Caribbean Sun and Caribbean Star Airlines Select Iridium
SATCOM Solutions from Aeromechanical Services
Iridium Satellite today announced that
Caribbean Sun and Caribbean Star Airlines will join
the growing number of regional airlines to equip their
fleets of DHC-8-100/300 series aircraft with AeroMechanical
Services (AMS) AFIRS™/UpTime™ satellite
communication systems for flight data and voice communications.
AMS will install the systems on eight
Caribbean Sun aircraft and ten Caribbean Star aircraft.
Daryl Jacobs, president of AMS, said,
“These are our first Caribbean operators using
the enhanced satellite voice communication offered with
the AFIRS/UpTime system. The voice capability, along
with the additional flight following feature, is extremely
important, since 99 percent of the operations are over
open water beyond the range of radio and radar coverage.
Voice communication will now be available as far south
as Guyana, one of Caribbean Star’s current destinations.
Our customers see the advantage of AFIRS/UpTime, as
we provide them with their aircraft data and information,
in the format they want, when and where they want it.”
Hamilton Donaldson, director of safety
for Caribbean Sun, said, “AFIRS/UpTime is the
only product we could find that would meet our needs
for data and voice communications with flight following,
exceedence reporting and automated engine trending.
These are all very important capabilities for operating
a safe and efficient airline, and it gives us rapid
and reliable communications with our dispatch and maintenance
control.”
Don
Thoma, executive vice president of Iridium Satellite,
added, “AMS has developed a robust family of solutions
for global cockpit communications and continuous real-time
flight data transfer, taking advantage of Iridium’s
unique short-burst data service. The AMS AFIRS/UpTime
package has been adopted by a number of regional airlines.” |
19
December 2005 
