Proven Fuel Savings Program Now Available for Business Jets
FIRST™ is designed to help operators develop, adopt, and quantitatively monitor their own best practice procedures for flying the aircraft, in each phase of every flight, as well as document unnecessary fuel burn during ground operations and handling. Examples of effective industry best practices for reducing fuel burn include: Once the desired best practices, or standard operating procedures (SOPs) have been defined, the parameters associated with the selected SOPs are captured by onboard hardware, the Automated Flight Information Reporting System (AFIRSTM). AFIRS continuously monitors the precise flight control configurations, engine settings, and other aircraft parameters in each phase of flight and is therefore able to compare actual SOP compliance against the optimum execution of that SOP. The output is available to crews and support personnel immediately and is presented in terms of savings achieved and remaining opportunity for each SOP, each airport, or any other filter. The in-service evaluation conducted during 2009-2011 utilized a mid-cabin class twin jet, fitted with FLYHT’s AFIRS 220 system, flying average sectors of 1.7 hours. Several hundred sectors were flown. Crews, flight operations, maintenance and ground services all received the automated daily reports and used the data to refine procedures as the improved SOPs became more routine. The operator reported that, on the aircraft using AFIRS and FIRST, it achieved savings of approximately 4.5% of its normal fuel usage and projected a total additional savings opportunity per sector of over 3% Richard Hayden, FLYHT’s president, who is responsible for FLYHT’s business aviation initiatives, stated, “What is impressive about this result is that the savings realized and those opportunities remaining were achieved by implementing only six initiatives and monitoring them with FIRST. There were some other unexpected additional benefits tied to these trials, including a 40% reduction in APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) usage and associated maintenance costs, and some opportunity to save some money on certain ground services. We believe that these results are representative of savings that every business aircraft operator can achieve, and we are pleased to bring this unique and powerful product to the business aviation community as part of our AFIRS services portfolio”. The AFIRS 220 has been operating on FLYHT’s customers’ commercial, military and business aircraft for over seven years with 25 STCs and over 35 customers globally. FIRST was developed in collaboration with airlines and industry experts from 2008 to 2010, and utilizes AFIRS as well as other data sources. The next generation AFIRS system, the 228, will provide additional capabilities to support comprehensive fuel management. The first production release of FLYHT’s next generation AFIRS 228 is scheduled for October, 2011, with numerous STCs to follow. When the full AFIRS 228 series is completed in early 2012, the AFIRS 228 family will be fully certified to provide safety services voice, data, text, and electronic flight bag (EFB) integration, including support of ACARS over Iridium and FANS over Iridium. About AeroMechanical Services AeroMechanical Services Ltd., under the brand name FLYHTTM, provides proprietary technological products and services designed to reduce costs and improve efficiencies in the airline industry. The company has patented and commercialized three products and associated services currently marketed to airlines, manufacturers and maintenance organizations around the world. Its premier technology, AFIRS™ UpTime™, allows airlines to monitor and manage aircraft operations and fuel consumption anywhere, anytime, in real time. If an aircraft encounters an emergency, FLYHT’s triggered data streaming mode, FLYHTStream™, automatically streams vital data, normally secured in the black box, to designated sites on the ground in real time. The company has been publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange since 2003 under the trading symbol AMA. AFIRS, UpTime, FLYHT, FIRST, FLYHTStream and aeroQ are trademarks of AeroMechanical Services Ltd.
Calgary, Alberta and Las Vegas, Nevada – October 2011 -- AeroMechanical Services Ltd., under the FLYHTTM brand name, is offering its unique Fuel Initiative Reporting System Tracker (FIRSTTM) to operators of business aircraft. The FIRST system, already being provided on a fee-for-service basis to several of FLYHT’s transport customers, was subjected to an 18-month in-service evaluation by a leading European business aircraft operator to determine if the benefits of FIRST that have been realized in the transport sector carried over to business aircraft operations. This evaluation provided conclusive evidence that significant savings can be realized by individual and fleet operators in typical business aircraft operations.
