CUSTOMER SUCCESSES

Unforeseen turbulence particularly clear-air turbulence (CAT), adds millions of dollars worth of unplanned expenses to the global airline industry. Turbulence events may cause damage to the structure of aircraft, physically injure flight crew and passengers, impair flight crew performance, damage cabin interiors and divert aircraft off their optimal flight paths. As a result of climate change severe clear air turbulence encounters are projected to increase by up to 140%, therefore a platform for real-time sensing, monitoring and alerting of pilots and flight dispatchers to these turbulence events is required by the global airline community.

Clear-air turbulence is difficult to avoid as it cannot be detected by aircraft radar systems but it can be sensed by on-board sensors when an aircraft flies through these invisible “air pockets”. These sensor readings are passed through algorithms which compute the intensity of turbulence and transmit their values to ground-based servers. A number of airlines already gather this information and use it in their own flight dispatch systems, however, until today, there has been no way for airlines to share this information with each other.

IATA created the Turbulence Aware program after 96% of respondents to an IATA feasibility study – including airlines, air navigation service providers, and militaries – stated that they required real-time, objective data about the location and severity of turbulence. Turbulence Aware will collect, anonymize, and consolidate aircraft-sensed turbulence data from multiple airline operators onto one cloud-based platform that will be made available to all airlines and will provide flight operations departments and pilots with real-time situational awareness of clear-air turbulence events around the world. A governance board comprising of IATA and some of the world’s most innovative airlines (Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Air France, Qantas, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, China Southern, Aer Lingus, EasyJet, Lufthansa, Swiss and WestJet) has been established to drive the vision and roadmap of the Turbulence Aware platform on behalf of the global airline community.

After an extensive competitive evaluation, IATA selected Snowflake Software to build, host and manage the cloud-based Turbulence Aware data management platform using Snowflake’s award-winning and proven Laminar Data platform. Snowflake Software is deploying and will manage a secure Laminar Data Private Cloud that will receive, anonymize, process, store, and distribute turbulence data from each participating airline’s fleet of aircraft in real-time. This turbulence data will be made easily accessible to airline flight dispatch systems and pilot applications via simple to consume APIs or a browser-based turbulence viewer. In addition, the Laminar Data platform will serve as an archive of turbulence data for post-flight analyses, academic research and refinement of turbulence forecast models.

Snowflake is working with the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) to pursue a vision of sharing consolidated and authoritative flight information across the United Arab Emirates Flight Information Region (FIR) and its neighbours. Snowflake will deploy the Laminar Data Platform to manage flight data in compliance with the System Wide Information Management (SWIM) concept for the GCAA SWIM Gateway. Scheduled to be operational in 2018, the SWIM Gateway will receive, validate and publish the most up-to-date flight planning and strategic tactical flow management data, which will provide a platform for information exchange amongst all stakeholders in the region.

NATS, the UK’s leading provider of air traffic control services, handles 2.2 million flights and 220 million passengers in UK airspace each year. Originally collaborating in the 2013 EUROCONTROL SWIM Master Class, Snowflake and NATS developed a prototype to demonstrate how reduced stack holding over London Heathrow could provide both economic and environmental savings. The successful project, now fully operational, uses GO Publisher to publish arrival sequence and temporal information to the adjacent control centres.  Since its original trial in April 2014 it has so far saved 8000 tonnes of CO2 and £1.65 million in airline and ground costs.

Harris is a proven leader in tactical communications, geospatial systems and services, air traffic management, environmental solutions, avionics and electronic warfare, and space and intelligence. Snowflake Software is working to enable the SkyFusion service, a data exchange platform developed jointly by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Harris Corporation in a drive to improve air traffic management (ATM) efficiency.

Snowflake Software, a provider of cloud and on-premise software solutions for the aviation industry, is working with Aeropath to deliver an Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) data converter, in alignment with the industry standard of System Wide Information Management (SWIM).  In delivering this solution, Snowflake Software and Aeropath will combine their expertise and establish a strong partnership with the joint goal of making aviation data accessible and easy to use.

Aeropath will now be able to create new innovative solutions and enhance existing ones with data provided from the Snowflake AIXM data converter.  Built on top of Snowflake’s award-winning Laminar Data Technology Platform, the AIXM data converter allows Aeropath to map and convert their existing aeronautical data into the AIXM 5.1 SWIM standard, resulting in significant cost savings while avoiding costly infrastructure upgrades.

Aeropath’s development of the next generation of aero data solutions based on the AIXM 5.1 standard is well established.  The benefits of the AIXM 5.1. model combined with modern web and geospatial technologies is enabling traditionally static aero data to be accessed, updated and visualised dynamically providing much greater awareness to end users at a fraction of the cost of the solutions currently available.