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ARINC Direct SM will participate at Europe’s premier business aviation event EBACE in Geneva, Switzerland in May (Stand No 575) having seen its customer base in Europe and the Middle East Region grow significantly over the past 12 months. The number of business aircraft it is now supporting has increased to 250, up 100 units from this time a year ago. In 2009 for the first time, more than 50% of new aircraft deliveries are occurring outside North America. As a result, ARINC Direct is looking to create a similar dedicated infrastructure to EMEA in the Asia Pacific Region later this year.
The message that ARINC Direct is taking to Geneva focuses on how it can help deliver value to customers with tools that can enable them to make the most cost effective use of their aircraft for business. The industry is facing big challenges and cost-cutting has become a regularly heard expression. ARINC Direct will be meeting customers at EBACE to help them deliver more value.
There is already an increasing trend among established customers to expand the number of service solutions from the ARINC portfolio. Interest is growing in ARINC’s flight planning solutions, although growth is mainly being driven by its communications offerings, according to Business Manager James Hardie. In support of this, ARINC continues to co-operate with competitors on the provision of flight plan uplinks. During the show Gary Gambarini, Director of Operations will be talking up ARINC Direct’s international trip planning solutions and hopefully taking orders from customers.
ARINC Direct continues to win business because of its overall value proposition to business jet operators – in three core areas: cockpit datalinks – which provide critical information for pilots to make well informed decisions and provide valuable point to point contact with their support on the ground; cabin voice and data that improves the passenger experience and utility of a business jet by maintaining connections that are commonplace on the ground and, an area that is becoming increasingly popular, flight planning. In the EMEA region, ARINC has bolstered its number of engineers to handle all aspects of aircraft activation, advice, troubleshooting and application train.
Datalink ARINC is marking its 30th anniversary of Datalink applications this year and on the business aviation side ARINC Direct has delivered new applications such as graphical weather uplinks to support the widest range of avionics and a variety of aircraft types. Year 2008 pricing has been modified in light of the current climate and clients now have a flat fee rate for global communications services via the various media – VHF (ARINC and SITA) Immarsat and Iridium. This has significantly helped to reduce the overall cost of annual use and simplified the invoicing process – so that customers can maximize their ARINC services without fear of incurring unexpected fees
Cabin Communications ARINC is now offering the lowest prices in the industry for satellite voice calls and internet connectivity via Swift 64. Subscribers to ARINC’s full Gold Plan services benefit with additional lower cost prices
Flight Planning Last year ARINC Direct enhanced its flight planning solutions with the addition of Weight and Balance and Performance Calculator. It also saw its expanded fuel offering expand to 7,500 locations. Since the start of this year – cost index functionality has been added to enable operators to calculate the cost of a flight based on a variety of factors and thus select the most cost effective plan o aircraft Further developments are underway to give flight departments the clearest possible support for maximizing efficiency of operations while using all the tools placed at their disposal. ARINC Direct is working closely with CFMU and it is now delivering options to use eAPIS compliant functionality (ahead of the mandatory compliance date) – in a bid to offer optimum value,
ARINC Direct provides a complete integrated suite of flight support services for business jet operators that enables customers to have a single point of contact for all of their aircraft communications, flight planning needs – similar to an airline’s operations centre. Customer service is ARINC Direct’s main service differentiator, including training, aircraft configurations, 24×7 flight support, and rapid second tier response to customer issues.
ARINC Direct has programmes in place with aircraft manufacturers and completion centres to select, configure and test aircraft communications systems prior to delivery of the aircraft to customers.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
