AMS Air-To-Ground System Upgraded for Data Streaming

AeroMechanical Services, Ltd, Calgary, has completed testing of an upgrade to its Automated Flight Information Reporting System (afirs(TM)) that allows continuous streaming of GPS position and aircraft parameter data from aircraft to ground in addition to the currently deployed event-driven reporting of position and selected aircraft data. The prototype development started several years ago with Aloha Airlines, but was interrupted when Aloha ceased operations in 2008. Because of afirs(TM)'s use of the Iridium satellite constellation and its own GPS receiver, afirs(TM) can report from any point on the earth to any other point through its internet delivery system. As the data are analyzed to find the causes of the Air France Flight 447 tragedy, calls are being made for a "live black box", a method of streaming critical flight information in real time to provide insight into incidents in the event that an aircraft's Flight Data Recorder cannot be recovered. Even though the aircraft may have been operating out of radar coverage, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200, was very well equipped with a system that transmitted aircraft status and position data via a satellite communications method, without which the aviation community would have limited information with which to proceed with the accident investigation. Yet even aircraft equipped with these advanced technologies (and many are not) are subject to the limitations inherent in any system that is not programmed to automatically "stream" (continuously transmit) position and Flight Data Recorder (FDR) data in real time under a set of pre-defined conditions (e.g., loss of cabin pressurization, rapid change in altitude or attitude, engine failure, or excessive "g" loads). At a time when calls are being made for new technologies and changes to legacy systems, it should be made clear that such solutions currently exist, are certified for aviation use, and are commercially available.