AeroMechanical Services Ltd. (TSX.V: AMA) marketed under the FLYHTTM brand name, was founded in 1998 and has been listed on the Toronto Venture Exchange since 2003 under the symbol AMA. FLYHT designs and develops products and services for the international aerospace industry. The company’s patented technologies enhance safety, efficiency and profitability by providing real-time data communications to airline customers worldwide. FLYHT is based in Calgary, Canada and has service locations in the United States, China, Ireland, England, Switzerland, Dubai, India and Argentina.
FLYHT’s patented Automated Flight Information Reporting System (“AFIRS™”) operates on multiple aircraft types and provides functions such as voice and text messaging, data collection and transmission, ACARS over Iridium, data on demand anywhere, anytime and FLYHTStreamTM, streaming of black box data initiated by the aircraft, pilot or from the ground. AFIRS sends that information to its companion, UpTimeTM, the ground service product, which stores and transfers the data to the customer in real-time. Aircraft operators can use this information to increase safety, improve service, and enhance profitability.
In addition to its data monitoring functions, AFIRS provides voice and text messaging capabilities that give pilots the ability to communicate with ground support. FLYHT, through its relationship with Iridium Communications, offers global satellite coverage that provides service to whoever needs it, when they need it, anywhere on the planet.
FLYHT has demonstrated that live flight data can be streamed from an aircraft in real-time. If an airplane encounters an emergency, FLYHT’s proven technology, FLYHTStream, can be automatically triggered to stream vital data that is normally secured in the black box, and provide position information to designated sites on the ground in real-time. This technology opens new doors for increased safety and data analysis capabilities in the aerospace industry.
Type: Public (TSX.V:AMA)
Industry: Aerospace/Aviation
Founded: 1998
Headquarters: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Key people: Bill Tempany, Tom French, Richard Hayden, Matt Bradley, Jeff Brunner, Kent Jacobs, Steve Harke
Products: AFIRS UpTime, FLYHT Fuel Management System, FLYHTStream, Underfloor Stowage Unit
Employees: 50 +
Website: www.flyht.com
Contents |
FLYHT offers combined avionics hardware, the Automated Flight Information Reporting System or AFIRS™, and web-based, operations software, UpTime™, to offer a new type of intelligent solution. The company’s real-time connectivity modules allow airlines to make timely, informed decisions that result in a measurable increase in the overall performance of the airline.
The AFIRS unit monitors the various systems on the aircraft, and when events are detected the information is transmitted to the appropriate person on the ground via Iridium satellite. This gives the customer complete awareness of its fleet as well as the ability to act on the information AFIRS provides to mitigate future issues.
From the data AFIRS provides, it can be determined if a part needs to be replaced and airlines can have a replacement part waiting at the aircraft’s next stop in order to minimize repair delays and maximize safety.
Airlines can also dramatically improve scheduling because they know precisely where each aircraft is– on a minute-by-minute basis –whether the plane is in the air or on the ground.
Most airline passengers don’t know that there are large parts of the world where air traffic controllers lose contact with aircraft because there is no land-based infrastructure to facilitate radar contact. The AFIRS unit provides satellite phone capabilities and connectivity that allow aircrew to make phones calls, request weather reports and send messages to the ground at any location around the globe.
UpTime is the internet based system that receives the information, stores it and creates reports for customers.
AFIRS reads the same data that is recorded in an aircraft’s black box. But AFIRS also records critical data that a black box doesn’t. In fact, AFIRS can monitor all onboard sensors (thousands of parameters) and send any operational anomaly back to the airline the instant that irregularity occurs.
AFIRS 228 is the company’s next generation product. It is an improvement from the 220 in several areas including processing capacity, data transmission characteristics and programmability. The next generation unit has more inputs and outputs, allowing air carriers to process and analyze more data at a faster rate. The AFIRS 228 is designed as a versatile platform that caters to the changing needs and demands of airlines. In addition, the new unit will meet the needs of the new air traffic control regimes in North America and Europe, coming into effect in the next few years.
AFIRS meets airlines needs in the following areas:
What else does the system offer?
FLYHTStreamTM
FLYHTStream is FLYHT’s triggered data streaming technology. FLYHTStream automatically transmits four-dimensional GPS-based position and flight data recorder information when triggered by an airborne event, initiated in the air by the pilot or on the ground by the airline. The real-time streaming of critical flight data to the ground effectively creates a “virtual black box”, allowing the data to be analyzed immediately.
Alerting & Improved Search and Rescue Reaction Times – Personnel are automatically notified via an urgent email, text message, or through visual or audible notification on FLYHT’s UpTime, airline operations software, or flight tracking suites. This is important since it eliminates the chance of key personnel being unaware of an emergency due to misinterpreted maintenance messages that may not indicate the severity of the incident. Data can be immediately analyzed in order to determine the severity of the situation. With immediate event reporting and position tracking it is possible to enhance the provision of appropriate procedures and resources to improve Search and Rescue reaction times.
