News
Star actively contributing to ITU Focus Group on FDM
Dec. 17, 2014, Toronto - Star Navigation Systems Group Ltd. is actively participating in the First Meeting of the Focus Group of ITU/ICAO for real time flight data monitoring and streaming.
December 17, 2014 By Carey Fredericks
The tragic loss of Malaysian Airlines MH -370 triggered worldwide concern respecting real time flight tracking and monitoring of aircraft. The latest meeting was held last week in Malaysia, under the authority of the ITU (the International Telecommunications Union) with the support of the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission.
Both the ITU, and ICAO (the International Civil Aviation Organization), are looking at the use of existing modern technology in order to put in place an efficient system for worldwide flight tracking and monitoring of aircraft.
Star originally presented its views and experience on Flight Data streaming and monitoring at the May, 2014 meetings, and was subsequently invited by ITU/ICAO to join the Focus Group. The Group will develop recommendations on Real Time Flight Data streaming and Data Analytics to be presented in February, 2015 in Montreal, along with the ICAO High level Safety meeting. The Group’s participants include key domain players such as Malaysia and Asia airlines, Teledyne, Panasonic, and Inmarsat. It will eventually identify the requirements for telecommunication standards for aviation data cloud computing.
Benefitting from its experience and expertise in real-time aircraft data monitoring, analysis and streaming, Star is taking the leadership role 1) to identify the scenarios for cloud computing for flight data, and 2) to identify the requirements and issues related to transmission of flight data.
The ITU Focus Group results will hopefully be an additional major contribution towards the establishment of international standards for the efficient use of real-time flight data.
In addition, in another initiative established after the loss of MH-370, the IATA Aircraft Tracking Task Force, at which Star presented earlier this year, has now issued a report with recommendations concerning the continuous tracking of aircraft. While general in nature, one of the recommendations is that airlines implement existing technologies which would close any gaps in their current tracking capabilities within a 12-month time frame. One of the features of Star’s STAR-A.D.S. (TM) system directly addresses this issue.
