The Enhanced AIRCOM® ServerPlatform 8.0 is here

At SITA, we’re constantly seeking to enhance and innovate for the air transport industry. Our popular SITA FOR AIRCRAFT AIRCOM^® applications digitally transform flight operations through every stage of the journey – at take-off, inflight and landing – but we never stop striving to improve the aircraft day of operations.

That’s why we’ve released AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform (ASP) 8.0, which includes a host of updates to make flight operations more efficient and effective than ever.

We’ve made significant enhancements to some of our key AIRCOM^® solutions, including AIRCOM^® FlightTracker, AIRCOM^® FlightPlanner and AIRCOM^® FlightMessenger – all hosted on the AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform – to optimize flight routing and turnaround and enable more effective communications inflight.

Discover the latest updates:

AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform (ASP)

• To enable a more efficient technical support, relevant configuration, usage and statistical data will be retrieved from ASP through the AIRCOM^® Usage and Statistics Service. The data will provide the visibility of the customer’s setup and product usage.
• The user interface of the status page has been rewritten and it is not required to use and configure the IIS CGI feature anymore. The new status page has a new, more modern look, but the functionality behind the page is kept intact, and it works as before.
• The ASP client login now supports 32 characters long passwords for ASP local user accounts, both for native ASP and LDAP authentication. In Account Policies, the setting “force a minimum password length” can now take a value up to 32 characters

AIRCOM^® FlightMessenger

• With the help of the HTTP connector, AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform now supports HTTP requests for messaging. As any other connector, it is possible to send messages into ASP so it can be processed and update the tracking data. Any message can also be distributed to an endpoint using this connector. In addition to send and receive messages, it is also possible to request the status of an uplink message that has been sent through the connector.

AIRCOM^® FlightTracker

AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform (ASP) Release 8.0 enhances the quality and robustness of flight tracking:

• Since aircraft can use the wrong operator code in ACARS downlinks when flying partner's flights, AIRCOM^® FlightTracker will always ignore that operator code and will use only the number part to update the tracked flight data
• The tracking algorithm has been improved to detect aircraft swaps even for airlines not relying on AIRCOM^® FlightPlanner to generate their flight plans.
• Expected flight resets will show as an information in the Traffic Log and Event Log. Unexpected flight resets, such as one occurring while in OUT or OFF flight stage, show as a warning. This allows easily identifying which flight resets might be caused by avionics problems or out of sequence OOOI.
• Messages older than 30 minutes won’t be sent to FlightAware anymore. This is to avoid unnecessary traffic as FlightAware automatically rejects such messages.
• Vertical deviation events, under Flight Event Handling, allow defining actions to be executed when aircraft is above or below planned altitude by a given number of feet. This threshold can now be configured up to 99,999 ft which avoids raising unnecessary alerts when a quick descent is required by authorities.
• This ASP release introduces a new notion of tolerance for dubious positions. As a reminder, a position is considered dubious when its time and position relative to its previous non-dubious position would imply that the aircraft traveled beyond the speed of sound. Starting from ASP 8.0, a position will not be marked as dubious anymore if it is within 5 NM of the last known position (non-dubious, non-late and non-estimated).
• For Flight Route-Alerting (FR-A), new parameters were added to narrow down the number of raised alerts and notification. For example, one can choose to execute actions for all flights or only active ones. At the same time, also configure actions to be executed as soon as a FR-advisory or warning is raised (original behavior) or within a defined number of minutes before the forecasted weather condition. In addition, the FR-A’s thresholds for airports and routes can be customized using a spreadsheet.
• A new keep alive mechanism has been put in place between FlightAware and ASP, this ensures the link between the two parties is always up regardless of the volume of traffic.

AIRCOM^® FlightPlanner

• In Release 8.0, the focus is mainly on improving our NOTAM presentation capability and on adding support for FlightPortal, which gives seamless integration with the forthcoming FlightFolder and with 3rd party EFFs.
• In Release 8.0 the Dispatcher can select between these Narrow Route and Location-specific NOTAM briefings.
• We have added functionality to allow Dispatchers to suppress specific NOTAMs from appearing in Pilot briefings. This can be set as a permanent or temporary rule, allowing NOTAMs to be suppressed permanently or for a specific flight only. This adds a practical enhancement to our comprehensive NOTAM filtering capability.
• NOTAMs can be highlighted based on key words or phrases. Highlighting options are varied and include bold, underlined, italicised and highlighted text, enabling the application to draw the Dispatcher’s and Pilot’s attention to important information.
• The way NOTAMs are displayed for the Dispatcher have been changed to a location tree-type format, allowing them to quickly find relevant information more easily.
• FlightPortal will be released at the end of this year, providing integrated functionality for supporting EFF:
  • Comprehensive support for EFF, most specifically with our own FlightFolder solution, and an API for 3rd party EFFs. This allows our Flight Planning and associated briefing collateral (such as weather and NOTAMs) to be shared with EFF using ARINC 633-2 standard data format.
  • For airlines who do not use EFF, or who use a mix of EFF and ‘traditional paper’ briefings FlightPortal provides a website that allows Pilots to review, query, accept and reject their flight release, with a live chat function between the Portal and FlightPlanner and full logging in FlightPlanner.
• Release 8.0 also contains some minor improvements to flight schedule handling, including separation of STD and ETD from DoF to prevent issues from occurring where a flight is delayed beyond midnight and the addition of ETD to the flight schedule to better support integration with a wider range of scheduling systems.

For the full details of the AIRCOM^® ServerPlatform (ASP) 8.0 release, reach out to your usual SITA FOR AIRCRAFT contact or send us an inquiry.