12:36 EST Monday, February 08, 2010

CALGARY & BRUSSELS (Business Wire) -- AeroMechanical Services, Ltd (AMA) has been selected and awarded a subcontract as a member of the CEDAR (Critical Event Detection And Reporting) consortium to support the OPTIMI (Oceanic Position Tracking Improvement & Monitoring) program. OPTIMI is one program being implemented by the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM Research) Joint Undertaking (www.sesarju.eu) aimed at improving air traffic capacity and efficiency and reducing fuel burn and emissions in all European airspace. AMA's role as the sole consortium member providing data linking services will be to provide data and analysis related to AMA's patented afirs technology to provide continuous reporting of aircraft position and streaming of flight data recorder (“black box”) data to the ground over the Iridium satellite system. An in-service evaluation of AMA's afirs FLYHTstreamTM system, which is already deployed with AMA customers, is under consideration by the CEDAR consortium as part of the OPTIMI program.

The objective of the OPTIMI Project is to conduct a study that will analyze and demonstrate the feasibility of implementing oceanic flight tracking services in the Atlantic (NAT, EUR and AFI regions) at a reasonable cost and within a limited timeframe (2010).

The key issues for the OPTIMI study are:

• That the solution should be based on existing technology,
• That the study must include as wide a range of stakeholders as possible, including all of those who will be impacted by the introduction of any new service,
• The implementation and in-service costs of any new service must be fully understood,
• The regulatory aspects of any new service must be fully understood,
• The safety impact of any new service must be fully understood and mitigations identified where necessary

Following the CEDAR consortium kickoff meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, February 2, Mark Watson, of NATS UK Ltd, the CEDAR consortium program manager, stated, “I have been personally impressed with the technical capability of AeroMechanical Services, and particularly so with the level of maturity of their flight data recorder down linking service via the Iridium network. I'm sure the involvement of AeroMechanical in the OPTIMI project will make a valuable contribution to identifying potential improvements to flight monitoring over remote oceanic regions as we endeavour to improve safety and rescue efforts should an event such as the tragic loss of AF447 be repeated”.