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.

Airline Alliance OPEN Communications Hubs Implementations

In today’s climate of airline alliances and mergers, airlines need to make communications changes at a moment’s notice. Achieving that flexibility once meant throwing the problem to a costly team of developers or a legacy provider. Today, airlines can use AIRS’ patent-pending scripting innovation and get instant results on their own.

An example is a North American regional airline that recently needed to send messages in a new address format to its legacy airline partner. With AIRS, the regional found how easily and quickly AvFinity’s patent-pending scripting option provided the solution. AIRS now automatically makes the adjustment with no outsourcing costs, no legacy message providers and no rejected messages.

This same solution is ideal for handling code changes during IT conversions for new partners or alliance members.

AvFinity is connected to Canada Border Services Agency's API PNR PUSH ahead of major airlines!

AvFinity has completed testing and is now authorized to submit Passenger and Crew manifest data (API and PNR) to the Canada Border Services Agency ahead of the major airlines.

Do you need help connecting to Canada’s new PNR Push program for submitting your APIS manifest data? Cargo and Charter flights are an immediate fit for the AvFinity PNR Push solution. The deadline for moving to the new PNR Push program is December 2011.

Contact AvFinity today for your CBSA PNR Push solution!

http://www.avfinity.com/ContactUs.php

Why use an OPEN Communication Hub

AIRS is now installed in about 50% of the regional airlines in North America. Many of these airlines are codeshare partners of major airlines.

AvFinity is currently introducing its Open Communication Hub that addresses the need for simplification, knowledge transfer and collaboration within the logical framework of a major airline and its code-share partners.

With the OPEN Communication Hub, AvFinity simplifies host-to-host and outstation-to-host messaging, data and application communications.

The solution is designed to operate flawlessly within an Alliance’s heterogeneous systems and network environments.