How airlines take control of their legacy messaging

Control is a significant airline benefit provided by the OPEN Communication Hub. Communication among all partners provides flight-critical messaging in all departments, from Operations, to MRO, to regulatory, regardless of the level of technology of the remote airports or the format the particular message recipient requires. That’s a major benefit the single appliance AIRS offers to aviation today.

3 Critical elements of an OPEN Communication Hub

AvFinity’s Open Communication Hub solution set offers airlines these three components that provide them with unprecedented control of their communications:

IP VPN Networks:

· Enables the customer to connect to multiple IP-based VPN’s via a single connection

· Enables the customer to reduce the number of legacy connections through direct host-to-host communications.

AvFinity AIRS^TM:

· Enables the customer to communicate with any device regardless of communication interface, host-to-host (H2H) and host-to-application (H2A) access

· Enables the customer to switch data and application at the hub

· Enables the customer to access airline databases & applications

· Enables the customer to create and deploy applications on open standard platforms using AvFinity supplied ASMS^TM software:

o Connectivity communications (Legacy protocol to IP connectivity)

o Business Rules (application logic)

o Parsing (creating data records from legacy applications)

o Scripting (rapid development languages)

o Remote hardware and software management

o Remote software installation and configuration

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) Applications:

· Enables the customer to create and deploy applications on open standard platforms (Cisco or servers) within the network

· Enables network based Business Rules (application logic)

· Enables peer-to-peer application management e.g. APIS segment conformance

OPEN Communication Hub Creates Communities

With the OPEN Communication Hub, AvFinity creates a communications ecosystem using AIRS where all airlines that must message one another can interact with each other and a central hub.

The benefits of this interconnected network among members who share common goals are immense. Here are just a few:

• Flight-critical communications become more efficient.
• Communications are controlled by the airline and its members so that the quality of information is assured without the filter of a third-party vendor.
• Changes, which are a constant in aviation, are performed immediately by AIRS without having to hire a team of developers that will spend six months figuring out a solution.
• New airline partners become communications-ready with established airline members immediately upon installing AIRS regardless of their IT datacenter expertise.
• AIRS integrates into back-end systems so that data are accessed without human intervention.
• AIRS handles all data, regardless of format, and sends and receives them regardless of communications protocol or transport media.

Why Legacy Messaging Distorts Airline Costs

From a cost standpoint, airlines today are squeezed three ways.

1. They have flight-related costs tied to volatile fuel prices, crews and aircraft maintenance.
2. They have passenger-related costs that vary with the number of passengers—a number that today can drop precipitously through the spread of contagious diseases and the after effects of natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
3. And there are also the fixed implementation costs associated with any business.

Airlines have a desperate need to control costs in every sector of their business. More efficient technology is one way such airlines can realize significant savings in the vital area of communications. This area spans all data transfer requirements from Baggage Sortation Messages (BSM) to flight plan filing and CDM requests to passenger/crew manifests (APIS) submitted to government eBorders systems.

AIRS was created by AvFinity to control messaging and the infrastructure to support messaging.

That’s why roughly 50% of the North American regional air carrier market has chosen the AIRS innovation in just the last year alone.

Solving the Babel of Aviation Communications Issues

In an effort to gain a cost or efficiency advantage—even for the short-term—different airlines and government agencies continue to adopt different IT solutions. This approach has led to a babel of communication protocols, diverse message formats and disparate network systems. To access this scene of confusion, airlines must rely on a combination of legacy and more modern IT architectures as well as legacy Type B and more modern (TCP/IP) messaging suppliers.

The result is daily challenges to an airline’s IT department in handling communications with needed flight partners under this mongrelized communications industry structure.

Left without a universal solution, conditions won’t improve for aviation. In response to an increasingly tough competitive and economic environment, airlines are merging and consolidating. And many others are forming strategic alliances. Suddenly established airlines must immediately communicate with new partners.

This evolution—operating within an aviation industry backdrop of IT cost-cutting and a desire to outsource—further muddies the communications picture.

Consider an AIRS solution configured in a hub (or star). AvFinity’s OPEN Communication Hub is a quick, convenient and cost-effective way for airlines to link their applications to meet code share and alliance obligations. The OPEN Communication Hub handles the routing, management, protocol and formatting issues on behalf of the airlines. All the solutions needed in a single but powerful appliance.