Star Navigation Offers In-flight Safety Monitoring

Toronto-based Star Navigation Systems offers business jets something better than the airline black box: the Star In-flight Safety Monitoring System (Star-ism). “Our original system, introduced in 2005, provided current information to pilots and ground controllers, giving them the ability to note anomalies and nip problems in the bud,” said Viraf Kapadia, CEO of Star Navigation Systems Group. “While it was a significant safety improvement, it didn’t do quite what we wanted,” Kapadia told AIN. “The original system measured 4,000 parameters per minute but we can now measure as many as 18,000 per minute,” he said. The system gathers information from the aircraft’s data buses, analyzing anything on the aircraft that puts out a digital signal. Kapadia cautions that the limiting factor is the age and the sophistication of the avionics. The new Star-ism system includes GPS tracking, and within the limits of the avionics it can provide both real-time and after-landing reports, intelligent flight data transmission, and detailed live flight data alerts to ground operators using satellite-based technology. “It acts as an early warning system, detecting the earliest signs of potential problems in real time,” he said.