Posted by John McHale

 

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., 26 July 2010. Lion Air in Jakarta, Indoesia selected the Wireless GroundLink Quick Access Recorder (WQAR) from Teledyne Controls in El Segundo, Calif., to retrofit their 60 Boeing 737-900ER aircraft. The Indonesian airline also selected the AirFASE software, a flight data monitoring (FDM) tool jointly developed by Teledyne and Airbus to assist operators with their flight operations, safety management, and aircraft maintenance programs.

 

Integrating these two systems will provide Lion Air with an automated end-to-end data retrieval and analysis process to reinforce their FDM program, Teledyne officials say.

 

Lion Air's selection of Teledyne's WQAR was driven by the system's new Download on Demand feature, which will allow Lion Air to remotely command wireless flight data download whenever they need earlier access to their data, regardless of airport destination, designated hub or gate connectivity. By using the WQAR with the AirFASE software, the downloaded data can be analyzed within minutes of landing to evaluate the flight's performance. This solution will also give Lion Air the ability to run ACMS (Aircraft Condition Monitoring System) and Boeing supported APM (Aircraft Performance Monitoring) reports.

 

"With increasing needs to collect aircraft data to meet regulatory requirements and to support our operations and maintenance, we selected Teledyne's proven FDM solutions to automatically retrieve and wirelessly transfer data from destinations with very little coverage," says Ari Giantara, Lion Air's FDM program manager. "We fly across three time zones, on scattered routes all over Indonesia to remote destinations with no out-stations, making it a challenge to manually collect and process flight data in a timely manner. But now, the WQAR and AirFASE will allow us to analyze our data at our home office shortly after landing.”

 

Within 15 minutes after landing, the raw data recorded during flight is compressed, encrypted and then transmitted via cellular technology and the Internet to the airline's or Teledyne's ground-based data center for processing and analysis, company officials say.