Story ID: 
ADS Introduces Electronic Oxygen-planning Service
By: Matt Thurber
Caption: How much oxygen do you need to make sure you’re not only legal for a planned flight but can also safely provide for crew and passengers in the event of a d
Word Count: 337
How much oxygen do you need to make sure you’re not only legal for a planned flight but can also safely provide for crew and passengers in the event of a diversion? Aeronautical Data Systems (ADS), based in Upper Saddle River, N.J., has developed Web-based software that helps answer this question easily and comprehensively. ADS’s E-Ops (electronic oxygen planning service) software requires an Internet browser that runs a recent version of Java. I tried E-Ops using Google’s Chrome browser, and that worked fine. E-Ops is running as a beta test program for now using a Dassault Falcon 900EX for the calculations. After users log onto the ADS Web site and click on the E-Ops button, a small window pops up with three data fields, for the user ID, password and N-number. A larger window then appears, with fields for aircraft type and tail number (already filled out because the beta uses only this one airplane), flight altitude (which is really diversion altitude), number of crew, number of passengers, equal time point (ETP, to suitable alternate), number of oxygen bottles and size, crew mask type, passenger regulator and passenger mask PSU (the last four are already filled out). The flight altitude field doesn’t let the user input anything higher than the maximum diversion altitude. After filling out these fields, a click on the submit button reveals the minimum required oxygen cylinder pressure needed for dispatch. I tried a few examples. At 25,000 feet with two crew and no passengers and a 3:15 ETP, the minimum was 1,108 psi. Adding six passengers under the same conditions prompted this message: “WARNING: oxygen deficit 1,834 liters.” With two crew and two passengers, the minimum cylinder pressure was 1,701 psi.ADS welcomes pilots who want to try E-Ops, and the company can add other aircraft types to the system if you want to see how it works on your company’s aircraft. Pricing is not yet available. For more information, contact ADS vice president Jim Stabile at (973) 383-2224 or jstabile@adsopp.com.