, it could be two weeks before they’d look for you,” said Adam White, president of the Alaska Airmen’s Association. “The wolves would have dragged you off by then.”

Flying in remote areas is much safer today, thanks to a handful of new electronic devices that have emerged in the past five years. White detailed the advances in a presentation at the Aviation North Expo on Saturday, which brought Alaska pilots to the Fairbanks Princess Riverside Lodge for a three-day conference this week.

White, a Nenana resident who has been flying for 22 years, said the use of improved emergency location transmitters — commonly known as ELTs — and new mapping technology has transformed personal aviation.

ELTs give an automatic signal when there is a crash, allowing authorities to locate the accident scene and look for possible survivors. Those devices are taking a big step forward, with an updated version becoming the version tracked by satellites since last February.

The old-style ELTs are being phased out because they had too many quirks and limitations. Only one in 500 of the alerts that authorities received was actually a legitimate distress call. False alerts could be caused by a variety of other electronic devices, including ATMs, pizza ovens and stadium scoreboards.

The new generation of ELTs is 50 times more powerful than the older ones, White said, and 70 percent of false alerts can be resolved with a phone call to the user. The average response time by authorities is six hours faster than the previous version.

“Six hours is going to make a huge difference in the number of lives that can be saved,” White said.

Pilots are also happy to have new automated flight following devices that they can take with them. About the size of a large cell phone, they can give a “bread crumb” trail by sending a signal every few seconds or minutes that can track a plane’s flight. If it makes an unusual stop or detour, people tracking the flight can contact authorities. It also allows pilots to hit buttons calling for help or signaling “OK.”

The equipment even allows users to check out the position of a plane on Google Maps.

“I’ve got three daughters, and they really like knowing they can go to a computer and know where I am,” White said.

But even with the latest technology, there are no guarantees. White said the Denali National Park plane crash on Friday that killed wildlife biologist Gordon Haber never sent an ELT signal, or at least one wasn’t received.

“All this technology is great, but it’s not perfect,” White said. “Regardless of what you have, it may not work.”

Contact staff writer Jeff Richardson at 459-7518.