Flight Safety Enhanced With Smoother, More Accurate Tracking

Since 2006 Spidertracks has been consistently innovating with flight tracking technology that allows aviation businesses to improve safety and become more efficient, and the introduction of our Virtual FDR™ feature is another step forward.

Available on all current commercial plans and hardware at no extra cost, Virtual FDR extends the real-time flight following capabilities of the Spider by logging a 4D vector at 15 second intervals, and every 5-seconds on a  30-degree change in heading. Data is transmitted in a bundled package with the next scheduled position report. The result - a smoother track and an incredibly accurate representation of the aircraft’s actual flight path and movements.

Spidertracks’ CEO Dave Blackwell says this is a step-change in value provided to customers, extending real-time flight following capabilities into their safety management systems.

For many aviation businesses, running an effective FOQA (Flight Operations Quality Assurance) programme relies on the quality and accessibility of flight data. Modern flight safety practice is about having the knowledge of risk factors to implement preventative strategies -- knowledge that comes from having a tool like Virtual FDR to easily gather more granular information.

Being able to more easily operate a FOQA programme can deliver a range of benefits to smaller aviation businesses, including:

• Improving airport operational challenges such as arrival/approach procedure issues.
• Finding ways to improve your standard operating procedures.
• Gaining data is useful in monitoring an aircraft’s performance and being able to anticipate maintenance issues earlier.

Spidertracks’ use of a dedicated Iridium channel means that the level of fidelity Virtual FDR promises is delivered on-time, every time, without exception. “As a trusted provider of aviation safety services we have elected to use Iridium NEXT as our primary channel for all mission critical flight data. This gives the customer assurance of receiving high quality data every time without reliance on the availability of a cellular signal or messing around with an SD card.”

Mr. Blackwell also states that this is just the beginning. “At Spidertracks, we believe in customer-led innovation and have a really exciting product evolution in front of us with Virtual FDR.”

Learn more at www.spidertracks.com/vfdr

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