With Aireon’s space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system, Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) will have complete real-time surveillance of all ADS-B equipped aircraft in their airspace which enables airlines to optimize flight paths, routes and tracks, save significant amounts of fuel and improve operational efficiency — anywhere in the world.
Additionally, improved airline predictability and efficiency have the potential to reduce direct operating costs and optimize passenger flight times.
Increased Cost Savings
- Conservative estimates indicate annual fuel savings of over $100 million per year for customers on the North Atlantic alone. This also translates to a reduction of greenhouse gases of over 300,000 metric tonnes annually
Return on ADS-B Investment
- Expanded benefits from investments in ADS-B avionics
- Improvement of ANSPs ability to meet ADS-B surveillance needs without major investments in infrastructure
Operational Efficiencies
- Surveilled oceanic and remote airspace enables:
- Improved flight profile predictability
- Fewer altitude and speed restrictions
- Optimization of tracks and flight distance
- Optimized flight profiles for best times
- Improved aircraft ability to fly cost index (CI)
- Improved air traffic flow management
- Reduced reliance from ANSPs on expensive ground-based infrastructure:
- Lowered infrastructure costs
- Harmonized costs between ANSPs, allowing for more consistent Air Traffic Control (ATC) charges globally
- Improved traffic flow across borders
- Reduced impact from radar outages
- Improved system predictability
- Improved global airline fleet tracking, without gaps
Reduced Emissions
- Reduced fuel consumption and lower greenhouse gas emissions — a key benefit in the context of cap-and-trade offset regulations
Enhanced Safety
- Minimization of impact from operational and weather disruptions
- Elimination of service and safety gaps over oceans and remote land with limited to no current air traffic surveillance
- Reduced search and rescue response times over oceanic and remote/polar airspace
Regulatory Compliance
- Compliance with International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) global flight tracking proposals like Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS)
- ICAO has updated Annex 6 to the Chicago Convention (Operation of Aircraft) with requirements to help avoid recurrence of MH370-type disappearances. These will take effect between now and 2021. They relate primarily to:
- The requirement for aircraft to carry autonomous distress tracking devices which can autonomously transmit location information at least once every minute in distress circumstances.
- The requirement for aircraft to be equipped with a means to have flight recorder data recovered and made available in a timely manner.
- Extending the duration of cockpit voice recordings to 25 hours so that they cover all phases of flight for all types of operations.