Immediate Analysis & Diagnosis – When FLYHTStream is activated, an automated process sends real-time position and critical flight data recorder (FDR, black box) information to the ground. Up to 240 Flight Data Parameters are transmitted including: location, altitude, airspeed, pitch, roll, yaw, engine information, and airframe indicators. The data arrives from the aircraft within 15 seconds of the event. Streaming is critical for building situational awareness of an airborne event in progress, or for post flight analysis in cases where the FDR cannot be recovered.
FLYHT Fuel Management System
The FLYHT Fuel Management system is another feature of the AFIRS box. The FLYHT Fuel Management System is a dynamic, interactive application that answers key questions by generating alerts and providing the user with the ability to quickly identify fuel consumption trends. This tool provides fuel managers with the key information they need to make quick decisions, instead of compiling and analyzing the data themselves.
FIRST
The Fuel Initiative Reporting System Tracker (“FIRST”) is a tool that eliminates uncertainty about the effectiveness of an airline’s operational fuel savings initiatives. FIRST can be purchased separately, as a standalone module from the FLYHT Fuel Management System. It uses real-time flight data acquired from the aircraft’s onboard systems, and presents the data to operations personnel in an easy to read dashboard. The dashboard compares how the aircraft is flown on various stations to how it could be flown in order to maximize efficiency and fuel savings. Where compliance has not been met, costs of those variations are shown.
AeroMechanical Services was founded in 1998 and began publicly trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol ‘AMA’ in March 2003. The company serves over 30 customers globally and is marketed under the FLYHTTM brand name. To see a list of the aircraft types FLYHT is certified to install on view the Supplemental Type Certificate chart.
AeroMechanical Services Ltd. was recognized as a TSX Venture 50TM company in 2008 and 2010 (the awards were not held in 2009). The Company was ranked number one in the Diversified Industries category in 2010 for showing strong results in key measures of market performance, share price appreciation, trading activity, analyst coverage and market capitalization growth.
FLYHT’s technology helped two Indian Air Force fighter pilots set a new record in 2007 by breaking the time taken to fly around the world in a microlight aircraft, a plane that weighs less than 500 kilograms with fuel and pilots on board. The Daily Planet, on the Discovery Channel, featured a documentary about this flight.
The AFIRS box enabled officials, family and thousands of fans to watch the tiny aircraft in real-time on the Internet as it battled its way through storms, navigated its way through mountain ranges and flew over frigid, ice-choked waters. The Iridium satellite global telephone capability enabled by AFIRS was of the utmost importance to the pilots. The box helped pilots shave days off the schedule, primarily by allowing them to phone anyone they wanted, from wherever they were, in order to fly around storms they encountered. They could also minimize time on the ground by phoning ahead to have fuel or other needs ready at their next landing.
Bill Tempany, Chairman and CEO
Tom French, CGA, VP Finance and CFO
Richard Hayden, President
Michael Fang, VP China Operations
Matt Bradley, VP Business Development
Jeff Brunner, VP Operations
Kent Jacobs, Technical Director, Advanced Applications
Steve Harke, Director of Product Development
Partners include the Aviation Data Communication Corporation of China, Iridium, L3 Communications, LiveTV, Meggitt
News featuring AeroMechanical Services: August 2011: Business & Commercial Aviation Magazine, In-Flight Monitoring Systems for Businss Aviation Part 1; September 16, 2011: Calgary Herald, Calgary firm sees growing interest for flight data systems; August 19, 2011: Flightglobal, AeroMechanical says it meets BEA specifications for data streaming; August 16, 2011: flyingmag.com, Air France 447 Latest Report: Mandating Safety, or Cost?; August 9, 2011: The Cranky Flier Blog, Why Can’t Airlines Stream Black Box Data?; July 26, 2011: National Post, FLYHT system steps ahead of black box; July 12, 2011: Calgary Herald, Blue boxes taking FLYHT around the world, Calgary firm develops air safety devices; June 27, 2011: thedaily.com, Real-time black box;June 20, 2011: msnbc.com, ‘Ultimate cloud’ comes to the rescue; June 16, 2011: Wired Magazine, The End of the Black Box: Rescuing Airplane Data from the Wreckage; June 14, 2011: Flying, Why the Black Box Debate Isn’t Over; June 14, 2011: Flightglobal, After AF447, is the answer to black box conundrum blue?; June 13, 2011: ABC News, Air France Crash Suggestion: Have Planes Send Black Box Data By Satellite; February 24, 2011: Calgary Herald, $2M federal support means more jobs at AeroMechanical; January 24, 2011: Keeping Aircraft Flight-Ready, Iridium, Hawker Beechcraft Corporation and AeroMechanical Services Ltd.; For more articles visit: www.flyht.com/investors/newscoverage/;