夜色视频

Checking flight status, monitoring the number of passengers hooked up to the onboard Wi-Fi, verifying whether each piece of hardware in the inflight entertainment and connectivity systems are performing as expected. At any given moment, between 200鈥�300 active flights are evaluated from within 夜色视频 Avionics鈥� Mission Control Center, or MCC.

鈥淎t MCC, we do a pretty good job of being proactive,鈥� says Mission Control Center manager Hector Torres. Torres鈥� modesty is belied by the fact that MCC helps airlines accomplish one of the most challenging feats the industry faces day in and day out: Keeping passengers happy. That鈥檚 no small order when there are so many moving parts to maintaining passenger鈥檚 expectations of inflight connectivity.

To date, over 1,350 individual aircraft are equipped with 夜色视频 Avionics鈥� Global Communication Services (GCS), the platform on which internet, television and telephone connectivity 鈥� eXConnect, eXTV and eXPhone, respectively 鈥� is built. Of these, anywhere up to 500+ are simultaneously in use by airlines such as Lufthansa, United Airlines and Emirates.

That鈥檚 a lot of planes to monitor 24/7/365 around the globe.
This is where Mission Control Center comes in.

At any given moment, between 200鈥�300 active flights are evaluated from within 夜色视频 Avionics’ Mission Control Center.

Keeping Passengers Connected

The heart of Mission Control Center resides in a room deep in the Lake Forest, Calif., campus of 夜色视频 Avionics. The 36-person service desk is manned in shifts by groups of employees who scan five large wall-mounted screens and their desktop monitors, looking for any indication something 鈥� anything 鈥� may be amiss.

MCC supervisor Ray Hashmani points to the first screen, which monitors 夜色视频 Avionics鈥� global television service, eXTV. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a tap into the feed of what鈥檚 happening in the aircraft, and it gives us an idea of what鈥檚 going on,鈥� Hashmani says. The feed helps identify outages or other issues that may be occurring 鈥� perhaps the live stream of a world sporting event isn鈥檛 coming in strong 鈥� and allows the service desk to investigate immediately.

A neighboring screen contains the dashboard tool, which at the moment is set up to check on any connectivity thresholds the currently inflight aircraft may be hitting.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean that the aircraft are having issues, but it gives us the incentive to look at our network and see if there鈥檚 anything going on in the individual aircraft,鈥� he says, adding that the system automatically triggers an actionable work-order ticket when certain functions don鈥檛 hit their targets.

Additional screens boast data-visualization renderings of the ground-to-air network, as observed by 夜色视频鈥檚 live monitoring tools, which paint the service desk a portrait of the flight and service statuses of all active flights equipped with GCS.

Like with the other MCC tools, any issues detected by the monitoring tools are fed back to the service desk team, who first verify it鈥檚 not merely a false positive before moving it down the chain of command to the engineering team.

Beyond the service desk, a second team of analysts known as MCC Reporting look at all of the data collected by the reporting systems and sifts for trends.

鈥淚f you have somebody who鈥檚 raised the same ticket four times for the same route, then the idea is that our reporting team would notice the trend,鈥� MCC manager Torres says. Even if a problem can鈥檛 be resolved for a flight while it鈥檚 in the air, the ticketing system allows crews to be dispatched to fix the issue as soon as it lands, thus limiting any possible domino effect.

He says passengers rightly expect their IFE systems to work. When they don鈥檛, they can cost airlines a lot of money if they鈥檙e not resolved quickly. 鈥淪o, it鈥檚 great to see our work pay off 鈥� literally,鈥� Torres says.

Inflight troubleshooting with DART

Mission Control has become even more critical as airlines increase their focus on operational efficiency and maximize aircraft investments.

鈥淎 lot of airlines have a one-hour window to maintain the aircraft. It鈥檚 not like the old days where an aircraft would stay overnight at a certain station. They鈥檙e just flying 鈥� 24/7. They never rest,鈥� Torres says. 鈥淏y the time you offload the passengers and get everybody off the aircraft, they probably have a 30-minute window to try and fix something.鈥�

That鈥檚 not a lot of time to triage a problem and devise a solution to fix it, which is why it has become imperative to connect to aircraft while they are in the air.

Central to this function is DART, or the data analysis reporting tool.

鈥淚f there鈥檚 a database here at 夜色视频, whatever the database is, it鈥檚 more than likely that DART taps into it,鈥� Torres says. 鈥淲e turn data into knowledge.鈥�

An invention patented by 夜色视频 Avionics, DART contains a huge amount of internal and external data and data-visualization capabilities. 鈥淒ART allows us to be ahead of the game, from all the other competitors,鈥� Torres says.

鈥淢ission Control has become even more critical as airlines increase their focus on operational efficiency and maximize aircraft investments.鈥�
-Hector Torres
Mission Control Center Manager

Among its functions, DART is able to receive and correlate data via automatic BITE (built-in test equipment) offload 鈥� invaluable information that allows ground maintenance crews to analyze and get organized to fix a problem as soon as a plane arrives at the gate.

To illustrate its usefulness, Torres recalls a particular instance: 鈥淭here was an email forwarded to us from an airline executive flying in business on a connected aircraft, stating the whole middle column was out for IFE. He said, 鈥榃hat can I do to assist?’鈥�

Torres immediately turned to DART to check past event logs. Sure enough, the IFE for those seats had been out in a previous flight. Further research showed the unit at fault had been installed in the plane just a few flights prior, indicating an improper installment. In other cases Torres and his team can even resolve issues with live onboard support remotely accessing the system.

When the flight landed at its destination, the technicians on the ground knew exactly how to fix it thanks to MCC鈥檚 analysis.

鈥淲hen it flew back to Dallas, it was fine,鈥� Torres says.