Brings Afforable FOQA Reporting, Safety Improvements For
GA
Systems developer Alakai
Technologies and safety analyst CAPACG recently announced the
Federal Aviation Administration has issued an amended Supplemental
Type Certificate (STC) for installation of Alakai's wireless
Broadband Units on Cirrus SR20 and SR22 aircraft. The certification
allows Alakai's Broadband Units to be permanently installed on
Cirrus aircraft, and to upload flight data and embedded Flight
Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA) results via secure Internet
connections at the conclusion of every flight.
"We are pleased to achieve FAA certification of Alakai's
Broadband unit to enhance our Engine Trend Monitoring and Flight
Data Monitoring products," said Brian Morrison, president of Alakai
Technologies. "Users of our system now have access to
near-real-time engine maintenance (MOQA) and flight (FOQA)
evaluation reports as soon as they land, and can easily review
safety reports, operational and logbook data, or replay their
flight from any Mac or PC."
Alakai Technologies and CAPACG operate under a teaming agreement
using the brand name GA-FDM.
"With the pending FAA requirements for Safety Management Systems
(SMS), a solid FOQA program becomes an indispensable part of Risk
Management and Safety Assurance at the core of every company's
SMS", said Larry McCarroll, CEO of CAPACG. "Our mission is to
provide the most cost-effective methods for implementing an SMS,
allowing users to actively manage and mitigate risk and to become
the best, safest pilots in the history of General Aviation. Now,
with the approval of Broadband, objective data needed for SMS can
be uploaded seamlessly at the end of every flight, with no action
required by pilots or maintenance personnel. We are excited to be
bringing this critical enabling safety technology to the GA
community."
GA-FDM provides an automated web-centric system that uses
embedded (real-time) expert analysis of engine operational and
flight operational data to:
- Perform real-time engine trend and flight analysis to identify
performance issues and reduce operating costs;
- Analyze maintenance and flight data, and summarize fleet (or
virtual fleet) performance;
- Analyze reams of operational data from its relational database
to identify risks and pre-cursors to accidents;
- Enable users to take preventive and corrective measures based
on regular reports, event studies, mentoring, and proficiency
training.
Real-time analysis performed during each flight produces reports
that contain concise indicators of aircraft and pilot performance.
Using the Broadband unit, these reports are emailed from the
aircraft to the laptop or PDA of the pilot or maintenance
personnel, and are uploaded to Alakai's relational MySQL
database.
GA-FDM experts then use automatically generated web reports,
analyses, and summaries of each flight to review engine trends,
examine anomalies, replay flights, examine GoogleEarth trackfiles,
and determine what advisories to provide to maintenance personnel,
pilots and fleet operators. Users have already experienced
significant operational savings, including reduced fuel
consumption, increased maintenance intervals, and lower insurance
costs, to name a few.
The GA-FDM system with Broadband link is available to Cirrus
owners and operators for after-market installation.