18 | LINKSMART | AIRCRAFT IT OPERATIONS | SUMMER 2011
Getting the right data transmission for the job Sergio Martins, President, LinkSMART outlines A guideline for an efficient Data Link service experience.
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irlines have long explored the potential for aircraft and flight crews exchanging data in real time with ground based staff and systems (Data Link) to enhance operational efficiency and safety. ARINC’s development of ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) AEEC 618 (airlines electronic engineering committee) protocol by the end of the 1970s, followed by SITA’s (Systemes Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautique) launch of its VHF AIRCOM service, based on the same communications protocol, served to position ACARS as the industry’s standard for real time
data exchange between aircraft and flight crews, and operators’ ground based staff and systems. This article aims to provide readers with an historic overview of how Data Link technology has evolved over the last four decades, within the wider context of the air transport industry’s activities, while also providing aircraft operators with a set of technical, commercial and strategic recommendations, developed to help airlines experience full efficiency in their Data Link service programs now and into the future. No matter how much effort airlines dedicate to the planning stages of flight operations, a new reality prevails
after an aircraft has left the gate — changing meteorological conditions over the route, varying performance of aircraft systems, unpredictable air traffic control restrictions and/ or opportunities can all affect the flight. Operators can only achieve an optimum level of actual operation against the original flight plan if they have the means to continuously monitor flight operations, and enable their ground resources to interact with aircraft systems and flight crews as required; in real time and in a way that facilitates the efficient handling of unexpected events. That’s the real strength of Data Link, which no other existing technology can beat.
The early days In the early days of Data Link services, transmission of simple messages such as the traditional ‘OOOI’ (movement reports identified by an internationally adopted acronym for ‘Out of the Gate / Take-Off / On the Ground / In the Gate’ events) and meteorological information, paved the way for the improvement of a wide range of airlines’ internal processes, resulting from the unique combination of real time and error free characteristics of the ACARS service. Just focusing on typical airline activities such as operations control, aircraft assignment, crew rotation, fuel