Case Study
Australia's leading aircraft ferry company, Australian Air Ferry (AAF), regularly ferries light aircraft to and from Australia, crossing vast distances over the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as remote terrain en route in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Much of this involves flying with no radio coverage or air traffic control, so satellite communications become vital for maintaining scheduled contact between the pilot and AAF operations base. Whilst voice communication could be achieved using a portable Iridium Satellite phone handset, AAF couldn't find a suitable solution for an automated GPS tracking system to maintain situational awareness of the ferry aircraft during these marathon flights. Because they were flying delivery flights with different aircraft, a specific requirement for AAF was to have a portable, simple to use flight tracking system that could be used in any aircraft, by any pilot. In addition, providing the pilot with a panic alarm to send distress messages was a key requirement to improve the safety of their operations.
Fastwave delivered the first portable aircraft version of its FasTracker to AAF in 2007. Since then, AAF tracks all of its ferry flights using the system. Not only has this enhanced the safety of their operations, but it also enables their clients to monitor the progress of their aircraft on their delivery flights.
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