Air Transat to Use ARINC's OpCenter for One-Click Messaging and Flight Following

Air Transat is getting an enhanced ASD (aircraft situational display) and flight following applications, as well as one-click messaging capability for its dispatchers, as part of a renewed contract with ARINC for datalink services.

The Canadian holiday travel airline, which is already an ARINC GLOBALink customer, agreed to use its ARINC's VHF and satellite datalink communications for three more years, but will enhance its overall operational control capability by adding ARINC's OpCenter message management tool.

ARINC will integrate Air Transat's Flight Explorer situational display and FW:S MFS:2 flight planning services with OpCenter, which has user-defined message management and store-and-forward functions, that will give the airline's dispatchers the ability to send messages to specific aircraft with a click on their ASD displays.  The system also will automatically send ACARS (aircraft communications addressing and reporting system) data to the carrier's flight planning service.

"This custom integration gives Air Transat's dispatchers faster and easier messaging, without changing the familiar applications on their desktops," said David Bonney, ARINC's account director.

OpCenter is a secure service hosted off site, ARINC says, so it can serve also as a full-scale backup for an airline's main datalink communications system.  04-06-2007.

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