EBACE: ARINC Direct – now supporting 350 business aircraft in EMEA region

ARINC  offers a suite of services in three main areas – flight planning, datalink communications for the cockpit, and passenger connectivity. Originally providing HF communications over the oceans, it moved to VHF ACARS, Inmarsat and Iridium satcoms and then HF datalink to complete a worldwide connectivity.  
Inmarsat and Iridium, along with ARINC’s own SKYLink Ku-band system, are becoming widely used now for passenger voice, email and Internet access, and other satellite services are beginning to emerge.   “ As long as the necessary equipment is installed in the aircraft, we can make the connection. We also provide management services such as call records, and have ideas in the pipeline to make even better use of Inmarsat’s recently introduced SwiftBroadband 432kbit/sec service,” says ARINC Direct Business Director James Hardie.
One satisfied ARINC Direct customer is the head of flight operations of European car giant BMW.  Christian Kramer is responsible for the operations of a Dassault Falcon 2000EX Easy and Gulfstream 500, which flies up to 700 hours a year.  The Department relies on ARINC Direct for flight planning and air to ground communications, routinely used by its passengers.
BMW Flight Service was set up to provide transport for group employees, from members of the board to test drivers and engineers, typically operating to destinations in Europe, the USA, South Africa and the Far East.  It signed up for ARINC Direct in August 2007 and has since built the service into its everyday activities. “We use ARINC Direct for flight planning nearly every day,” says Kramer. “Though we are free to call them at any time, we hardly ever need to, which shows how efficient and reliable the service is.”
 Other facilities available to the Department include the co-ordination of flightplans with the ATC providers. “This saves us having to run a separate system as well as flight-following and departure and landing reports. “If a problem should arise, we can rely on a quick reaction and support from ARINC round the clock.”
The list of ARINC Direct offerings continues to grow in response to customer demand, according to Hardie. “We listen to our clients and do our utmost to assign development resources to meet new requirements as they arise,” he says. “In EMEA we have specialised in helping newly established business jet operations that don’t have an established legacy of existing services.”
ARINC Direct files over a thousand flight plans a day and provides a range of capabilities from basic Web-based planning and filing all the way up to a full international trip planning service.  Specific functions include online fuel ordering, advance passenger information system (APIS) manifests, weather information, Notams, aeronautical charts, and flight tracking.
Last autumn ARINC introduced an APIS service fully integrated with the flight planning engine already being used by customers.  It exceeds the capabilities of the free data submission and tracking facility offered by US Customs and Border Protection (USCBP), and as a result ARINC was asked to make this available to the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA).